Jan 28, 2024
Snopes Confirms It: Disney+ Show Features Devilish Romance
by Christian Toto June 4, 2023, 8:58
by Christian Toto June 4, 2023, 8:58 pmupdated June 5, 2023, 6:08 am
It's hard to tell truth from fiction these days.
That's particularly true with headline flowing from Disney, the mega company behind theme parks, classic films and that Mickey Mouse fella. The corporation went woke in recent months, picked fights with GOP hero Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and watched its financial fortunes take a swan dive as a result.
Team Disney just wrapped a 7,000 employee layoff schedule to help right its fiscal ship.
So many Disney headlines would be discounted as balderdash just a few years ago.
The company allows a mustachioed man to dress as a princess and greet park visitors? C’mon, man, that's grade A malarkey!
A Disney+ series aimed at kiddies features a trans character shopping for sanitary pads? You’re pulling my leg!
The studio tweaked lyrics to some of its classic songs because they were deemed problematic to select ears? Nonsense.
To quote Han Solo in "The Force Awakens" … "It's true … all of it."
And there's more.
Disney+ will produce a new German TV show, dubbed "Pauline," which follows a teen besotted with a devilish gent. It gets worse.
The teen is impregnated by the cad, and his demonic shtick is no accident. He's the devil. Literally. And she's crushing hard over him.
Even by the outrageous news coming from the Mouse House this seemed too crazy to be true. You’d expect such a show to be featured at Max, Netflix or Amazon Prime. They often cater to adult programming, pushing the boundaries of good taste along the way.
The free market is wide open to those kind of subjects, and creators should have carte blanche when it comes to storytelling.
You still won't find that kind of fare on, say, PureFlix or the Angel Studios app. Inconceivable.
Shouldn't Disney play by similar rules?
Disney+ is meant for family viewing, showcasing content everyone can savor, no matter their age. Parents are exhausted by the crush of adult fare populating most streaming platforms. Disney+ was meant to be different, an oasis from all that R-rated noise.
The show's description, courtesy of Deadline.com, further suggests this was an April Fool's Day gag well past its expiration date.
Pauline follows the eponymous protagonist, an 18-year-old who accidentally becomes pregnant – from a one-night stand. With school stress, the climate crisis and the downfall of society weighing heavily on her mind, something she doesn't need at all right now is catching feelings, especially not for her one-night stand Lukas, who, as it turns out, is the devil himself.
The show's creators dubbed it a "coming of age" yarn, akin to the most innocuous stories we’ve watched on the topic over the years. After all, who can't relate to being knocked up by Beelzebub?
The story seemed so outlandish Snopes had to weigh in. And, sure enough, the liberal fact-checking site branded the story an unabashed "true" rating on May 31.
CLAIM: Disney+ greenlit a TV show about a teenage girl who gets pregnant after a one-night stand with the devil.
The biggest irony? News of the program hit the web in early April and took a few weeks before people began talking about it online. Finally, Snopes.com decided it had to weigh in to ease readers’ minds on the matter.
The Mouse House's fall from beloved family brand to divisive woke factory is so complete many likely rolled their eyes at the initial announcement.
After all, it's just Disney being Disney in the post-Walt, currently woke era.
Christian Toto is an award-winning film critic, journalist and founder of HollywoodInToto.com, the Right Take on Entertainment. He's the author of "Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul" and a lifelong Yankees fan. Toto lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife, two sons and too many chickens.
Follow Christian on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HollywoodInToto
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Christian Toto