Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (25 page)

You shouldn’t do that. Go to a club. They were just trying to cause trouble anyway.”69

Two years earlier a similar event occurred at Disneyland on an even larger scale. For years, the management had allowed private parties to rent out the park after normal working hours during the off season (vaguely October through January). In 1978, an organization calling itself the Los Angeles Bar and Restaurant Association reserved the park for such a party. Just before the night of the party, Disneyland realized that the Association consisted of
gay male
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tomers. Unable to bar the event completely at such short notice, Disneyland made preparations for the worst. All live music was canceled to keep from encouraging same-sex couples to dance. Security was beefed up, and park supervisors “said that, for a night, courtesy was optional.”70 In a classic case of gay activist “zapping,” 15,000 mainly gay male guests aggressively took over Disneyland. Some of the guests were heterosexual families who had no idea that they had bought tickets for a gay “zap” and were shocked to find very open displays of affection between men. Yet, the majority were homosexuals running rampant through the park, occasionally having it out with homophobic employees and joyfully engaging in what has been described by many of the people who worked at the park that night as a free-form orgy. Various stages of sexual coupling occurred in bathrooms, on park benches and even on the Submarine Voyage.71

The response from the “Family” seems to have been equivalent to their stance on Exler and Elliott’s dancing: disapproval. One homosexual employee who worked that night declared, “Oh my goodness!

There were men cruising men all over, . . . and they were obnoxious.

. . . Even the gay people like myself were a little appalled. Because we thought, ‘Well, this is a little—pushing things too far.’ I mean, it’s one thing to come and have fun, but they were really in your face.”72

Similar to the parks’ gay community’s apparent antipathy towards radical queer activism, the community often seems to reject the blurring of sexual boundaries espoused under the term “queer.” Instead, categories based on older ideas about sexuality and gender identification are reinforced: that gay men are defined by their femininity and lesbians by their masculinity. For example, a number of lesbians favor working at Frontierland or the motorized cars of Tomorrowland’s Autopia (as well as maintenance and janitorial work). Similarly, many young gay men tend to drift towards the fanciful nature of Fantasyland, or, even more likely, towards performing in the parades down Main Street. It is possible that, for these individuals, this is the only way they know how to “be gay,” affecting (if not reinforcing ideas still common in conservative communities) how they identify as homosexual. Sue Schiebler relates, “We used to say Fantasyland were the gay boys and Tomorrowland were the lesbians. . . . It really is funny how all of it feeds stereotypes, but yet it does.”73 Such strict definitions might have an adverse affect upon some individuals. For example, women reported at both parks the importance of park softball teams within the lesbian 128

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work force. At least one formerly closeted lesbian said she thought, “I must not be a lesbian, you’re supposed to like softball! What am I?”74

Such a strong division between effeminate gay men and “butch”

lesbians often separates homosexual employees from each other, instead of uniting them under the “Family” umbrella—much as discussed above in regard to LEAGUE’s members. Lesbian maintenance workers do not associate with young gay male parade dancers, for example. Granted, the constraints of the job descriptions often keep such disparate groups from interacting on any regular basis. Yet, within the social structure of the parks’ homosexual community, cliques often form, and certain groups disparage the attitude and appearance of other groups. By all accounts, for example, “parade boys” are commonly looked down upon by many other groups as being flighty and unintelligent.

Announcement of the first LEAGUE meeting seems to have exacerbated the differences amongst homosexual employees rather than bringing them together. Most of the early meetings were attended by men only. A number of both lesbians and gay men decided not to attend under the assumption that only “parade boys” would be there. Garth Steever, for example, felt no need at first to get involved in LEAGUE/

Anaheim, because he was already out in the workplace and was in a managerial position. Others who wanted to talk about support for AIDS feared that the “parade boys” would come in and turn it into a dating club. This type of attitude has made the history of LEAGUE/

Anaheim less stable than LEAGUE’s history. After setting up the first two meetings, LEAGUE relinquished any control or responsibility for LEAGUE/Anaheim to the park employees. Consequently, the organization and success of the group has ebbed and flowed. Slowly, some who were previously indifferent or antagonistic to the idea have gotten more involved. Steever decided to act as a role model and to help lead LEAGUE/Anaheim. Slowly, more women became involved with

LEAGUE/Anaheim as well.

