Walt Disney: Brilliant Artistic Visionary or Exploitative Corporate Monster?
 

So ive been watching the PBS American Experience Walt Disney and its really shifting my perspective. I always thought of Disney as a sell out son of a bitch responsible for the corporatization, indeed the Disneyification of art and culture.. and sure, contemporary Disney is surely that, but learning more about 1920s-1950s Walt i am increasingly seeing Disney the man as a visionary, artist, and brilliant futurist. His early films were innovative, creative, ground breaking works of art. Even Disneyland is an artistic vision when you separate it from all the cash.. i find myself conflicted. What do yall think?

Some of the company's early work is truly stunning from an artistic perspective, but I can't get myself to see the man himself as anything but a cruel and bigoted tyrant. Yes, he had a vision, but at the same time he was a prick. A huge staff worked tirelessly to create the films we call classics today, but he always took all the credit for it without giving any to his animators etc. Couple that with his autocratic style of leading the company and his antisemitism + dislike for African Americans and you got a picture of a very despicable man. Then there was his involvement in the hearings at the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy-era. He might have had a vision, but treating people the way he did is just reprehensible. Plus, a lot of other people worked on what is often just attributed to him without getting the credit they deserved. He was no lone genius, he had an amazing team that made a lot of the things we love today possible.

I didn't say i liked the guy personally, just talking about the art

Thats why you have to judge the art by its own merits not the morals of the person who made it. Come on. Artists are lunatics. If they were reasonable people they'd be farmers or engineers. But no. Artists need to make art to stay sane. Without it you'd have more serial killers. So.... If you want pure hearts youll have to search elsewhere. Fuck, even saints are often maniacs. Anyway, i need breakfast.

I agree. What i learned watching this 5hour documentary was just how heavily involved Walt was in the film making and park. Also how technologically innovative all early Disney shorts and films were and just how directly involved Walt was in their production. I always only knew him as the business mogul and spokesman i.never realized he was such the artist

I've heard he pretty much just hired talent and treated them miserably

He was much.more involved than that. You heard wrong

Well if you're separating Walt Disney the person to Walt Disney the artist, then frankly he was just brilliant. It's not an understatement to say he changed the world.

he was the artist first then became an inhuman corporate monster.

When he built DisneyLand he set prices at levels only middle class and upper people could afford (which when Disneyland was created meant WHITE FOLKS ONLY).

Oh, sorry, didn't want it to sound like a "How could you like that" kind of post. I totally understand people who say that oldschool Disney was visual magic and yeah, it certainly turned out to be a gamechanger. I'm just not willing to give him full credit for that. He did put a lot of work into it, but so did his staff.

Update: And despite all my dislike of the man, I'm actually going to show a classic Disney cartoon during an event I host tomorrow. Because yeah, it's pretty damn good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2T-vCv65QE

Its not that i'd negate the importance of his staff but this documentary really showed just how directly involved Walt was at every level for decades.

Disney's failings as a person are well documented but yeah, his early films still stand up as art. Eisenstein was supposedly obsessed with him and really wanted them to collaborate on something. It never happened but he claimed Disney was a massive influence on Ivan the Terrible.



Disney actually collaborated with Dali on a film but it was pulled before it was finished.



The Toccata and Fugue sequence in Fantasia came out of a collaboration with the German experimental animator Oskar Fischinger

Besides maybe Chaplin, Disney was probably the Hollywood filmmaker most respected by members of the avant-garde. Apart from anything else, they admired his ability to make experimental techniques and a surrealist vision so accessible to a mass audience.

He was very involved but he did suppress the careers of hugely talented animators. People like Ub Iwerks was basically responsible for creating Mickey Mouse and was pretty much the sole animator on most of the early cartoons but, while Disney himself is a household name, it's bordering on criminal that stuff as good as this is now reliant on sites like youtube for its distribution.

I suppose in terms of your thread title, Disney was a 'Brilliant Artistic Visionary' and (rather than 'or') an 'Exploitative Corporate Monster'.

i'm sure the man who installed my refrigerator had a lot of personal failings which unfortunately haven't been well documented. because if they were i'd return the thing. and who made that bridge there? were the engineers pure? i won't cross it unless i have proof!

