What Were Our Parents Thinking?

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What were our parents thinking? Scions of the most fecund and prodigious generation ever in America; steeped in the faiths of their fathers, in the unspoken social contracts that allowed the law to be a last resort rather than the first, in the stoicism of “mind your business”, not “wearing your heart on your sleeve”, not “undressing” in public; who lived through the Great Depression and had sympathy and gratitude for the things that unions brought like the 40 hour week, overtime, benefits, pensions, holidays and vacations; who pledged to the Flag and the Republic for which it stands, and its cores in the Declaration, Constitution and Polling place, who invented radar, the atomic bomb, the transistor, the computer, and perfected the airplane, rocket, jet, helicopter, the bituminous concrete highway, 50,000 mile tires and the LP record; our parents chose Disney as their number one, Mom & Dad-approved, wholesome, family-oriented entertainment source. Again I ask, what were they thinking?

Let's take a look at the body of Disney’s work with an eye towards how Disney’s ideals are at cross-purposes to the things our parents were taught to believe. Readers might parry my claims with the thrust that our parents beliefs were superstitions too, but I make a distinction among the quality, moral and ethical standing of the institutions promulgating superstition today. In other words, some religions are more tolerant than others, and we like those better even if we think their beliefs are loony. Like the old joke about opinions and anuses: we all have ‘em and they all stink. Also, I don’t leave out those secularists who abandoned their progeny to the Magic Kingdom. They might be rational in their intellectual abandon of superstition, but actions speak louder than words. (This is beginning to sound like Æsop.)

When You Wish Upon A Star

There it is, Folks, the Disney Creed. The first phrase can be intoned just as in the Gregorian Chant "Credo in Unum Deo" ("I believe in One God"), and could well be stated as Credo in Unum Stella, and declared a heresy by the Society for the Protection of the Faith, better known as the Holy Inquisition. It is sung by a cricket representing Conscience.


When you wish upon a star, makes no diff’rence who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.
When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme, when you wish upon a star as dreamers do.
Fate is kind, She brings to those who love, the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.
Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through,when you wish upon a star, your dream comes true.
- by Ned Washington and Leigh Harline
Copyright © 1940 by BOURNE CO. Copyright renewed.

So, whaddya think? I cannot deny the power of the performance, it is hauntingly beautiful, with manipulative and melodramatic power in its arrangement and the near-countertenor lead. I can hear my parents, “what a pretty tune!”. They, Irish-American Catholics, were more atuned to learning and performing music as a course of life, and not an exceptional event. Aware of the power of words, I am surprised they let this get by. Let’s go line by superstitious line:

When you wish upon a star, makes no diff’rence who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.

OK, Daddy. First of all, “Why?” Failing to answer that, you were taught and truly believe that the only way to make your way in life is to believe in God, work hard, pay your taxes, love your neighbors, do your civic duties, be sober and responsible, and, all in all, either raise yourself up some, follow a noble vocation or ethical profession, and failing that, raise some kids that might, so how does the idea that all your desires can be fulfilled by wishing upon a star fit in with your values? Why would you think this a harmless idea? The most amazing thing is that this occurs while James Bond and Peyton Place are condemned from pulpits, both bully and church, as morally dangerous influences on adults (the sort the Brits call “right-thinking people”), and EC Comics is being put out of business by "Slaughter of the Innocents", a hysteric tome with horror stories about children committing suicide by jumping from their stack of EC horror comics, with Tales from the Crypt fresh in their young impressionable minds, which instigates the Comics Code, much like the big media (publishers and producers, print. radio, movies, and the new upstart, TV) Standards and Practices codes.

But maybe not too amazing as our parents were trusting of their institutions. Some would say they were hypocrites, but that goes too far. I believe their leaders were, those mavens of media and their Hollywood role-model pawns, consummate showmen honed in the misery and ruthless competition of the vaudeville circuit, then thrust into the mass media as “ordinary folks with STAR POWER”, when in fact they were products, no matter what the quality of craft. And our folks bought it, hook, line and sinker. They thought that the government had their interests at heart, that the corporate good citizen was the new model, the benign paternal company the norm, that there was truth in advertising, that scientists could not be bought, that new was great, in better living through chemistry, and plastics, and that nuclear power would make electricity free, that all their children would be able to go to college and have an even better life. And they sacrificed to make much of it possible, but unconsciously indulged something counter to the accumulated wisdom of their own parent’s and peers’ beliefs, namely Mr. Disney and the now nearly completely profit-motivated company. Mr. Disney might have believed this stuff. I’ll need to check his background before I make errors of attribution. After I know the skinny, I’ll make all the errors I want. Let us continue to the next sentence.

When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme, when you wish upon a star as dreamers do.

What?! No wish too extreme? What if I wish that it does make a diff’rence who you are? What if I wish for everyone but me and my chosen lusts be transported to the sun? Come on. If they think that magical thinking is harmless, no wonder they’re worried that Elvis’s swingin’ dick is dangerous, Elvis’s dick is real. Believing in real magic is harmless thinking? This is not the willing suspension of disbelief you use to play along or be entertained by a performer, this is wishbones and black cats and broken mirrors and hats on beds, whistling in the dressing room or mentioning the Scottish play by name, Nomar’s batting gloves and goalies throwing up. It’s mass hysteria in the name of a nice song. Next line,

Fate is kind, She brings to those who love, the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.

OK. Didn’t you tell us the Fates were pagan idols, incapable of producing the blessing of the One, True God? So what is this shit? Did you think that no one would believe it because it was ridiculous? Like the Red Queen, it is possible to think of a number of impossible things before breakfast, but the weak-minded could convince themselves that those impossibilities would become true because they desired it so. I note at this time that children are notoriously weak-minded and impressionable. These ideas are promised true in the song their mother and father sings to them, not as a dangerous idea promoting irrationality, but as a soothing lullaby. Everything will be alright because we wish it so. The Power or Positive Thinking gone wild, a secular Prosperity theology. Onward! Excelsior!

Like a bolt out of the blue, Fate steps in and sees you through, when you wish upon a star, your dream comes true.

Now we’ve all heard the expression, a bolt out of the blue, and we all understand it to mean a lightning strike without a cloud in the sky, but I’ve never known anyone who has seen such a thing, and I am naturally skeptical simply because of all the golfers and farmers in the open fields of the world who might have but have not reported same. There is always some kind of weather front involved. The immediate supernatural assistance of Fate that is demanded and enforced by the wish-granting star is actually like that bolt, completely imaginary, but the metaphor serves to validate the magical thinking that wishing makes your dreams come true by moving the Fates.

Mom, Dad, were you there when they crucified my Lord?

As you can see, this little piece of music, lyric and sentiment is a crack in a consistent moral façade that allows dangerous solutions to seep in, to crystallize, to calcify, and build the frame for manipulation, commercial or noble, sacred or profane.

Catch the Magic.

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