The Bible vs. Walt Disney: my Scylla and Charybdis?

"First, we take Manhattan..."

Walt Disney: Have you ever been to Kansas City, Mrs. Travers? Do you know Missouri at all? 

P.L. Travers: I can’t say I do. 

Walt Disney: Well, it's mighty cold there in the winters. Bitter cold. And my dad, Elias Disney, he owned a newspaper delivery route there. A thousand papers, twice daily; a morning and an evening edition. And dad was a tough businessman. He was a "save a penny any way you can" type of fella, so he wouldn't employ delivery boys. No, no, no -- he used me and my big brother Roy. I was eight back then, just eight years old. And, like I said, winters are harsh, and Old Elias, he didn't believe in new shoes until the old ones were worn through. And honestly, Mrs. Travers, the snowdrifts, sometimes they were up over my head and we'd push through that snow like it was molasses. The cold and wet seeping through our clothes and our shoes. Skin peeling from our faces. Sometimes I'd find myself sunk down in the snow, just waking up because I must have passed out or something, I don't know. And then it was time for school and I was too cold and wet to figure out equations and things. And then it was back out in the snow again to get home just before dark. Mother would feed us dinner and then it was time to go right back out and do it again for the evening edition. "You'd best be quick there, Walt. You'd better get those newspapers up on that porch and under that storm door. Poppa's gonna lose his temper again and show you the buckle end of his belt, boy." 

[Travers looks noticeably unsettled by his story] 

Walt Disney: I don't tell you this to make you sad, Mrs. Travers. I don't. I love my life, I think it's a miracle. And I loved my dad. He was a wonderful man. But rare is the day when I don't think about that eight-year-old boy delivering newspapers in the snow and old Elias Disney with that strap in his fist. And I am just so tired, Mrs. Travers. I'm tired of remembering it that way. Aren't you tired, too, Mrs. Travers? Now we all have our sad tales, but don't you want to finish the story? Let it all go and have a life that isn't dictated by the past?

I don’t know if the real Walt Disney spoke a single word of this monologue — it’s from Saving Mr. Banks, screenplay by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith — nor if it holds any semblance of his lived life. I haven’t read so much as the Disney Wiki (will amend that oversight once this is posted, I promise). BUT. It does a great job of summarizing the Walt Disney World View I absorbed as a child.

Anyhow, I’m having trouble wrestling a post into submission, so I will break it down into (hopefully) digestible chunks. Some more Disney related thoughts:

• Sunday night worship service? Or the last five minutes of Disney? The struggle begins!
• It is my belief that Toby Tyler provided greater inspiration to the literatischje from my childhood village than did any of the various shunnings portrayed within their publishings.
• T Bone Burnett wrote a song named “Hefner & Disney.” He considers it a keeper, and so do I. Nor is Burnett the only one who wonders if their ideology is not in fact joined at the hip. Give it a listen.

Next: The bloodless Bible.