Has Disneyfication destroyed the traditional folk tale and damaged childrens illustrated literature Essay Example For Students

Has Disneyfication destroyed the traditional folk tale and damaged childrens illustrated literature? Essay Has Disneyfication destroyed the traditional folk tale and damaged childrens illustrated literature? Contents 3. Introduction 4. The Death of the Seven Dwarves 5. Folk Tales 6. Rant #1 7. Input ~ Laurence Anholt writes 8. Beauty and the Beast 9. Cartoons, Capitalism, Commerce and Conjecture 13. Walter Elias Disney 18. Forum 21. I Relent 22. Sycophant 24. Rant #2 26. Tex Avery 27. Cutting Edge and Contemporary with Typographical Twists 31. Conclusion 33. Bibliography / Reference Introduction Having decided to produce a childrens book as part of my Degree course, I initially considered writing a contemporary version of one of the old folk or fairy tales, possibly a story by Hans Christian Andersen or a tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. I narrowed my selections and decided tentatively on a reworking of the classic folk tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I immediately tried to blank all thoughts of Happy, Dopey, Sneezey, Bashful, Sleepy, Grumpy and Doc, but this proved harder than expected. How do you go about renaming, individualising and illustrating characters that are so firmly ensconced in the memories of children all over the world? Disneys monopolising of the fairy/folk tale genre and mass marketing of the characters as toys appeared to limit my options of adapting the Snow White story to a. Mocking the Disney version in the tale itself. or b. Radically departing from the original story and imagery. both of which seemed quite appealing. I finally decided on a subtle combination of both options, but resolved to look further into Disneys domination and desecration of folk tales, myths, fables and classic childrens literature. The Death of the Seven Dwarfs On a high plain between Brugg and Waldshut, near the Black Forest, seven dwarfs lived together in a small house. Late one evening an attractive young peasant girl, who was lost and hungry, approached them and requested shelter for the night. The dwarfs had only seven beds, and they fell to arguing with one another, for each one wanted to give up his bed for the girl. Finally the oldest one took the girl into his bed. Before they could fall asleep a peasant woman appeared before their house, knocked on the door, and asked to be let inside. The girl got up immediately and told the woman that the dwarfs had only seven beds, and that there was no room there for anyone else. With this the woman became very angry and accused the girl of being a slut, thinking that she was cohabiting with all seven men. Threatening to make a quick end to such evil business, she went away in a rage. That same night she returned with two men, whom she had brought up from the bank of the Rhine. Together they broke into the house and killed the seven dwarfs. They buried the bodies outside in the garden and burned the house to the ground. No one knows what became of the girl. Documented by Ernst Ludwig Rochholz 1856 Translation by D. L. Ashliman 1998 Whilst researching traditional fairy tales, particularly those collected by the Brothers Grimm, it became apparent to me that Disneyfication has impeded the natural evolution of the folk tale and, to some extent, tainted childrens illustrated literature and animation as a whole. Clearly my introductory tale The Death of the Seven Dwarfs would now be construed as being in bad taste: and rightly so, if considered purely in the context of 20th/21st century childrens books, and of course its an extreme example. But initially traditional folk-tales werent necessarily childrens stories, they just became so during the natural evolution of the story due to the oral traditions of times past; each re-telling would elicit new twists and variations on a fable, some subtle and engaging, others decidedly grim. In the words of writer Joseph Campbell, these stories are Told and retold, losing here a detail, gaining there a new hero, disintegrating gradually in outline, but re-created occasionally by some narrator. In his book The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology Campbell describes the folk-tale as an art on which the whole community of mankind has worked, and as if in warning to Disney himself asserts Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Many children dont like them and many adults do C. S. Lewis on the subject of fairy tales. In my opinion the preceding old Swiss version of the tale, though cutting and concise, is far more exciting, charming and evocative than anything in Walt Disneys celluloid outing. Did Snow White really require such a nauseatingly saccharine sweet voice? Did they have to give the dwarfs memorably endearing/stupid names? Of course, I wouldnt want any young child of mine to encounter the language and brutality described in the previous text, but corny, clean-cut