Politics & Power Quote by Mark Morris

Mark Morris drops the kind of candor artists usually sand down for grant panels: the uneasy coexistence of enchantment and ideology. The line walks in with a shrug - "Well let's see" - then lands the punch: Walt Disney, "except for the horrible fascism". It’s not a delicate critique; it’s deliberately blunt, almost comic in its over-clarity, like he’s refusing to let nostalgia do the laundering. That frankness matters coming from a choreographer who trades in beauty as a professional medium. He’s admitting that aesthetic pleasure isn’t a moral alibi.

The intent is less to litigate Disney than to defend a grown-up mode of looking. Morris frames taste as complicated and ethically noisy: you can "love the art" while staying lucid about what sits behind it. The subtext is a rebuke to two easy poses in cultural conversation: the purity test (if it’s tainted, banish it) and the surrender (if it’s gorgeous, forgive it). Instead, he models a third posture: hold the contradiction in full view and keep your brain turned on.

Contextually, Disney functions as the perfect object lesson because it’s childhood-coded and institutionally powerful. To name the ugliness - fascist sympathies, labor hostility, cultural homogenizing - is to puncture the myth of harmless fantasy. Morris isn’t asking permission to enjoy; he’s insisting that enjoyment should come with receipts. It’s a dancer’s version of critical literacy: the body can be moved, the mind shouldn’t be seduced.