Disney Culture

John Wills

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780813583334
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Historia y crítica cinematográficas

Over the past century, Disney has grown from a small American animation studio into a multipronged global media giant. Today, the company’s annual revenue exceeds the GDP of over 100 countries, and its portfolio has grown to include Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ABC, and ESPN. With a company so diversified, is it still possible to identify a coherent Disney vision or message? Disney Culture proposes that there is still a unifying Disney ethos, one that can be traced back to the corporate philosophy that Walt Disney himself developed back in the 1920s. Yet, as cultural historian John Wills demonstrates, Disney’s values have also adapted to changing social climates. At the same time, the world of Disney has profoundly shaped how Americans view the world. Wills offers a nuanced take on the corporate ideologies running through animated and live-action Disney movies from Frozen to Fantasia, from Mary Poppins to S tar Wars: The Force Awakens. But Disney Culture encompasses much more than just movies as it explores the intersections between Disney’s business practices and its cultural mythmaking.  Welcome to “the Disney Way.”
 

1

Making Disney Magic

The Disney story (and with it Disney Culture) begins with Walt Disney’s early forays into animation as a teenager in the late 1910s. Following a stint as a Red Cross driver in France, Disney took on a range of animation posts in the Midwest for Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio and Kansas City Film Ad Company, while also working on his own business projects, including Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists (with fellow animator Ub Iwerks) and Laugh-O-Gram Studio comedy series. His early productions included Tommy Tucker’s Tooth (1922) dentistry cartoon and short adaptations of the fairy tales Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. However, none of these ventures made significant profit, and in October 1923 at the age of twenty-one, a bankrupt Disney relocated to Hollywood, where he set up the Disney Brothers’ Studio with his brother Roy on Hyperion Avenue. An intriguing mix of cartoon and live action, Disney’s Alice Comedies provided the fledgling studio with some income, but distributor problems limited success. In 1926, the Hyperion studio refocused on the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, producing a range of Oswald cartoons for Universal. However, in February 1928, Walt Disney lost the rights to Oswald during a fee renegotiation. Disney purportedly declared, “Never again will I work for somebody else” (Holliss and Sibley 14). Early productions featured at least some of the staples of classic Disney. Anthropomorphic lions sharpened their fake teeth, and Alice rode a Disneyland-style train in Alice’s Wonderland (1923). Early Disney also featured a strong Charlie Chaplin–style comedy and a propensity for violence that was absent in later productions.

Part of Disney mythology is the story that Walt allegedly came up for the idea of Mickey Mouse on the return train journey from the Universal meeting in New York in which he lost the rights to Oswald. Working closely with Ub Iwerks, he promptly produced three short black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons. On November 21, 1928, Disney showed Steamboat Willie, a Buster Keaton–style romp, at Colony Theater, Los Angeles. Variety reported, “Giggles came so fast at the Colony that they were stumbling over each other,” and predicted, “If the same combination of talent can turn out a series as good as Steamboat Willie they should find a wide market” (Landry). Mouse frenzy soon erupted. From Hollywood, Philip Scheuer reported a sudden loss of work for slapstick comedians, with “animated cartoons replacing humans in Briefies” (“Mickey Mouse Routs”). Everyone wanted Mickey Mouse cartoons and memorabilia. By 1935, the Hyperion studio had grown to a staff of over three hundred. Disney began work on a number of feature-length animated movies, lavishing attention on cartoon versions of European classics Snow White and Pinocchio, as well as the Austrian Felix Salten’s nature story Bambi. The rapid growth of Disney generated new problems. A five-week-long labor dispute in 1941 led to mass picketing at the new Burbank studio’s entrance. Walt responded with Capone-style Mafiosi and intrusive surveillance of staff. Disney never forgave the strike organizers and later targeted them in anticommunist hearings.