sentimentality, moralising, and censorship are just as, if not more offensive. My other reason for recounting The Death of the Seven Dwarves is to illustrate how the Disney machine has desecrated classic storytelling, and deigned to stamp its own sterile mark, not only on early folk tales, but also enduring favourites such as Alice in Wonderland or Tarzan. To me, sanitising great literature is plummeting to the depths of bad taste but thats not to say it shouldnt be mocked or satirized. Perhaps, during my research I was in danger of becoming a little too biased against the Disney Corporation: I need, after all, to try and balance the companys good and bad points and it certainly does have its good points. Maybe political correctness, the ever-changing moral climate, and the fickle and erratic tastes of children and parents, have a part to play in this matter. To give balance to my deliberations I decided to get a second opinion on the matter. I wrote to Catherine and Laurence Anholt, Double Gold Award winners of the NestlÃÆ'ƒÂ © Smarties Book prize and named as Top 10 childrens authors in Britain by the Independent on Sunday; and I posed the following questions Has the Disneyfication of traditional folk tales and classic childrenquot;s literature Halted the natural evolution of the folk/fairy tale? Damaged childrenquot;s literature as a whole? Affected the way that you work? and in the same way has political correctness damaged/enhanced or in any way changed the folktale or childrens literature as a whole? In response to my inquiry Laurence Anholt writes Im not a huge fan of contemporary Disney, although I loved some of the earlier animations as a child, but I guess trad itional tales have always been moderated, contemporised or censored by each new generation, and you could argue that quot;Disneyficationquot; is a natural part of that process. Itquot;s a bit like complaining that slang defiles the English language, whereas in fact language is an organic, constantly changing thing, in which slang has always played an important part. Essentially I accept Mr. Anholts point, but I would like to suggest that, in the case of folk tales unlike childrens literary classics, where we have a concrete and definite reference point, the animation giant has permanently etched a number of distinctive characters each with their own particular idiosyncrasies and a clear-cut chain of events into our subconscious minds, effectively eradicating its organic and constantly changing nature. Take for example Beauty and the Beast; As a child, no matter how many illustrated interpretations of The Beast I saw depicted in countless editions of the story, my imagination could still conjure up its own grotesque, misshapen behemoth. Sadly Disneys gruff, yet cute and cuddly buffalo style creation has entrenched itself in our bookshelves, brains, and living rooms via The Disney Store and I fear that the great illustrated revisions of this particular tale, by countless artists from the past, such as Paul Woodroffe, Margaret Tarrant, Jessie Willcox Smith, W. Heath Robinson, Charles Robinson, Arthur Rackham, Margaret Evans Price, Peter Newell, Warwick Goble, H. J. Ford, Edmund Dulac, Walter Crane, Eleanor Vere Boyle and John Batten, not to mention more recent editions illustrated by Mercer Mayer in 1978 and Jan Brett in 1989 cannot compete with complete saturation of the marketplace. I hope I can follow the path these dark illustrators have walked, or at least use the sidewalk that runs alongside it. Lane Smith ~ Childrens book illustrator In essence, Disneys 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. Richard Schickel The Disney Version At this point I would like to point out that Im certain Disney, in its infancy, didnt set out to erase our traditions, flood the marketplace with mass produced posters and playthings or brainwash anyone, but somewhere in the companys long history, either Walt, or at least one of his unscrupulous yet perceptive employees, decided to utilise their power, to exploit gullible consumers and to overlook minor little irritations like history and folklore. Conversely, in Disneys defence Anholt rightfully points out that Angela Carterquot;s superb retellings and the Opiesquot; collections of the original versions, remind us that fairytales were cleaned up and sentimentalised long before Disney got hold of them. Traditional fairytales are full of violence and even rape and I think the Victorians changed them quite dramatically for their young readers. The stories we were told as children were also softened. Itquot;s important to consider that the original stories grew out of an oral tradition and they were told to adults as well as children and were steeped in the brutality nd morality of their time. Anholt also states that although I personally loathe the sentimental, dollar-motivated, formulaic junk that spews out of Disneyland, I feel that classic stories are robust enough to stand a bit of a thrashing. I donquot;t know if you have read my Seriously