Disney enchants kids and adults alike. So when does fan fervour become a secular religion?
oel Callen wouldn’t necessarily call Disney “his religion”, but it’s something like it.
The 35-year-old has had an unbridled enthusiasm for Disney’s famous stories since he was a kid. And that passion didn’t disappear upon entering adulthood.
“I grew up watching Disney movies. Whenever we would go to the video shop down the road we would get the six weeklies for $10, or whatever it was,” he recalls.
“Every single time, one of my choices was always, always, always Mary Poppins.”
Mr Callen is what some would call a “Disney adult” — although he prefers the term “Disney nerd”.
“I’m an adult who unashamedly loves Disney,” he says, “but there are some negative connotations that come along with [the term].”
“People think we’re being childish or deluding ourselves about the state of the world, so I’m a bit apprehensive about [being called that].”
After growing up on the Central Coast in New South Wales, Mr Callen now lives in Los Angeles and buys an annual pass to Disneyland every year.
“Going to the parks and being surrounded by this storytelling being brought to life — for me it’s a sense of nostalgia made 3D,” he says.
“It’s just a place where you can kind of switch off and leave everything at the door.”
The emergence of the ‘Disney adult’
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company, which is plenty of time to develop a certain level of fanaticism. And adult Disney fans have indeed been around a long time.
But the “Disney adult” properly emerged as a cohesive subculture when the community flourished on websites like Tumblr in the 2010s.
“Technically speaking, a Disney adult is someone who engages in Disney products, parks, films, conventions without bringing children along,” religious scholar Jodi Eichler-Levine says.
Their zealous behaviour is unmistakable: from wearing Mickey Mouse ears to amassing vast collections of merchandise and reciting lore from across the company’s history.
Some dedicated fans practise “Disneybounding” — visiting theme parks dressed in streetwear inspired by their favourite characters, without breaching the rules that forbid adults from wearing costumes.
This unironic enthusiasm can rankle outsiders. BuzzFeed News describes it as a “polarising fandom”, while Rolling Stone pulls no punches, calling Disney adults “the most hated group on the internet”.
But is it just a hobby? Or is Disney something closer to a secular religion?
For Dr Eichler-Levine, there are important parallels between Disney and traditional religions, and she believes it’s a question that’s worth taking seriously.
Everyday magic
As a child, Dr Eichler-Levine was always on the lookout for the magic in everyday life — mostly because she knew Santa would never come to her house.
“Not because I’m a bad person. It was because I was Jewish, from a minority religion,” she explains.
Her parents told her not to spoil the fun for her Christian friends, but she still wondered where she could find that “magical feeling” in other places.
“Ideas around magic and fairy tales became what enchanted the universe for me as a child,” she says, which naturally led her to Disney’s products.
Now a professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, Dr Eichler-Levine is turning the tools of religious studies on the company that enchanted her childhood.
She says concepts like belief, ritual and pilgrimage “are operating all around us, not just in churches, synagogues or mosques”.
And as to whether Disney is a religion — or at least functions like one — she says it’s open to debate.
It’s not about seeking tax concessions for one of the world’s biggest media companies, says Dr Eichler-Levine. Comparing religion to Disney’s place in the lives of its most ardent fans is fruitful because it reveals a lot about human behaviour and spirituality.
“People say, well, ‘We know Disney is invented and real religions are real‘. But from a scholarly perspective, it’s a little bit more dicey,” she says.
“People tend to say, ‘Disney can’t be thought of using religious terms because it’s not old enough‘, and it doesn’t involve a religious truth claim to salvation.
“But to put it bluntly, that’s a very Christian orientation towards religion, right? Not all religious traditions are about other worldliness or salvation.”
Making meaning at Disneyland
Like Mr Callen, who visits Disneyland about once a month, many fans find their trips to theme parks can become part of a meaningful ritual.
They might be sites to remember dead relatives or to celebrate weddings.
Dr Eichler-Levine says it’s an experience akin to pilgrimage.
“I don’t think it’s that different from people who spread their dead relatives’ ashes in Yankee Stadium — it’s a similar impulse,” she says.
“But Disney gets made fun of, because sports are just taken more seriously.”
She says critics point to the high cost of admission to these parks, and the naked consumerism associated with this fandom, to argue that Disney is nothing like a religion.
“That’s one of the trickiest things about this, right? Is there any version of this where being part of the community isn’t somehow exploitative? Does it require consumption?” she says.
“I would usually answer with all those examples of how very expensive commitment to some religious traditions can be, or expectations around charity.
“Paying to do something doesn’t vacate meaning from it … Even if there is a capitalist impulse for it to happen, real people are making meaning [at the theme parks] and crying at fireworks shows.”
Sacredness of shared experience
Nostalgia, ritual and shared experiences are all part of the “Disney adult” phenomenon, even when their participants are not treating Disney as literally religious.
When Mr Callen went home for Christmas last year, he gathered his family around the TV to watch the Disney film Encanto.
It’s an example of how he’s “learned to treat texts as sacred, even when they are not technically a sacred text”, he says.
“I’m not someone who is a religious person — I didn’t grow up with that in my life,” he says.
“As an adult, I think what’s important for me is using texts that I love, and not treating them as part of the Divine, but treating it in a way where it has lessons to teach me.
“So in that respect I would say that Disney can be a religion. I don’t know whether I would say it is mine, but I would definitely say it has had a guiding impact on my life.”
A world without Disney, he says, would have, “something sacred missing”.
“If the parks shuttered and the movies disappeared … it would rob a little bit of the sacred out of my life.”