Disney’s woke CEO Bob Chapek doesn’t seem to mind that his far-left corporate view is harming the company after more than a year of tumbling stock prices and legislative smackdown by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Chapek has instead doubled down on “diverse” content, now claiming that “how people think” about the media giant is “what’s important.”
While attending the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference, the CEO was asked about the criticism the legacy media giant has received for being “too woke.”
“My own personal feelings aren’t really important,” Chapek began. “What’s important is how people think about our company.”
According to the CEO, the company is just providing what the “consumer base” wants to see.
“I want to respect Legacy, I want to respect what this brand is, but at the same time, I know that we may be even more precious about ‘what’s Disney’ than the consumer base is,” he added.
“And if the consumer base has more elasticity than we’ve traditionally had in terms of defining ‘what’s Disney,’ then we probably ought to listen to our audience, which means we have more degrees of freedom than we’ve probably thought,” he continued.
WSJ Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray asked the CEO about Pinocchio‘s new ending, as well as the “blowback” Disney got throughout the Middle East for “a same-sex kiss” in Buzz Lightyear which got the flick banned throughout the region.
“I may be wrong, but I think the new Pinocchio — he doesn’t change in the end,” Murray noted. “He just accepts himself for who he is, so the ending has changed a little bit with sort of contemporary mores. And you know, your people love to get out there and say Disney’s too woke. Disney’s become too politically correct.”
“Are they right? Do they have a point?” Murray asked. “What’s your take on that, those criticisms, and reaching that wide span of people?”
Chapek appeared to suggest that the country wants Disney to become more ‘woke.’
“You know, I think the more complex something is, the more you have to really drill down into the basics,” Chapek responded. “And we want our content to reflect the rich, diverse world that we live in.”
“And again, I guess that’s another way of saying, ‘catering to your audience,’ but the world is a rich, diverse place, and we want our content to reflect that,” he added.
“Certainly, you know, we live in a world now where everything seems to, you know, be polarized,” he said. “But I think we want Disney to stand for bringing people together.”
And that respect, who can forget this “Baymax” classic featuring the ‘transgender male’ recommending tampons?
EXCLUSIVE: I've obtained leaked video from Disney's upcoming show "Baymax," which promotes the transgender flag and the idea that men can have periods to children as young as two years old.
It's all part of Disney's plan to re-engineer the discourse around kids and sexuality. pic.twitter.com/y1ATnKCEce
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 28, 2022
Americans are clamoring for this?
In May, CNBC reported, “Shares of Disney have slumped 30% since January and more than 40% compared with the same time last year.”