COLUMN: Duck! It's more Disney

From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96 From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96The many incarnations of Disney's The Mighty Ducks are enough to drive you crazy. From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96The many incarnations of Disney's The Mighty Ducks are enough to drive you crazy. Kids are great, but they can lead to evil. I mean, drape-apes can be good company. Most grown-ups won't engage you in a serious conversation about the Animaniacs. Plus, kids can help you get jobs. Mind you, it's a trifle callous to bring little lives into the world just to brighten your resume, but in this job market you do what you have to do. Before you go forth and multiply, though, be aware of the true evil you help bring into the world when you do. I speak, of course, of the inevitable bio-economic fact that every child born brings a little more Disney into the world. Now sure, everybody complains about Disney: how rich it is, how it's gonna own everything that isn't already owned by Sony or Time-Warner. Wiser noggins than mine have fretted that every household in America is being overrun with every gewgaw that can have the name of the latest Disney cartoon plastered on it, from the "Lion King Electric Training Potty" to the "Pocahontas Junior Nuclear Particle Accelerator" (and, sure as God made winter in Philadelphia like a crappy spring in Cleveland, you know that next Christmas the tots will find "Hunchback of Notre Dame Human Genome Project Kits" and "Quasimodo Press-On Humps" under the tree). Me, I don't really care that Disney does well. I think it's great when any American business succeeds. What bugs me is when a business does so well with so little, when it can take one idea and milk it 'til its udders fall off. I can sum up my objection to Disney in three words: The Mighty Ducks. You will recall that Disney released a rather dumb and innocuous film a few years ago called The Mighty Ducks, in which Emilio Estevez whipped a bunch of loser kids into a winning hockey team (including the standard '90s kid stereotypes -- the fat kid and the computer nerd, among others; this is the modern equivalent of those old war movies where you had one of every ethnic stereotype -- the wiseass Italian guy, the fresh-faced farmboy -- all pulling together before charging up Pork Chop Hill or Braised Beef Tip Ridge or wherever). You know the plot -- adult is assigned to whip kids into shape, laughs abound as kids flounder, they soon realize they need each other, team improves, wins the big game and everyone realizes that If We All Pull Together, We're All Champions, yadda yadda yadda. OK, fine. It's The Bad News Bears redux (no pun). Very little harm there. But then Michael Eisner got grandiose. He went out and bought himself an NHL franchise to plop down in hockey-deprived Anaheim, California. He then decided hey, wouldn't it be just ginchy to call the team "The Mighty Ducks?" The kids will love it! The parents will love it! It's family-style hockey! I've followed hockey for a few years, and it's not really a family game. It's more of a guys-drinking-Old-Style and girls-with-big-hair kind of sport. But now it's been Disneyfied. The Mighty Ducks (NHL version) start their game with a little ice show -- leggy Kristi Yamawannabes, music, laser lights and the Duck himself getting lowered to the ice like Peter Pan on a bad-nose day. It's a display that makes the most hardened hockey fan take a deep breath and sigh, "Eighty-six the Ice Capades and drop the damn biscuit already!" So there's the movie The Mighty Ducks, not to be confused with the NHL Mighty Ducks, not to be confused, now, with the animated Mighty Ducks. Disney's rolling out a new cartoon series called -- well, you know -- about "six mallard superheroes who play for a pro hockey team in their spare time." No kidding. I couldn't make this shit up if you stuck electrodes directly into my brain's Sarcasm Center. Hockey-playing superhero ducks. All the silliness of Biker Mice from Mars, with only a third of the originality. What's even more insidious is how we're fed The Mighty Ducks in disguise. Just last year Disney released a film entitled The Big Green, about a group of loser kids (fat, nerdy, etc.) who get whipped into being a winning soccer team by a reluctant coach. You got it: it's The Mighty Ducks, only on grass! Presumably, we can expect the same formula for lacrosse (The Ninja Netters), jai-alai (The Plucky Pelotas), and Greco-Roman wrestling (not even gonna touch that one?). So there you have it. In an age where every third movie is based on an old TV show, where Broadway musicals are based on old (and not-so-old) movies, Disney has once again taken the lead. You couldn't squeeze more dollars out of a concept if you had a kung-fu grip. Director John Milius once said that E.T. "soiled my aura." I don't necessarily believe in auras, but if I did, and if I could find mine, I'd take it out and have it One-Hour Martinized for ever having been exposed to any of the incarnations of The Mighty Ducks. The only solution to Disney domination is near-total sensory deprivation: toss out the remotes, avoid theaters and toy stores and just stay in the recliner with the Victoria's Secret catalog. Sure it's sexist, but at least Disney'll keep its paws off. For now.