During World War II, Disney produced a range of government propaganda movies. A consummate patriot, Walt rebranded his mascots as American heroes fighting the Nazis. Most famously, Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) parodied the German threat by relating the trials and tribulations of Donald Duck in “Nutzi Land,” a fascist metropolis marked by manicured swastika shrubbery, razor-sharp bayonets, and authoritarian rule. Trapped in Nutzi Land, Donald finds himself forced to read Mein Kampf and practice his “Heil Hitlers” at gunpoint. The ruthless Nazi war machine takes its toll on Donald. Endless work at the local shell factory causes the duck to experience a mental breakdown. He then wakes up in his US flag pajamas, with the Statue of Liberty shining reassuringly through his window and Nutzi Land revealed as a nightmare. Der Fuehrer’s Face roused anti-Nazi sentiment across the United States; it also revealed the Disneyfication of war. Disney propaganda reshaped world conflict into Chaplinesque cartoons awash with German stereotypes, swastika iconography, and incessant parody. With Der Fuehrer’s Face’s catchy tune and lighthearted, even cathartic qualities, the film was more tongue-in-cheek than hard-hitting. While hardly on the front line, Disney Studios played a key cultural role in denouncing fascist aggression. Uncle Walt played a cartoon version of Uncle Sam. However, the combined cost of wartime propaganda and high-cost movies such as Bambi (1942) left the studio out of profit, with a debt of $4.3 million at the end of 1945.

In the postwar period, the Disney portfolio expanded to include live-action movies, nature documentaries (Disney’s True-Life Adventures), regular television broadcasting, and theme parks, in the guise of Anaheim’s Disneyland. Walt’s enthusiasm for new projects proved remarkable. The 1950s represented a high point for Walt Disney and Disney Culture. Fans flocked to the newly opened Disneyland, while The Mickey Mouse Club, a variety show for kids, welcomed its first Mouseketeer performers. Through such actions, fans became not just distant spectators but active participants in all things Disney. The range of live-action hits included Treasure Island (1950), 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954), and the TV series Davy Crockett (1954–55).

The immense success of Disney came down to a range of factors: shrewd marketing, technical excellence, musicality and comedy, and emotional impact. Disney connected with ideas surrounding childhood, the rise of television and cinema, the growth of consumer culture, and a national predilection for nostalgia and utopianism. Disney also provided escape, especially in periods of struggle. The early success of Mickey Mouse coincided with the Great Depression; now Disney prospered as entertaining respite from the Cold War.

Walt Disney himself emerged as champion of conservatism as well as McCarthyism. An FBI informant, Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on October 24, 1947, smearing a range of organizations and former employees as enemies of the state. As the business diversified and expanded, Walt spent less and less time on animation, with the demands of the Disneyland TV show taking its toll (he moaned, “Once you are in television, it’s like operating a slaughter house. Nothing must go to waste. You have to figure ways to make glue out of the hoofs”; Schumach). In 1961, the Disney company for the first time operated loan-free and in profit. On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died of cancer. The Disney songwriter Richard Sherman called Walt a futurist and a great salesman; the science-fiction author and friend Ray Bradbury declared him “an American original,” while President Lyndon B. Johnson remarked, “It is a sad day for America and the world” (Thomas 382).

The death of Walt Disney created a huge creative and directional vacuum. Walt’s brother Roy O. Disney, Donn Tatum, and Card Walker initially ran the company but focused primarily on finishing Walt’s projects, including Walt Disney World, Florida (opened in 1971). Infighting, lack of vision, and staff loss undermined the studio. Rather than push new animation, the corporation increasingly depended on live-action films for revenue. In the 1960s, Disney made just four animated movies out of around fifty releases: a trend that continued for the next two decades. New animations recycled old material, with Fox and the Hound (1981) replicating scenes from both Bambi and Sword in the Stone (1963). Alongside live-action hits such as the VW Beetle classic The Love Bug (1968), Disney produced a range of poor-quality B-movie productions, forgettable films such as The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979). At the same time, the studio rejected offers to make both Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET: The Extra Terrestrial.

By the early 1980s, stagnation had set in. With the resignation of board director Roy E. Disney (Walt’s nephew) and an investment of $500 million by the Bass Brothers, the future of the company seemed unsettled. Takeover bids loomed. In 1984, Michael Eisner took over as chief executive officer and marshaled a new corporate turn. Eisner revamped management structure, expanded product lines, and oversaw new Disney franchises and features. Profit jumped from $97 million net to $700 million net between 1984 and 1989. Eisner oversaw the “Disney Renaissance” of 1989 to 1999, a decade-long period of movie hits including The Little Mermaid (1989) and The Lion King (1994) that combined fresh characters with classic Disney animation.

