Walt Disney Co on Friday said that remarks by activist investor Nelson Peltz criticizing the company for making movies dominated by female and Black actors is evidence that he shouldn’t be on Disney’s board.

Peltz, whose fight to join Disney as a director has become one of the year’s most bitter and closely watched board battles, in an interview with the Financial Times said Disney’s films have become too focused on delivering a message, and not enough on quality storytelling. He specifically took issue with “The Marvels” and “Black Panther.”

“Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that?" Peltz said in the interview, published on Friday. "Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?”

Asked about Peltz’s remarks, a Disney spokesperson responded: “This is exactly why Nelson Peltz shouldn’t be anywhere near a creatively driven company.”

  • Ranvier
    114·
    9 months ago

    Because whenever a movie or TV show or video game has anything except a cis hetero white man as the main character, people like this start screeching. They aren’t satisfied with having people that look like themselves represented in the vast majority of main characters. They view any time a character not matching the above description shows up in some kind of media as discrimination against themselves. Any slight reduction in privilage they mistake for real discrimination. They mask this by claiming they’re just concerned with the integrity of the art or some nonsense, especially the gamer gate type crowd.

    Anytime a gay character or a female character or someone pops up they start yelling, “why does this character have to be gay? It must be lazy pandering at the expense of a good story.” To which I would pose the same question back to them. Any piece of media featuring a straight cis white man, why does the character have to be a straight white man? Must be lazy pandering at the expense of story.

    Or maybe, just maybe, it’s more interesting to have a wide variety of characters and stories in media. Sometimes people are just gay, or are just straight, or just female, or just male. It might have a big impact in a story and it might not. It shouldn’t be “unless this is a story specifically about the gay/female/black experience the character must be straight/male/white by default.” If that is going to be part of that piece of media, great, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be depending on the story being told. You’ll never see this crowd upset with a straight white male character for these reasons though, very transparent.