Yet, trying to organize any type of employees’ group at the parks (not just for homosexual employees) is fraught with problems, predominantly because of the work schedules of the Cast Members. Unlike at the studio, where most employees take lunch around the same time, and work mainly “9-to-5” hours, park employees have staggered hours and alternate shifts. In order to deal with this problem, the very first F I N D I N G A P L AC E I N T H E K I N G D O M

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LEAGUE/Anaheim meeting was held twice on the same day (in the morning and again in the afternoon) to reach two different shifts. The prevalence of part-time labor at the parks not only creates problems in getting individuals together at the same time in one location, but it also significantly affects the issues that LEAGUE/Anaheim focuses on.

One such area is the attempt to advise and help those part-time Cast Members who wish to move into the Intern Program and move potentially toward a managerial position. Steever’s growing involvement in the group has helped others make these career moves. An even larger area of concern for many employees—not just lesbian and gay—are benefits. While members of LEAGUE at the studio were working towards
extending
their benefits to cover their same-sex partners, members of LEAGUE/Anaheim have been faced with struggling to get benefits for
themselves.
The importance mentioned earlier that some gay and lesbian employees placed on AIDS support points out how most of the theme park’s employees do not have the generous benefits extended to employees dealing with AIDS within the rest of the company. (This is true for all the theme parks, not just Disneyland.)

This had not always been the case. Until the mid-1980s, Disneyland had a benefits program for its large part-time work force that was possibly unmatched in the country: for working twenty hours a week, employees got full medical, dental and optical coverage, as well as paid vacation time and sick pay. As a consequence, a number of part-time employees stayed for years at the park. In the early 1980s, for example, mothers who had worked part-time since the day Disneyland opened in 1955 were still loyally punching in. Under this structure, HIV-positive part-timers would have been granted much if not all of the coverage that was eventually offered to the company’s salaried staff in the late 1980s.

But, this structure did not weather the momentous events that the Walt Disney Company endured in 1984. Just as the company was staving off various hostile takeover bids, and desperately trying to scrounge money to buy back stock, the contracts for the five major unions that Disneyland works with in hiring its part-time employees came up for renegotiation. Disney opened the contract negotiations by stating the need for an up to sixteen percent pay cut over three years. It is almost certain that the executives knew this offer would be flatly turned down. In ensuing bids, the company presented a seemingly less 130

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drastic strategy—a hiring freeze, a lengthening of the pay increase schedule and, most importantly, a denial of benefits to new hires until they reached full-time status. While the adjustments to pay scales and hiring freezes obviously bothered employees, the rescinding of the benefits seems to have been the largest complaint. George Herold, an employee working at that time, noted, “What bothered me was them wanting to take away things that they had always given us, the benefits.”75

Ultimately reaching a stalemate, Disneyland witnessed one of the most rancorous strikes in its history, in which protesters staged actions in front of the ticket booths, employees breaking the strike hid in the trunks of supervisors to get through the picket lines and one frustrated strike-breaker almost hit a pregnant striker with his car.76 Lasting only twenty-two days, the park was successful in breaking the will of the strikers who ultimately feared losing their jobs when Disney advertised for new hires during the strike and got over a thousand applicants. In the end, benefits were only retained for those part-timers who had been hired before the new contract. These “statused” part-time employees discovered quickly a subtle strategy to drive them out by forcing them to work the worst hours or hardest jobs. Dennis Brent, a “statused” employee, recalled, “They took me out of a cushy job, 9-to-5 Saturdays and Sundays at the Circle-Vision theatre, and all of a sudden I found myself working private parties on the Jungle Cruise and Grad Nites, which I hadn’t worked in ten years. It didn’t violate the terms of the contract, but they obviously were trying to get rid of us.”77