Silly Stories, illustrated by Arthur Robins, but they are certainly not reverential to tradition. In fact I would go as far as to say that some aspects of traditional fairystories need a good shaking. And in reference to one of the aforementioned tomes Beauty and the Beast for example, is a beautiful story but it could have been written by Goebbels himself! I mean it is decidedly non politically correct and needs to be completely re-told in a contemporary light. My problem with Disney is that they donquot;t challenge enough. I could go at length, but in summary I donquot;t think we need to worry too much about quot;Disneyficationquot; children have never had a greater wealth of stories and pictures; some good, some lousy, and only the best will survive the test of time. On the subject of the adaptations of classic childrens literature, in particular the travesty that is Walt Disneyquot;s Alice in Wonderland I would like to refer to reviewer Dan Patanella, who pledges in his internet appraisal of the film that; No amount of contextualism, revisionism, conversations with caterpillars, or sampling alternate slices of giant mushrooms will convince anyone that Disneyquot;s Alice in Wonderland is a classic film. Itquot;s a time-filler. Disney turned the Tea Party into an amusing ride at his various theme parks, and thatquot;s perhaps the kindest thing I can say. Ever the conservative film, the Disney version of Alice follows the Hollywood tradition of mashing together Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass , using Carrolls bizarre characters as excuses for stunt casting , and presenting the final result as a whimsical, neutered fairy tale. Patanella informs us that prior to the presentation of the finished artwork, studio drawings suggested a blatant Tenniel influence, but that on completion of the project the clean lines and flat colours were reminiscent of a more recent animation style such as Hanna-Barbera. He goes on to assert that in this film Much of Carrolls wordplay is dumped, and what little retained is delivered in a fey, overly precious manner. Mr Patanella also quizzically contemplates the question of whether Alice in Wonderland could be described as Disneys worst animated full-length feature film; but ultimately deems this accusation a little unfair, considering the companys recent penchant for churning out straight to video sequels such as Aladdin. I was personally quite flabbergasted, recently, to see a television advertisement for Disneys latest venture: a DVD/Video sequel to 101 Dalmatians. What they appear to be feeding us here in 101 Dalmatians 2- Patchs London Adventure is a feature film sequel, that is not only 40 years too late, but one which has been preceded by the live-action version of the original film, as well as its live-action sequel. In this instance I think that the Disney Corporation is being a little too greedy and far too lazy for its own good and I think that, unfortunately, children brought up on a diet of tedious, run of the mill entertainment and audiovisual mediocrity will greet it with open arms and lazy parents will accept it as another animated quick-fix to silence their restless and understandably inquisitive offspring, whilst critics and those with a more selective appetite will justifiably shake their heads and simply yawn. In the same vein Dan Patanella states that Alice may very well be a suitable time-killer for undemanding children totally unfamiliar with the Lewis Carroll texts. All others will find the film annoying in proportion to their love of Carrolls writing, and hope that Disneys heirs dont revive the hookah-smoking caterpillar and the Mad Hatter in a direct-to-video sequel. Patanella also points out in his review that Uncle Walts input on the film was negligible, aside from obtaining the rights to use Tenniels original book illustrations as a basis for character outline and design, he also indicates the irony in that an early animated series by Walt Disney himself had the title Alice in Cartoonland and questions why Disney didnt shown more interest in the development of the project. In The Disney Version The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney, Author Richard Schickel informs us that, apparently the movie mogul didnt particularly care for the film personally and, in hindsight, bemoaned the fact that it was filled with weird characters The more he worked on it, the more he came to think of Alice herself as a prim and prissy little person, lacking in humour and too passive in her role in the story. Audiences, he felt, could not identify with her and he could not blame them much: neither could he. To me, this begs the question; is it Disney the man or Disney the company that I should be taking issue with? To clarify this point I decided to read a little more on the man himself. Could go on a Disney slagging off session as I hate everything he stood for politically. That, however, is not the point here. James Merry Illustrator/Animator Apparently, when Walter