Professor Claims Mocking ‘Disney Adults’ is Religious Persecution After Mickey Mouse Wedding Horror Story Goes Viral

Candice OrtizJun 8th, 2022, 3:50 pm
 
PARIS, FRANCE - MARCH 05: General view of Disneyland Paris 30th Anniversary celebrations at Disneyland Paris on March 05, 2022 in Paris, France. (Photo by Handout/Getty Images)

Photo by Handout/Getty Images

A Reddit Am I The Asshole? thread blew up over the weekend after a user asked if they were wrong for not providing catering at their Disney wedding reception and instead opting for an appearance from Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

The Am I The Asshole? subreddit serves as a crowdsourced advice forum where users can anonymously ask about their most troublesome issues.

In the since-deleted post, user throwaway_family9525 said, “My fiancée (M30) and I just got married two months ago and we had our dream wedding.”

She said an issue arose when her aunt and guests of the wedding took to Facebook to complain about the lack of food offered at the event.

“Background – my fiancee and I are huge Disney fans,” she said. “Disney is such an important part not only to us, but also our marriage.”

She continued, “The issue was with our decision to not offer catering services/ bar services at our wedding due to routing the money towards having a wedding / Minnie and Mickey make appearances at our special day. The cost to have both Minnie and Mickey for a good chunk of time (30 minutes) was almost exactly what our parents allotted for our catering budget.”

The user complained that while the couple’s parents were supportive of their decision, “everyone else is being passive aggressive about it on Facebook.”

She later clarified that they spent roughly $5,500 on the appearances.

This sent Reddit into a frenzy with people sharing both messages of support and absolute horror regarding their decision.

The topic of “Disney Adults” or as Urban Dictionary described it, “millennial adults, with or without kids, that can’t stop talking about Disney, including the movies and the parks,” has been at the forefront of Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok recently.

One such advocate for the self-proclaimed “Disney Adults” took to Twitter to express frustration to those giving the couple such a hard time over their decision to forgo wedding food.

Jodi Eichler-Levine, a religious studies professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said “I’m a religion studies professor researching Disney and I’m here to tell you why to stop pathologizing Disney adults.”

“Many of the Disney fans I have observed in person and online find immense meaning in the parks,” she added, “People don’t just marry at Disney. They mourn lost relatives at Disney. They go to Disney to celebrate surviving cancer. They go there for one last trip before they die.”

“Religion is a way of making meaning in the world through stories and rituals. It is about a network of relationships with the human and non-human … It is about making homes and confronting suffering…” she continued.

“Would I want to go to a wedding with no food because the bride and groom wanted photos with Mickey?” Eichler-Levine asked. “No, no I would not. But when they say Disney is a big part of their lives I take that seriously. Maybe they met there. Maybe the IDEAS the Mouse stands for bring them joy.”

She concluded that Disney “is as much a religion as anything.”

“So stop pathologizing other people’s joy,” she pleaded. “There’s little enough of it in this world.”

“Disney Adults” has been a hot topic in the podcast world as well. Journalist David Farrier recently did an expose on the topic for an episode of his new podcast Flightless Bird along with guest Monica Padman from Armchair Expert.

Farrier spoke at length with a woman who considers herself a “Disney Adult” and after, both Farrier and Padman broke down the conversation.

Numerous times throughout the interview, the women used the term “we” when describing Disney parks and the company itself.

“She didn’t clock that she was doing this — the whole conversation. And it’s not all in that edited documentary, but we talked for quite a while and she would often talk about Disney World and Disneyland. Like it’s ‘our’ thing,” Farrier remarked.

“She thinks she’s a cog in the whole system. They believe they’re a family.

Although the reception of “Disney Adults” seems to be a mixed bag, Farrier understood the underlying meaning and passion. “Really proud of it. She’s not an employee being paid by Disney. She is paying them and she feels like she is a part of that. And it’s a really wonderful thing. And good on her, like she’s aware of that!” Farrier said.

Listen above via Flightless Bird.


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