(not writing this "at" you btw)


not sure so much exploitation as the human habit of looking for an "individual creator" even in an industrial system. in a similar vein, chuck jones gets all the credit for bugs bunny, for example.



i don't know how true that is. from what i've read the 70s disney ticket was pretty accessible to the middle class (whatever that means these days anyway). but it's NOW when they're tailoring the whole thing for one-percenter babies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/b...-class-behind/

ETA: ^^ a 1971 ticket = $3.50 - $20.46 in today's dollars *
today it's over $100..


* 2046!

That's what I said. he wanted ONLY middle class and up to come to Disneyland, which IN 1955, was white folks.

"A one-day ticket to Disneyland in 1955 cost $1 for adults and 50 cents for children. In addition to the price of entry, each of the park's 35 rides had a fee. Many of the attractions cost around 25 to 35 cents for adults and 10 to 25 cents for children. "If you are a glutton and try everything, it could cost you $8.70 for yourself and $5.15 for each tot," Thomas wrote. A trip around the entire park on a miniature train cost 50 cents for an adult and 25 cents for a child."


Dig? Counting for inflation, a day at DisneyLand, even before buying food and drinks and souvenirs, would run $83.54 a person.


Nowadays the ticket itself is $99 and rides are "free"


The average median income for families in 1959 was $5,400/YEAR

I couldn't find direct info if Disneyland was racially segregated but initially and until the 70s Disneyland didn't have a high general admission like today, it operated like a carnival using tickets for individual rides. The $1 admission was not drastically expensive but true, riding many rides would be costly for the poor

black and hispanic folks were not allowed to work in any positions that interacted with the largely white customers.

Motherfucker was a Nazi-lover just like Preston S. Bush and Henry Ford....

I read all about it in this book. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2015/0...ow-do-not.html

The Pirates and The Mouse.

It's not relevant to his art but let's face it, Disney is an iconic company that transcends the cartoons it made during its heyday. As a corporation it promotes a wholesome image and portrays Walt as a benign, loving father figure, so it's fair to highlight those those areas of his character that contradict the image. Otherwise you're just accepting lies.



No, exploitation. Animators working round the clock in workhouse conditions. If people want to be lazy and accept the myth that figures like Disney and Chuck Jones were solely responsible for certain characters, they can. The difference is Walt actively suppressed knowledge of Iwerk's involvement whereas Jones didn't deliberately deny the involvement of others (namely Tex Avery) in the creation of Bugs Bunny. Jones was actually key to highlighting the role of figures that Disney obscured.

There's plenty of credible books on this stuff. None of it's particularly contested now, except by the Disney corporation, who just don't mention it.

Disney reminds me of Apple. It makes a great product (sometimes) but everything about its practices building those products are horrible. That wouldn't be so bad if itheir corporate image wasn't so at odds with their corporate reality.

i have to accept lies on a daily basis. lies are the cornerstone of society. if everyone were completely honest we'd have absolute carnage. that doesn't mean that i BELIEVE the lies-- i just accept them as social currency.

i'm not saying the guy wasn't a jerk. i'm pretty sure he was. but likely he was no more a jerk than you or me, it's just that we don't have the power to bend other people to our wills and amass millions. look at your university hierarchy and i'm sure you'll find much more toxic individuals than walt disney ever was. probably. and shit, don't get me started on bricklayers.

i mean-- everyone is a twisted fuck. that's the baseline that we cover up with lies and gentility to make social life possible. let's stop acting shocked and surprised and own this goddamn fact already. i wouldn't leave my hypothetical kids in the care of walt disney or michael jackson or anyone else really. fuckem. much less a bricklayer. i'll build me a robot nanny.


i'm not in any way pro-disney (stopped reading donald duck comics when i was 5) but his brother roy who cofounded the business gave a shitton of money to the hispanic cultural center in albuquerque. i don't think it was shush money, the guy put down some new mexican roots if i recall.

eta: or maybe it was his son? yes: http://www.nationalhispaniccenter.or... 84&Itemid=291

anyway, the Elders of Zion now own & run Disney, so... nazis lost.