In Defence of the Disney Adult

17 May 2022

“Walt Disney was actually like a literal anti-Semite actually” cries the friendless smoking area patron of a club you didn’t want to go to. He’ll go on to explain how John Lennon beat his wife and that Leo cut his hand in that scene in Django Unchained before your cigarette is even half smoked.

Disneyland Paris is a truly magical place. I’m a depressed, cynical Marxist and even I can’t help but get butterflies when I see a minimum wage Parisian dressed as Cowboy Goofy taking pictures with fat children. However, the feeling is relatively short lived. By 4pm I’m sweaty, tired, covered in my girlfriend’s vomit due to her newfound motion sickness, and my arse cheeks are so chafed you would’ve thought I’d mooned Sodom and Gomorrah. I don’t even take a second look at Cowboy Goofy on the way to dinner.

Meanwhile, the Disney Adults are having the time of their lives, every minute they spend in this park is nothing short of nirvana. I’m dressed in a carefully curated summer outfit I think brings out my triceps, paranoid that my hair looks fluffy in the queue for Tower of Terror while they wear an ill-fitting Lion King t-shirt and cargo shorts that sit half way down their arse, shovelling popcorn down their throats in-between their acapella interpolation of It’s A Small World. And the odd part of all of this is I’m painfully jealous.

I’m 23 now, so I understand that the human experience, for the most part, is shared. As a 16-year-old the chip on my shoulder regarding my upbringing would’ve weighed me down to the extent that the Tower of Terror would’ve struggled to ascent. I would’ve assumed they’d never lost a loved one in death, had their heart broken or even heard the term ‘panic attack’. Maybe, they haven’t, who knows, but one can assume that in the grand scheme of things the Disney Adult has more in common with me than I could ever know. The only difference is, while I was listening to The Smiths wallowing in abject self-pity, they were watching Mulan singing along to A Girl Worth Fighting For.

They look like morons to me. Do they care? Absolutely not.

That’s where my jealously lies. They are allowing themselves to have fun while I worry about my self-image. I could tell them how embarrassing they look, but it would be like climbing a Tibetan Mountain to tell a monk that his orange robe looks retarded. Who is the moron here?

The security of their sexuality and lack of self-awareness is my dream. I wish I could wear a Mickey Mouse headband without wanting to self-harm, but I simply couldn’t allow myself to separate my exterior from the sarcastic, post-ironic personality I’ve wasted my life curating.

These people need celebrating. We need to separate them from the mouse that has monopolized the American cinema for the entirety of the century so far and look at them for what they are; happy, care-free, friendly, deeply embarrassing, bastions of consumerist acceptance. I can neither beat them, nor join them.

'Don't grow up, it's a trap'. The talisman of the Disney Adult. They’ve witnessed the second coming, and he has big round ears.