After talking about how School House Rock is telling a Story of America and that it was bought by Disney, it brought me to the great irony of the Disney Company.Based on one of America's father figures, almost any documentary that you see on television will be quick to speak of his pioneering attitude, his imaginative ideas, and his Fatherlike respect for all children of America.
He was also a white supremacist, outspoken anti-Semite, and was a large patron of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, also known as the German Nazi Party. Admittedly he did stop contributing money after WWII broke out, but he was nonetheless a man who was certainly not what we remember him as. Don't get me started on the Disney Princess idea.
When I think of Walt Disney I think of him smiling riding around on the train in his back yard. I don't think of a man who would today be considered part of a fringe group.
Look at the 1946 Disney Film, Song of The South. No longer sold, as a means of telling the Disney myth, this film has some of the most racist depictions of African-Americans you will probably ever see.
I think that we should alter our image of Walt Disney. He was a great man who inspired all children to be whatever they wanted to be.*
*Not applicable if you are Black, Jewish, Native American, gay, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Indian, Communist, or any not aforementioned non-white.
I had known Disney had issues with his character, but I didn't know it was in depth as you explained, which kind of surprised me. I really think it is a double standard that regular people need to have good morals, but rich and famous people are able to get away with pretty much anything (i.e. Mel Gibson, Bill Clinton, the list goes on and on)
ReplyDeleteDisney was a fantastic storyteller. I've watched this documentary about him a couple years in a row for one of my art classes, and it talked a lot about how his Disney documentary/behind-the-scenes specials he created in his time were very fictitious. He would reference books like 'The History of Animation' to talk about the process of creating animations and where his business fit in, and that book never really existed-- it was just a very useful prop that he pulled nearly all of his information from. He'd also have specials like 'How an Idea becomes a Disney Animation,' and the live-action depiction of the process would be very heavily scripted and cartoony, and would follow a very fun and simple story arc, great for the whole family to sit down and watch. These were completely made up accounts of how stories go in to the works for making animations, but they were presented as facts, or accurate-enough documentation of the fanciful interior of Disney Studios.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found particularly amusing was one of his descriptions of the long and laborious coloring process of every single one of the 15,000 traditionally-crafted frames of the Snow White movie. After everything is storyboarded, individually sketched, and inked, "two-hundred pretty girls" are responsible for painting the color onto each frame. He keeps on referencing these "pretty girls"... Meh I guess you had to be there to find it amusing. Very surprising how he created an image of being inspiring to all, and the perfect, most truthful and innocent storyteller one can think of, given his actual person.
Wow! I never knew that about Walt Disney. This is a huge shock to me and definitely enforces the idea that a good storyteller can convince anyone of anything. In addition to making me more critical of stories, this post also prompted me to be more critical of storytellers themselves. It is interesting to view the relationship between the storyteller and the stories they produce, like the ones created by Walt Disney.
ReplyDelete