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Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust
In this follow-up to his bestselling "The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World's Most Animated Family," religion journalist Mark Pinsky explores the role that the animated features of Walt Disney played on the moral and spiritual development of generations of children. Pinsky explores thirty-one of the most popular Disney films, as well as rece...more
Paperback, 306 pages
Published
July 14th 2004
by Westminster John Knox Press
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I’ll start out by saying I absolutely adore Disney, and when I rescued this book off the "due out" shelves at my local Barnes & Noble I was so excited! The idea of a book like this is intriguing and right up my alley seeing as how I love books, Disney, pop-culture, history, religion, and critically analyzing said things. Had Pinsky actually written his essays as he proposed, this would have been a worthwhile, even great book. However, he did not. I am so disappointed with this. Essentially h...more
This is my dream book! I mean, I enjoyed reading it because I am a total Disney nerd. Often the snippets made me think about the movies in new ways, and I would notice for the first time their use of religion in a non-religious way. The religion of Disney is THERE, but it has nothing to do with God. It's about faith, trust, pixie dust, etc. I was surprised how prevalent religion is in Disney, but in this sneaky way. Pinsky is a great writer, a religion journalist -- but the book lacked a lot of...more
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I was so looking forward to reading this and am so disappointed with this. I don't think this book has a clear focus and was so not worth the hype. I thought it would be an in-depth analysis of Disney's animated features (there is so much to talk about in each of them), but the analysis that Pinsky offered was so elementary, anyone with a child who has watched the movies a couple of times (and who hasn't if you have kids?) could easily come up with them. Each chapter was devoted to a different m...more
I didn't finish the whole book but I read a good chunk.
I was very disappointed in this book. It was filled with conjecture and reading between the lines. It is heavily moralistic without any reference to the true Gospel and barely any Scripture at all. (not totally surprising given the author isn't a Christian himself, he's Jewish.) The most interesting part of the book was the socio-political aspect to the movies.
I was very disappointed in this book. It was filled with conjecture and reading between the lines. It is heavily moralistic without any reference to the true Gospel and barely any Scripture at all. (not totally surprising given the author isn't a Christian himself, he's Jewish.) The most interesting part of the book was the socio-political aspect to the movies.
Thi book had such great promise from reading the title, reviews, and introduction, but it just didn't pan out. Most of the chapters summarize animated Disney films then give about one paragraph of analysis and background that doesn't provide much explanation or insight. The best chapters are those about the reigns of Disney and Eisner and other areas of Disney (theme parks, merchandising).
Interesting - but not as interesting as I wanted it to be. While a brilliant idea and fascinating subject matter - the author didn't quite manage to say anything as profound or as shocking as he could have. The writing was often and sometimes read like term paper, so this book is probably best left for the true Disney fans.
I really enjoyed this book, as a life-long avid Disney fan and one of the many who must every few years make a "pilgrimage" to Disneyland, as Pinsky observes. It was very interesting to see how the messages and morals in all those Disney movies compare to my own, and especially to see how the morals presented developed over the years from movie to movie, and from Disney to Eisner. Pinsky pays special attention to morals from a Christian perspective, and talks at length about the religious belief...more
Really not very good. Simply a synopsis of many Disney movies. Very little about the role of religion there. Read like a summary of other books from a more academic setting.
Pinsky has some interesting and occasionally profound things to say about how the Disney company handles religion in it's work, but I wish that he hadn't acted as though straight to DVD releases like "Return to Neverland" had the same cultural and social impact as a film like "Aladdin" - giving them equal time and space in the book seems like a missed opportunity. He could have cut the commentary on lesser known works and stuck to the big fish, diving in deeper rather than repeatedly giving plot...more
Feb 03, 2009
Suzanne
is currently reading it
I'm loving this book. It explains so much about why I am the way I am....religiously speaking.
Meh. Though I did enjoy the recaps of all of the Disney movies - it's been a while since I've seen a lot of these titles - this book didn't excite my brain as much as I thought it might.
Like his previous book about The Simpsons, very little analysis. He is a decent reporter of facts and previous work but again, where is the damn analysis?
I thought there were some interesting ideas in the book, but at times I felt the author was reaching.
signed & inscribed by author; BookExpo 2005
I did a video book review for this book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB48gr...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB48gr...
Very dull and boring. Reads like a textbook.
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