“Presented as originally created”: how Disney profits off racist content from the past on its streaming platform of the future

Digital streaming services are dominating global media, yet little research exists studying them as functions of multi-billion-dollar conglomerates that shape culture. Disney+ launched in 2019 and within three months had 30 million subscribers, ushering in what the company called a "new era" of media. However, Disney+ relies on its parent media conglomerate's film catalog, some of it racist, meaning the "new era" is anything but. This paper examines Disney+ to further explore one conglomerate-owned streaming service and shows, through an analysis of corporate records and trade publications using a political economy lens informed by Orientalism, how Disney+ positions itself as the future of media yet relies on "classic" content to fill consumer demand. This work extends a structural critique of Disney+ to show how "classic" racist content on the streaming platform of the future constructs a world of racism online that exists in perpetuity.