Just in time for the ramping up of Hocus Pocus 2 marketing, The Walt Disney Company finds itself in yet another culturally divisive battle sure to do nothing but harm… and it’s in the ideological fringes once again.
This time it is Bette Midler making waves and angering those who believe that biological men and women can fully be a different gender or sex than their DNA, and that such a concept would therefore warrant people altering their speech towards those people either by public scorn or public force. Midler is now pushing back against that, whether by her own intellectual prowess or by not understanding what she’s writing. As a result, she’s now being lumped into the same category as JK Rowling. You might say, “well Rowling is one of the most successful women in all of history,” but that doesn’t assess the situation in the same way as those in a particular political movement identify it.
So how did Midler manage to do all of this? Let’s take a look:
WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They don’t call us “women” anymore; they call us “birthing people” or “menstruators”, and even “people with vaginas”! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!
— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) July 4, 2022
That tweet brought forth replies with thousands of “likes” such as these:
As a woman without a uterus, I support inclusive language to normalize that trans men need reproductive healthcare too, 100%
It's not trans people who are taking away my right to bodily autony
We're all fighting the same fight.
— Tere Kirkland 🦀 (@TereKirkland) July 4, 2022
No. Don’t fall for the anti-trans panic fake nonsense. No one is erasing women. In a few small healthcare cases where appropriate they are using trans inclusive language. That’s all.
— Dr Panti Bliss-Cabrera (@PantiBliss) July 4, 2022
Bringing back Bette Midler for Hocus Pocus 2 is a different enterprise than it would have been for the original. For one, social media didn’t exist at that time. Whatever you may think of Midler’s positions — and you may very well agree with them — the woman is a leftist firebrand. That means that if you’re a company like Disney, you have to know that baked into the cake of this endeavor is the knowledge that you could have a very sensational statement made by the actress that would alienate conservative viewers. What Disney may have been less likely to consider is the danger of a Bette Midler taking on elements of the left at the same time. Yet this is the danger of celebrities who spend huge swaths of time posting political dogma online.
Shockingly, when Middler is posting about tragedies, that’s when Disney is safest.
Midler was in an outspoken mindset on Independence Day, as she reposted a video of people in Philadelphia fleeing a shooting incident. “They tell us we are citizens of ‘The Greatest Nation on Earth’, yet this is how we have to live…what a joke. why do we stand for it? Who are we? Are we ultimately just mice? When are we going to say ‘Enough’?” Midler wrote late on Monday.
— Jamie Burton, Newsweek
What can safely be assumed by Disney leadership, including the newly reempowered Bob Chapek, is that the runup to Hocus Pocus 2 is probably filled with even more landmines. For a company eager to get out of the fray, that’s not something their leadership is likely looking forward to. For stockholders, getting the company out of the political realm can’t happen fast enough.
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