Team Rodent

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Team Rodent (1998) by Carl Hiaasen, is more of a pamphlet than a book, being only about 80 pages long. Subtitled “How Disney Devours the World”, it sets out to demonstrate why everything Disney is bad for you.

I’ll admit in advance that I’m a Disney fan, and that may cloud my judgement somewhat. That said, Hiaasen is from Florida, which no doubt alters his perspective. However, I’m well aware that Disney isn’t perfect, and I’m always interested in hearing opposing points of view to my own.

Hiaasen begins his essay by taking great glee in the fact that there are hardcore sex shops just a couple of blocks from the New Amsterdam Theater in Times Square, New York, which Disney had just renovated to host The Lion King musical. Due to this work, Times Square had been cleaned up and become a destination for locals and tourists again. This seems to be the author’s way of pointing out that Disney is a powerful presence wherever it goes, and particularly Orlando, where it is the largest private employer. I realise that capitalism isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best we have—and I don’t think that this in itself makes Disney more “evil” than any other large corporation.

Most of the examples in the book follow a similar pattern—Hiaasen points out an “evil” aspect of Disney, then states that actually, they’re not all that bad after all. Another example of deals with governments to improve infrastructure around planned theme parks certainly aren’t unique to Disney.

A couple of cases do make for uncomfortable reading, such as the security force at Walt Disney World essentially behaving as though they were real police officers. In one incident, a youth was killed following a high-speed car chase, and the company refused to reveal their records of what was recorded on the radio system and so on. That kind of event is definitely unpleasant, but I fail to see how that or anything else in the treatise demonstrates how Disney is devouring the world.