Starting the Discussion

Twilight for the Theatrical Cartoon

Schickel, pp. 15-44 and 339-364; Klein, pp. 206-228

Schickel:

Since we have discussion leaders again for these sections, I won't go through them in great detail. Together, the two represent the "balance" of Schickel's positive and negative feelings about the Disney versions he's discussed throughout the book, so I'd like you to pay particular attention to how he balances out the good and bad. These chapters should also review for you the major issues of the book, so you might note what they are as you read.

Instead of questions, then, I want to give you a series of quotations from the text so that you can think about them before we discuss them in class on Thursday.

• "If you have a child, you cannot escape a Disney character or story even if you loathe it. And, if you happen to like it, you cannot guide or participate in your child's discovery of its charms. The machine's voice is so pervasive and persuasive that it forces the child, then the parent, to pay it heed. In essence, Disney's machine was designed to shatter the two most valuable things about childhood--its secrets and its silences--thus forcing everyone to share the same formative dreams. It has placed a Mickey Mouse hat on every little developing personality in America. As capitalism, it is a work of genius; as culture, it is mostly a horror."

• "'Mr. Disney, just what do you do?' 'Well,' I said, 'sometimes I think of myself as a little bee. I go from one area to another and gather pollen and sort of stimulate everybody.'" (Disney speaking about himself)

• "A reporter once asked him . . . to name his most rewarding experience, and Disney's reply was blunt and brief: 'The whole damn thing. The fact that I was able to build and organization and hold it . . . ."

• "The trick, of course, is to turn the interest stirred by the original idea into a habit that is beyond the reach of criticism narrowly conceived."

• "It is the business of art to expand consciousness, while it is the business of mass communications to reduce it."

• "The stars of a Disney movie are utterly interchangeable with others of their types. It was his name, and now, in his absence, it is the studio's name that draws the people."

• "Many, many years from now--decades, I hope--when this magical Pied Piper of our time wanders from this imperfect world which he has done so much to brighten and adorn, millions of laughing shouting little ghosts will follow in his train--the children that you and I once were, so long ago, when first a gentle magician showed us wonderland." (Max Rafferty)

• "He [Disney] shows scant respect for the integrity of the original creations of authors, manipulating and vulgarizing everything to his own ends. His treatment of folklore is without regard for its anthropological, spiritual or psychological truths. Every story is sacrificed to the 'gimmick.' The acerbity of Mary Poppins, unpredictable, full of wonder and mystery, becomes, with Mr. Disney's treatment, one great marshmallow covered cream-puff. He made a young tough of Peter Pan, and transformed Pinocchio into a slap-stick, sadistic revel!" (Frances Clarke Sayers)

• "In a Disney book, what has vanished is motive and temperament, all the pulse of life under the skin of events, all the wild hope of someday understanding. Disney's world is not a child's world at all, for a child is a human reading for his future; it is an oldster's world, for an oldster is a human relaxing into his past." (Donald Barr)

• "To see him [Disney] as merely the proprietor of a mouse factory is to miss entirely his significance as a primary force in the expression and formation of the American mass consciousness. When we seemed to demand an optimistic myth he gave us the unconquerable Mouse. When we seemed to demand the sense of continuity implicit in reminders of our past, he gave us fairy tales in a form we could easily accept. When we demanded neutral, objective factuality, he gave us the nature films. When, in a time of deep inner stress, we demanded another kind of unifying vision, he gave us a simplified and rosy-hued version of the small town and rural America that may have formed our institutions and our heritage, but no longer forms us as individuals. When we demanded, at last, not formal statements, but simply environments in which to lose ourselves, he gave us those in the amusement park built and the amusement parks yet to come."

Klein:

1. We've skipped a section here, one in which Klein presents an extended discussion of the chase cartoon as the archetype for 1940s full animation at Warner Brothers. When we pick up with him here, he's moving on to a more sociological reading of the postwar period. What, according to Klein, characterized the cultural mood in the post-WW2 US?
2. How was this reflected in the animated film industry? How does Klein see Duck Amuck as reflecting the animator's concerns at this time?
3. What are the connections between Friz Freleng's By Word of Mouse and the growing consumer culture of the US? How do cartoons in general respond to the postwar emphasis on convenience and streamlining in the marketing and buying of consumer products?
4. How well does Klein substantiate his assertion that the dominant term for the 1950s might be "controlled desire"? What does he mean by the term? Does this notion of control (which he opposes to creative anarchy) seem appropriate to you, given whatever images you have of the 1950s?
5. In talking about Tex Avery's Symphony in Slang (1954), Klein notes that "Speech is detached from language." How might that phrase also be used to describe the increasingly large role played by advertising in US culture?
6. What do many of the top animators from Termite Terrace have in common as they move through the 1950s and 1960s?
7. As you work on your own cartoons, you should be particularly aware of the importance of timing in making a gag funny. How do Jones, Avery and Freleng each manipulate their timing in a different way when they show a character at the moment of a disaster? How might you relate how each use timing to their general style and concerns?
8. In what sense is Chuck Jones almost invariably concerned with greed? How does he define the word? Using one of his cartoons, you should be ready to illustrate this theme in action.
9. Perhaps the key to the link between character and movement is in Jones' comment that "Our characters have a skeleton and obey the way they're built; with Bugs' big feet and long legs, there is only one way he could walk." But, actually, the Coyote is also built that way; does he walk like Bugs? What else enters into the equation?
10. Why is the chase cartoon, as practiced so successfully at Warner's, probably gone forever?

Chuck Jones--Extremes and Inbetweens: A Life in Animation

As you watch this week's video, I'd like you to try to get a sense of Jones as a filmmaker, and in doing that you should also focus on the following ideas::

• What were the influences on Jones when he was starting out in animation? What kinds of animations and other films may have given him some inspiration for the cartoons he would later create?
• Note the pattern in the way in which he speaks about the characters he's either created or regularly animated. What's the key to understanding the characters he's animating for Jones?
• You should also jot down what you can observe about the art of animation as it's perceived by people in the industry on a variety of levels as you watch the interviews with many of the people who were at Warner Brothers when Jones was.
• "I don't want something that's realistic; I want something that's believable." Respond.
  

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