Word: disneyized
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Many of the old films have been more successful in re-release than originally. Bambi, considered a failure when it grossed only $1.5 million in 1943, has vindicated Disney's vision by drawing an impressive $15.5 million to date. Cinderella, presently in rerelease, has grossed $17.5 million in four circuits. A few years ago, one Disney employee confessed that Alice in Wonderland had never been re-released because latter-day misinterpretations might tarnish the Disney image; the Caterpillar, for instance, loftily puffing on his hookah, now looks suspiciously-well, stoned...
Only two animated features have been produced since 1966: The Aristocats, already in preparation when Walt Disney died, and Robin Hood, to be released this fall. Disney pictures now tend to be the live-action variety; animation has become prohibitively expensive, and the Disney studio suffers from a shortage of good animators. The average age of the key animation staff is now 55, and energetic recruiting among young artists has not filled the gap. "They're trapped in a cozy formula," complains one disgruntled refugee from the mouse factory. "They're not doing any original work...
Other young artists are unwilling to conform to the imperious (although recently somewhat modified) Disney dress and hair codes, or to go through the Mickey Mouse employee indoctrination at the "universities" at Disneyland and Disney World. At these "universities," most of the company's 20,000 clean, neat and good-looking employees are schooled in Traditions I, II, III and IV in the Way of Walt. (In the late 1950s, one of those employees was future Presidential Press...
...Disney movies succeed not merely because they appeal to the least common denominator, but because Walt Disney Productions carefully-and exclusively -addresses itself to the most common problem of the entertainment consumer: "Where can we take the kids?" In order to do so, the corporation has sacrificed creative vitality, cultural relevance and its former, justifiable pretensions to genuine, if inevitably industrialized, artistry. Which is a way of saying that somewhere along the road to its present, seemingly invincible prosperity, it lost its soul...
That soul, on the evidence of the early short cartoons-made before Disney or anyone else devoted any time to consumer analysis-was anarchic, occasionally cruel, broad and barnyard in its humor. If it did not comfort the afflicted (except by providing them with virtuoso entertainment), it certainly afflicted the comfortable. It was a direct spiritual descendant of the great silent screen comedies...