This loss of benefits has helped the more conservative theme park branch of the company keep from dealing with the issues LEAGUE

raises. Not offering benefits to its part-timers, there’s no need for discussion of domestic-partner benefits. Not offering health coverage to its part-timers, the parks feel no need to deal with treatment and support for the HIV-positive. In fact, a large amount of energy within LEAGUE/

Anaheim has been spent specifically trying to get recognition from the park that HIV-positive employees even exist. Sue Schiebler noted that

“Disney has been very hush-hush on the fact that we have HIV-positive people and people with AIDS working there at the park. Even among the employees themselves.”78 However limited by both corporate and self-regulation in attitudes towards sexuality, LEAGUE/Anaheim has worked to create as much a space for these employees to find support and assistance—and to voice their concerns and needs—as the conditions would allow.

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CONCLUSION: OPENING DISNEY’S CLOSET

The formation of LEAGUE, LEAGUE/Anaheim and ALLIANCE all

point to a strengthened presence of the lesbian and gay work force at the Walt Disney Company. Their existence has succeeded in helping more employees at Disney feel secure and safe enough to come out at the workplace. They have stood as models for employees at other studios and in other industries. And they have helped win benefits for homosexual employees that might not have been granted otherwise. For, more than three years after Sass Nielsen announced the first meeting of LEAGUE, the Walt Disney Company announced in October of 1995 that it would offer domestic-partner benefits to its employees beginning in 1996.

As this chapter shows, the growing solidarity of Disney’s lesbian and gay employees does not necessarily guarantee a unanimity in conceptions of sexuality or even a blanket-agreement on workplace issues for “queer” employees. Various divisions of this conglomerate face different situations that create different conceptions of identity and experience, and thus require different strategies and answers by both the employee groups and the corporate structure. The dialogue between executive decision makers and these lesbian/gay/bisexual groups is an ongoing balance of power, as is the dialogue between the groups and within the groups themselves. Dealing with issues of health coverage, employment opportunity and job security is murky and complex, and varies with each situation.

Even though these relations are never smooth nor stabilized, one must recognize that such relations actually exist within the Walt Disney Company. In the past decade, attitudes towards homosexual employees within the company have radically altered. While not denying the presence of homosexual employees prior to the Eisner and Wells regime, the relatively open acceptance of these employees marks a new era in the company’s history. In turning around the economic status of the company, this new executive board has also turned around the company’s outlook towards the sexuality of its employees.

Yet, as this chapter has argued, the company’s revamped attitude towards sexuality in the workplace is not an unleashing of a free-moving concept of sexuality. Instead, the existence of these employee groups often works to
contain
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draw its gay and lesbian employees into identifying as “Disney Family,” hopefully causing them to internalize corporate attitudes and self-regulate their expressions of (and possibly even their conceptions of) sexuality. As a number of activists in the late ’60s and in the ’80s and ’90s discovered, liberation is ever and always an elusive goal.

4

“Part of Your World”

Reading Disney Queerly in the Eisner Era

T H E I N C R E A S E D V I S I B I L I T Y of gay men and lesbians as Disney employees reflects their increased visibility as a cultural and political force in society as a whole. Queer activism during the late 1980s, centralized in groups such as ACT UP, Queer Nation and GLAAD, helped pressure Hollywood studios like Disney to come to terms with their homosexual employees. At the same time, these groups became equally concerned with actively monitoring how the film and television industry represented homosexuals. The attempt to interrupt the filming of
Basic Instinct
(1992) stands as possibly the most notorious instance of activism against the industry’s images of homosexuals. Various activist organizations continue to consistently alert the lesbian/gay community to what they consider to be “positive” or “negative” portrayals, to organize letter-writing campaigns, to initiate boycotts or (conversely) to announce awards for “positive” representations of homosexuality in order to make the community’s attitude known to those in charge of film and TV production.