Disney continued its corporate expansion into the twenty-first century. The Disney Channel found form with the teenage programs Hannah Montana and High School Musical, while new parks opened in Hong Kong and Shanghai, as well as the California Adventure next to the original Disneyland. In response to the rise of Pixar, “neo-Disney” dropped older styles of animation, introduced more complexity to its stories, and diversified topics, releasing both Western and science-fiction cartoons. For the scholar Chris Pallant, this change represented a more experimental Disney (125). In 2006, Disney purchased the cartoon giant Pixar. Pixar’s John Lasseter promised to bring innovation and energy to the studios. In 2010, Disney produced its fiftieth animated feature, Tangled, which took in $591 million worldwide. In 2013, Disney’s Frozen proved an even bigger success, netting over $1 billion. For the film journalist Scott Mendelson, the movie about two royal sisters amounted to “Disney’s triumphant reaffirmation of its cultural legacy.”

The Disney story is a story of an evolving corporation, culture, and brand. A variety of impulses lie behind Disney Culture. Walt Disney’s personal vision, coupled with the immense popularity of Mickey Mouse, determined the early studio’s direction. A unique blending of art, music, and technology contributed to the success. The Disney universe also relies on subtle systems of control to offer an alluring and immersive escape.

A “MICKEY MOUSE” STORY

In twentieth-century Disney, two figures dominated the company: Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney famously related, “It all started with a mouse” (Disney Studios, What Is Disneyland). Disney business, vision, and culture all derived from the drawing of one cartoon figure. According to Walt, Mickey Mouse was not just the technical beginning of a successful Disney brand but at the heart of it all. Mickey Mouse cartoons proved important to Disney Culture as they set the tone of the studio. Playful, childlike, animal focused, and family oriented, Mickey Mouse features proved decidedly mainstream entertainment, and Mickey became the ideal consumer product to export.

The rise of Mickey Mouse corresponded with the dawn of Disney Culture. Walt was inspired by his pet mouse, Mortimer, to imagine a new mascot to replace Oswald the Rabbit. Ub Iwerks drew Mickey as a simple character with broad appeal. Imagining him to be similar to the contemporary Felix the Cat, Iwerks described Mickey as “the standardized thing” (Brockway, Myth 130). Two silent movies, Plane Crazy (based on the Charles Lindbergh flight) and The Gallopin’ Gaucho (inspired by a Douglas Fairbanks movie) followed, but the true breakthrough came with Steamboat Willie (1928), thanks in part to its remarkable soundtrack. Early Mickey Mouse cartoons proved slapstick-heavy, highly visual escapades. In Steamboat Willie, Mickey played animals as instruments and had few qualms about cruel and violent behavior. The scholar Stephen Jay Gould highlights how “the original Mickey was a rambunctious, even slightly sadistic fellow” (30).

Success changed the rodent. High demand led to a production line of Mickey Mouse cartoons and merchandise. Mickey quickly became more than a studio mascot: an American institution, a national hero, and a savior in the Great Depression. Mickey also became a product: a toy to take home, a wristwatch to wear. As the family fan base grew around the mouse, Disney felt under pressure to deliver a consistently wholesome role model. Born a trickster, Mickey quickly matured into a safe, family-friendly character. The more sensible rodent could be seen directing music in The Band Concert (1935), while Donald Duck assumed the role of trickster. Responsibility over Mickey (or, in Disney’s words, the golden rule “not to mess with the mouse”) translated into creative doldrums. Frustrated, Walt disclosed in 1934, “He’s such an institution that we’re limited in what we can do with him” (Brockway, Myth 131). The number of original Mickey features dropped. Mickey also began to look visibly different. Playing safe with the mouse led to a softening of Mickey’s features, as evident in the big-eyed, loquacious Mickey in The Pointer (1939). He became more juvenile and less challenging. In both behavioral and aesthetic terms, Mickey reverted to childhood, went back to the womb. For Gould, the result was a “blander and inoffensive” mouse (30).

By the 1950s, Mickey Mouse had become more important to Disney as a corporate logo than as a movie character. With reference to the sociologist William H. Whyte’s research into white-collar men of the time, “He became an ‘organization man’” (Brockway, Myth 133). The journalist Edward Lewine went further, seeing Mickey as “a corporate prisoner, representing suppressed individuality in the name of image and profits.” The revised, inoffensive appearance of Mickey reflected the direction that Disney as a whole was heading toward: mainstream products designed with maximum profit in mind. Mickey symbolized the new look of Disney Culture: his softer, simpler lines highlighting a company playing it safe. Mickey embodied the corporate image of Disney Studios.

