Lobbying Group Decried Cartoon Characters’ Virtual Genitals
When Winnie the Pooh showed up this week for ceremonies inducting him into Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, he was naked from the waist down.
If anyone needed proof that Michael Eisner, Disney’s former CEO, was really gone from the company helm, a pantless Pooh was it.
Moreover, Pooh sans even a skimpy stuffed bear thong was further evidence that Disney has chosen the high road in the culture wars and rejects calls from conservative family values lobbying groups to fully clothe the company’s stable of cartoon characters, most of whom have always been naked from the waist down.
Robert Iger, Disney’s new CEO, and others who spoke at the induction ceremony made no mention of Pooh’s clothing or that of the other Disney characters who participated in the event.
It was just a year ago that word leaked out that Eisner, under intense pressure from dissident Disney shareholders to step down, was pondering whether Pooh should begin wearing pants in all his appearances in Disney venues. Reports at the time said that a Pooh with pants would soon appear everywhere, from theme parks to future film and television appearances.
Pantless Pooh particularly alarmed Wall Street security analysts. They had long been critical of Eisner’s leadership of Disney and a raft of business decisions that had depressed earnings and the company’s stock price. They saw clothes for Disney cartoon characters as a last straw.
Clothing Disney characters, particularly those who wear no pants and theoretically have their genitals exposed, was first proposed by National Family Wholesome Values, a conservative group based in Sioux City, Iowa that has been critical of nudity in the media.
NFWV said that even though Pooh and other Disney characters were completely devoid of genitals, they nevertheless were displaying “virtual genitals” that anyone who saw one the characters painted in with their minds.
“It’s a form of visual innuendo, a kind of virtual nudity and it’s just as offensive to any thoughtful person as a more real form of nudity,” NFWV executive director Leland Kennedy famously said at the time.
“Praise the Lord! Sanity has returned to Disney,” said Raymond Jamison, an analyst at Misty City Securities, a Chicago-based hedge fund that specializes in entertainment companies. He had been scathing in his criticism of the pants idea when it first surfaced.
Jamison said he dispatched a Los Angeles-based securities analyst to attend the induction ceremony and observe firsthand what Pooh was wearing. “No pants was a very bullish buy signal for Disney stock,” he said.
Reached at his dry-cleaning business in Sioux City, NFWV’s Kennedy said the group has not changed it views. “You know as well as I do that Winnie may be genderless, but everyone is busy painting in all the missing parts every time they see him,” Kennedy said. “That’s just not wholesome for our children.”
Kennedy said his dry-cleaning business would continue to turn away customers who brought in Winnie the Pooh bears for cleaning and mending unless they agreed to purchase a pair of pants that Kennedy sells and installs for $19.95 plus tax.