Elias Disney died of acute circulatory collapse on a December morning in 1966, his empire was at its zenith. The corporations balance sheets showed total profits at their highest since the companys inception in the early twenties. The character of Nora in A Doll's House EssayIf Disney hadnquot;t participated in telling those tales many children and adults may never have heard them at all. Perhaps they even encouraged the older versions to be retold over the years I never read The Little Mermaid until I saw the movie first and became interested in the story. What good is a book if it sits on the shelf? The beauty of a story is in the telling. You refer to the final version of the Beast that appeared in the film as some kind of branding iron that will burn all other versions of this character from the memory or imaginations of the public. Personally, I suggest you take a look at some of the concept art that was created in the planning stages for that film, they werenquot;t all sweet and the illustrations are fantastic, but again this is just one telling for the story by a team of artists. I doubt this or any other film, will eradicate any piece of inspiring artwork from a readerquot;s memory. Where in any Disney Marketing material do you see anyone telling consumers to overlook minor little irritations like history and folklore? No one is holding that child in his/her chair and saying Donquot;t you do it! Donquot;t you open that book! For Godquot;s sake, donquot;t READ it!! . Since Waltquot;s death, the lull that the Disney Company had in the early 80quot;s anybody remember The Black Cauldron. anybody and the resurgence and perverse expansion into every type of business they could become involved in I think many people have become bitter toward the Mouse and Mickey as more of corporate symbol than the character they loved as a child. Marketing, high prices at the Disney Store, and press coverage of Michael Eisner in court have diluted the Technicolor that once awed America on Sunday night television. But the heart and soul of the Disney Company has always been its feature-animated films, and every good film starts with a good story. -Lisa Mazzuca On Your Mark Design Graphics www. oymdesigngraphics. com Courageous storytelling ~ Although I have already accepted and conceded some of these points in my previous text, I have to say that I believe that it is this type of unadulterated hero worship and pitiful sycophancy and that has turned Walt Disney into both an American deity and, conversely, an object of disdain and ridicule. It seems to escape the minds of some people that Disney was, amongst other things, a businessman and predominantly interested in making money and not a saintly benefactor working for the good of mankind as Ms. Mazzuca would suggest. Surely it is no coincidence, as Gary Morris points out in his Bright Lights Film Journal that: these stories predate the copyright laws and were thus free to adapt. Making money has always played an important part in the make-up of the Disney corporation and I do not think that unwarranted fawning and flattering of the man can absolve him from any blame, he was after all an unabashed capitalist. I also cannot see how anyone could possibly submit Disneys The Little Mermaid as a positive example of an adapted folk tale, and extolling the virtues of concept art in the planning stages of Beauty and the Beast merely highlights the fact that these fantastic unsweetened drawings were not used in the final film. I do accept a point that many have made which suggests some of the earlier animated feature films were intentionally over-sweetened to combat the general gloom resulting from the Great Depression, but I think its important to remember that Disney wasnt the only animator at that time toying with folk and fairy tales, and some of these others didnt subscribe to Disneys sugary style. In one of Gary Morriss journal articles he informs us that Not everyone in Hollywood was so enamoured of order or happy endings or the sentimental school of mindless, grinning funny little animals. Amongst these renegades of Warner Brothers Termite Terrace were Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and most notably Tex Avery. As Morris affirms Averyquot;s application of modernist elements to an ancient cultural form is the most complex and extreme of the lot. Between 1937 and 1949, whilst animating for Warner Bros. and M-G-M studios, Tex Avery made eight films based on or relating to fairy tales, namely: Little Red Wa lking Hood, Little Rural Riding Hood, Red Hot Riding Hood, Swing Shift Cinderella, Cinderella Meets Fella, The Bears Tale, A Gander at Mother Goose, and Blitz Wolf. Morris again explains that these animated shorts represent an assault on the Bettelheim school that sees fairy tales as the source of moral instruction for youth, and, closer to home, on the Disney aesthetic. Averyquot;s rendering of these ancient tales were produced to gratify the young and naive, as well as the more mature worldly-wise