Disney's Forgotten Legacy
Walt Disney's legacy as a creative visionary affects almost every aspect of American entertainment. He not only patented the use of the multi-plane camera (so animators could reuse backgrounds and create visual depth) but he also widely used techniques that inspired the last eighty years of animation. Though many hold his achievements high (and some of his political sympathies low) few look at those first, early cartoons and the messages behind them.
For Disney, his messages were as important as his techniques. In one of his Silly Symphonies he borrowed from a classic Aesop’s fable. “The Grasshopper and the Ant” warns against laziness, as the hardworking ants are chastised by the Grasshopper, who assumes that the world will take care of him. He sings, “Oh, the world owes me a living.” The story is fun and entertaining, but the message an important and timeless one. When winter comes, the Grasshopper finds himself cold and hungry, while the hardworking ants live comfortably off the store of their labor.
Today, we are hard pressed to find any cartoons, television shows or kids books that champion hard work and responsibility. One of the rare exceptions and one of my favorites is Phineas and Ferb, which tells the story of stepbrothers who make the most of their summer vacation by accomplishing new, exceptional feats each day. The show is peppered with themes of hard work and innovation. It is also a Disney show, incidentally. Phineas and Ferb was an inspiration to me when I founded my children’s entertainment company and I can only hope that other children’s content creators also begin to take their thematic cues from Phineas and Ferb and classic Disney offerings like Silly Symphonies. American children deserve stories that morally instruct as they entertain—and as many can attest, we already have plenty of grasshoppers out there.
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Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
My kids are just a little too young for Phineas and Ferb but I can't wait to watch it with them. The episode I saw was hilarious.
Oct '10
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
(You might want to fix the link to Cherry Tree.)
Apr '11
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
You can still hear the grasshopper's refrain, "Oh the world owes us a living" every so often on the Dennis Prager show. He plays the clip when he wants to underscore the latest folly of the entitlement generation. Now I know its origins, thank you.
May '10
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
Disney was a solid conservative. He battled Herb Sorrell, the Communist spy and Hollywood labor organizer tooth and nail. The 1941 animators' strike killed the family atmosphere at the company.
Walt would cringe at the political crap his studio puts out today.
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
When I did a report on Walt Disney in the fifth grade, he became solidified in my mind as the quintessential American. To me, the American Dream is indeed a dream, not a forgone conclusion. You have to work to make dreams come true. And when there are Fairy Godmothers, you have to be deserving. The realms in the Magic Kingdom: Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland all glorify the American impulse to actively create and progress, not wait idly dependent on someone else.
Some of the original Disney animated shorts are incredibly profound and insightful reflections on the human experience, which makes me sad that they don't air them anymore on the Disney Channel (that's how I first saw them). "The Ugly Duckling," with no dialogue, can still bring tears to my eyes.
Feb '11
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
My tadpoles love Phineas and Ferb, and I enjoy letting them watch the show because it really is well done.
Here is a great video of Bill Whittle's Firewall in which he explains how the difference between the unconstrained view of mankind (mankind is basically good and utopia is possible) and the constrained vision of mankind (mankind is inclined to sin and utopia is never possible in this life) leads to either Auschwitz or Disneyland. Well worth watching, if you have a spare 8 minutes.
(I can't stop posting links to Bill Whittle because he is so wonderful. But sorry to anyone who might be annoyed by my frequent doing so.)
Edited on April 27, 2012 at 10:03pmFeb '11
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
Daniel: I will again step up to quibble with you on a seemingly minor but important-to-me distinction.
You say, "American children deserve stories that morally instruct as they entertain." I somewhat disagree.
My tadpoles hate stories that are intended primarily as moral instruction, and I can't help agreeing with them that those stories are kind of like hiding medicine in candy. They love stories that are set in a strong moral framework, and are disappointed by and disdainful of stories set in a relativistic or nihilistic world view, but they like stories intended as great tales, not morals.
JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were great friends but disagreed over allegory. Lewis wrote explicit allegory, in his Narnia books, but Tolkien could never entirely approve, saying, "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of the reader. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
Apr '12
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
I also have respect for Disney's brother who was able to raise financing for a movie about a talking mouse, was that Steamboat Willie?
Jul '10
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
I know Yer new 'round Here these parts, but most of Us like to be entertained by varmits, rabbit season, and Acme TNT.
Apr '11
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
Mama Toad:
JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were great friends but disagreed over allegory. Lewis wrote explicit allegory, in his Narnia books, but Tolkien could never entirely approve, saying, "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of the reader. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author." ·
I read far more Tolkein as a kid than I did as an adult. Not just slogging through the Silmarillion, but a bunch of the posthumous stuff, too. I'm not certain it did me a lot of good. Lewis, on the other hand, both in his explicit theological works and in the Narnian books, has been the inspiration of a good deal of thought and prayer. I do appreciate the value of indirectness, but one can go too far. Plus, I often get the impression that Tolkein was just as pedagogical, just with different goals; linguistics, not God.
Feb '11
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
JoE - I have fully enjoyed many of Lewis' works, especially Till We Have Faces, which is an outstanding retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, and is also a familiar fairy tale motif (e.g., East of the Sun West of the Moon), and Screwtape Letters.
As for Narnia, some of the imagery, notably the scene in Dawn Treader in which Eustace has been turned into a dragon and needs Aslan to remove the skin from him, is very remarkable. I have referred to this scene many times as a teaching tool with my tadpoles, and it functions beautifully as allegory, but the Narnian characters are fairly flat. Not so with Tolkien, in my view. There are few characters in literature I find more compelling than Frodo Baggins. His story continues to fascinate me well into my adulthood. Faramir, with his complex allegiances. Eowyn, the warrior-maiden.
My point is not that I like Tolkien better than Lewis, but that allegory can result in a dull story or cardboard characters. The story should, in my POV, be the driving force behind a work, not the moral.
Edited on April 28, 2012 at 4:13amNov '10
Re: Disney's Forgotten Legacy
FWIW, the public school curriculum we use, Houghton-Mifflin's Journeys, is heavy on hard work and perseverance. The first semester we read Thomas Edison as a Young Man, whose laboratory burned down and his mother died but he never gave up; Michael Jordan, whose brother was a better player than he but he never gave up; young Temba from Nepal, who tried to climb Mount Everest as a young man and failed but never gave up, etc. I've been pleasantly surprised.