Got a few new ideas popping around my head at the moment, so hopefully I'll write up a quick something at some point in the near future. (Apparently I need to work on getting to the point for a short story, and some ficcing should help do just that...hopefully I can keep up the normal novel pace, though. XD)

Anyway, care to take an informal POLL?! *whacks around a few Agent Smiths with a metal staff* *Pralines for whoever gets the reference. XD*

Now, as you all know, Disney has obtained something of a reputation for being shilltastic shillers, thanks in part to all the lawsuits, the labor violations, the copyright bitchery, and of course the RealWeeklyNews spreading his anti-Viacom fearmongery because he couldn't get the fuck over himself. (Ironic considering how often I bitch about him myself. XD)

But in this specific case, I'm referring to the general concept of shilling; producing crap to put on the air solely and entirely for the purpose of making money. And the more I look at it, the less this holds true for a pretty good amount of Disney's work.

The main reason I think people attribute Disney to being a shill group, apart from its above questionable legal practices, is...well, it's entirely Disney Channel. Even at its absolute worst in recent years, Disney's film and animation division have made a constant good showing, and it's here that we see why Disney earned the reputation that it has in the world of filmmakers and film critics alike. Up is a shining example of this, and even their subpar animated films have been seen to be reasonably well performed in recent years. Actual effort can be seen to make a good, solid film, and the name dropping is incidental at best.

The real issue is Disney Channel, and even this is entirely misdirected. I've watched a fair chunk of Disney Channel material, and the stuff ranges from campily Narm-tastic fluff with some fun times to be had (pretty much all their movies) to reasonably funny (most of the kid coms on the channel) to hilarious (Phineas and Ferb; when you can make a formulaic show kick ass, you've definitely got the touch.) So yeah, for the most part even the programming is relatively harmless, and even well-created; it is not the issue.

The main issue actually began when Disney decided to commodize it's staff; this is particularly evident with any of the Disney stars beginning a singing career, but it REALLY became a problem when Hannah Montana first appeared. While Disney had created bands and mini-franchises out of people singing in movies before, it was an aftereffect of sorts prompted by the popularity the shows garnered. This was a deliberate attempt to market a singer gimmick right from the getgo. The music isn't terrible, but it IS fueled by an inherent marketing schematic that, up to this point, had only appeared after the show had become successful. (I suppose the show Jonas could qualify, but this is simply riding on a band's success, and really, any music video or Spinal Tap ripoff is more or less the same thing; it's shilling, but at the most base level possible.)

That said...Disney Channel is really the only source of any of this, and this has only really become apparent with one aspect of it. Yes, Disney has heavily marketed its stuff, but only in the aftermath of creating a successful, albeit silly, product, which is no more shilling than buying any soundtrack or video game. So I wonder, does Disney really deserve the reputation it has gotten for being a vastly unethical purely profit driven crap factory, or is it merely a vastly unethical corporation with a strong artistic vision that just happens to know that if you're going to make big money, you're going to have to make good stuff?

Feel free to respond; well thought-out responses, reactions, and explanations are what I'd like to get, however.