audience and to reverse the sentimentalist trend by bringing chaos out of order. For young audiences, Avery preserves the trappings of the genre ~ talking animals, supernatural events ~ and adds the cinematic touch of physical law constantly challenged. For adults, he litters his work with sexual innuendo and distancing devices that replace the sense of reassuring archetypes with a modernist construct that merges the story with its audience, puts adult preoccupations e. g. , sex in place of childrenquot;s, and imagines characters not as clueless tabula rasas awaiting moral enlightenment but as sophisticated, willful creatures with a bottomless bag o f tricks. Gary Morris The Fairy Tales of Tex Avery For a time, Avery was able to successfully remove the tired old characters of the big bad wolf and red riding hood from their safe and sacred sanctuary of the well-worn fantasy narrative and relocate them into a sleazy, urban landscape full of pool halls and nightclubs awash with lusty ladies, sinful suggestions and sarcastic side swipes: creating in the process a unique world of self-conscious cartoon actors who know theyquot;re in a cartoon and freely comment on their status as fictional creations, undercutting the story at every turn. So, are there any contemporary artists still willing to challenge the Disney aesthetic and produce childrens books and illustrated folk-tales with a harder edge? A name that was mentioned earlier in this discussion is that of Lane Smith, an artist renowned for distorting folk tales and fables. After meeting with writer Jon Scieszka in 1986 the inventive pair produced The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. The book, described by internet childrens book site Kidsreads. om as a wise-guy fairytale was initially rejected by most publishers for being too weird and too sophisticated but has now sold over a million copies, been translated into ten languages, and has been called a classic picture book for all ages. Their next venture which, incidentally, I recently purchased was a collection of anarchic interpretations of classic tales and fables called The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales and certainly breaks boundaries in the world of childrens illustrated literature. The book itself questions the principles and standard practices not only of folk-tales but even those of typography and publishing. For example: Take the opening tale, the classic Chicken Licken; One minute the story is running along smoothly in the traditional manner and then an odd little character, claiming to be Jack the Narrator appears shouting Wait a minute! Wait a minute! , only to inform us that he forgot to publish the contents page; The throng of familiar characters Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky etc. gnore this bizarre interlude and carry on their customary course until the Table of Contents falls from the sky and kills them all, leaving a twisted mass of typography and body parts. But of course its not purely Jon Scieszkas bizarre plot and the imaginative use of typography that makes this book so different and so successful; Lane Smiths beguiling use of all manner of media, from photomontage to printed textiles certainly strike the eye accordingly, in his weird and wonderful renderings of such tales as Cinderumplestiltskin and The Really Ugly Duckling. I was surprised to read that much of his sinister grainy work was not done using any spray-painting technique. As Smith himself explains: A lot of reviewers have misidentified my technique as airbrush or dyes or even egg tempera. I think this is because it almost looks as if it was sprayed with paint with little dots of color and texture visible. Actually, my work is rendered in oil paints. I paint on board, building up several thin glazes of the oil, sealing them between coats with an acrylic spray varnish. This not only dries the oil instantly, but also causes a chemical reaction between the oil and the acrylic. Normally, it would be a mistake to combine two opposites like this and in fact it was a mistake the first time I did it, but I liked the results. Iquot;m a big fan of artists who play with surfaces. I love texture and grunge. The trick is to know when to stop. Sometimes I keep adding more and more layers until Iquot;ve ruined the piece. Usually I stop when the painting starts to look interesting. Then I go in with a fine brush and add details, lights and darks, etc. Itquot;s a laborious process, but itquot;s unpredictable and it keeps me interested and surprised. This book retains its appeal to children as a familiar storybook, whilst attracting the adult graphic-novel readers, sells successfully worldwide, has won many awards and still manages to offend a few purists along the way. Another artist who works with a variety of media, styles and techniques is Lauren Child. I was interested in her innovative mix of naive-art, montage and creative typography, but particularly the combination of these techniques with digital media A recipe I have recently been experimenting with myself. In Whoquot;s Afraid of the Big Bad Book, the hero Herb falls into a book of fairytales, where he instigates a chaotic series of events, meets a tenacious and headstrong Goldilocks, is pursued by numerous recognizable individuals and ultimately gets rescued by his Fairy Godmother. Herb is also the star of Beware of the Storybook Wolves another Lauren Child book to mess about with the conventions of this genre. This time, the wolves from his bedtime story come alive to devour the boy, but the child tricks the wolves and again begins a madcap jaunt through a number of well-known fables, along with more of those notorious fairy tale characters and mocked clichÃÆ'ƒÂ ©s. Ilene Cooper, in her internet review of the book, states that The artwork is franticÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢ €šÂ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?strips of color serve as background for exuberant pen-and-watercolor pictures reminiscent of Quentin Blakes art, only kicked up one dizzy notch. Of course, having mentioned Quentin Blake, we are reminded of hi work with the late Roald Dahl and in particular their book of Revolting Rhymes which memorably satirised a number of tales, again including Little Red Riding Hood. In Dahls last picture book he teamed up with illustrator Patrick Benson to produce a book that almost straddles genres; a contemporary tale that, whilst featuring deep dark forests, a throng of little people, a largely unseen beast and a general feeling of foreboding, still manages to retain a modern, upbeat, quality largely due to Bensons twisting on the old cross-hatching style. My final example is the work of author James Finn Garner and illustrator Lisa Amoroso entitled Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life Times a sample of which is neatly condensed by book reviewer Russell A. Peck: Cinderella is a kind of misfit with sisters-of-step heavily augmented with cosmetics, a man appears, her individual deity proxy, who helps her prepare for the ball with tight-fitting clothes that cut off her circulation and high heeled shoes that ruin peoplequot;s bone structure. Conclusion To start summing up, I would like to point out that when I first started this dissertation I honestly believed that my original question Has Disneyfication destroyed the traditional folk tale and damaged childrens illustrated literature? had an obvious answer and that my research would reveal an open and shut case. But during my research I have discovered the matter to be far more complex than I had initially anticipated. Even though I still believe that the Disne y corporation has permanently altered the course of the folk tale, I now dont necessarily believe this to be such a heinous crime. For the foreseeable future I will still look upon Disney ~ the man, the machine and the mouse ~ with a certain amount of scepticism, contempt and culpability but possibly with a little less angst. It has recently occurred to me that we can equate Disneys apparently inadvertent interference in the evolution of the folk tale with that of the new breed of Illusionists who supposedly spoil the traditional, tried and tested, formulaic magic by showing you exactly how the trick is done: when in reality they are challenging the conventions of a dying art and merely invite revitalisation, invention and the promotion of healthy competition. Back in the area of childrens literature and film, I am also encouraged by the resurgence of witches, wizards, ogres and the like, in blockbusters such as Shrek and the Harry Potter series, whilst obviously not forgetting The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But funnily enough, the final factor in turning my argument around was simply the fleeting appearance of a number of well known storybook characters in a recent, extremely popular, award winning childrens book. Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper, a beautifully illustrated and fairly cheerful tale about a cat, a squirrel and a duck, contains a segment where two of these protagonists wander through a grim, shadowy forest, imagining all manner of beast and villain, most notably the green-faced witch in the pointy hat, the big bad wolf, a hungry fox and a brutal bear, whilst a lost and oblivious innocent skips playfully on his way. And here again we have an artist imaginatively playing with typography and challenging conventions. All of this simply proves that somehow, however stale or sterile the genre can get, there are always cutting edge artists around to tinker with ideas and subvert from the norm, not to mention annual pantomimes and Halloween celebrations to keep these shady characters tightly lodged in our subconscious minds. And having researched far more on the subject of Disney than I could possibly convey in this thesis, I will have to leave you with a thought from Paul Bommer Artist and Illustrator, who surmises: I guess the old frozen nazi wasnquot;t all bad!