In 1981, the artist Andy Warhol produced a series of ten screen prints titled “Myths” that included a portrait of Mickey Mouse alongside portrayals of Uncle Sam and Superman. Mickey Mouse stood tall as an icon of America. Like Warhol, Walt Disney had combined art, advertising, and commerce to frame popular culture. Mickey served as precursor to the logos of today: Apple, Microsoft, and Nike. The author John Updike declared Mickey Mouse “the most persistent and pervasive figment of American popular culture in this century” and a better symbol than even Uncle Sam for the nation. Certainly, alongside the Coca-Cola can and the golden arches of McDonald’s, Mickey Mouse proved an eminent symbol of American culture in the twentieth century.

However, by the close of the century, most Disney fans wore Mickey ears, but few watched Mickey cartoons. An almighty symbol, Mickey curiously lacked a decisive role. In 1978, John Culhane for the Saturday Review wrote, “He would surely now be eager to blast off into the farthest reaches of outer space. Then woe be unto Darth Vader if he should venture so far out of his class as to kidnap Minnie Mouse!” Commentators pondered whether Disney could ever resurrect its archetypal cartoon character. Mickey Mouse in many ways seemed tethered to the Walt Disney years and appeared a relic of the past. The Disney biographer Bob Thomas saw in Mickey Mouse the “alter-ego” of Walt and a character irrevocably tied to the studio master (150). As Walt himself admitted, “He’s a pretty nice fellow who never does anybody any harm, who gets into scrapes through no fault of his own, but always managed to come up grinning. . . . There’s a lot of Mouse in me” (Updike). For the scholar Robert Brockway, Mickey proved as “complex as Disney was himself and as profound in his symbolic and mythic implications as any mythic or fairy tale character” (“Masks” 26). Certainly Mickey played a pivotal role in Disney’s early success, as the journalist Marshall Fishwick concluded: “Mickey was Disney’s Model T—simple, sturdy, and functional.” However, one hundred years on, the Model T seemed decidedly outdated.

WALT DISNEY, HERITAGE, AND SELF-MYTHOLOGY

Walt Disney’s personal interests—from his fondness for animals, circuses, and toy trains to his loyalty to conservative politics and small-town America—all shaped the fabric of the studio. His take on business, art, and animation determined the culture of the organization and, in turn, the values exported outside the studio and around the world. Disney invested a great deal into his projects, with the making of Disneyland being akin to “a crusade” (Thomas 254).

The popular image of Walt Disney is of a fatherly figure sitting at his desk enthusing about his latest project. Walt is cast as the great artist, the father of animation, and the inspiration behind literally hundreds of Disney cartoons. Fans imagine Disney handcrafting early pictures and sprinkling magical Disney dust on them. According to popular Disney mythology, Walt brought immense happiness to the world. The biographer Marc Eliot contends that a viewer can see much of Walt in his early movies, with Mickey Mouse operating as his superego and Donald Duck as his id (181–82). As one journalist remarked, “Disney pictures have a technique and a philosophy, but they would be headless horsemen, without the fervor of Walt Disney’s spirit” (Ducas). Equally, California’s Disneyland owes much to Walt’s personal imagination. The park serves as a time capsule of 1950s Americana and a cryogenic freezing of Disney’s fictions. Visitors enter a plastic and concrete realization of one man’s fantasy, a world where a severed Lincoln head talks and giant rodents greet you. Like Lincoln, Walt Disney has become an American folk hero. Through his anticommunist stance, his wartime propaganda, his work ethic, his family values, and his strong sense of tradition, Walt provided a father-like, protective role to people living in uncertain times during the mid-twentieth century. Disney served as the nation’s family man, welcome in every home, comforting to every child, and protector of all things good about the country. Hedda Hopper for the Los Angeles Times simply called him the “All-Year Santa Claus.” Known affectionately as Uncle Walt, Disney promoted simple happiness as his philosophy. He provided an appealingly sentimental, nostalgic, and good-natured take on the world.

What lies behind the popular image of Walt Disney is less certain. A reclusive, private person, he is hard to know and a figure of controversy. Certainly he was far from the only influence on studio or park creations. He was neither the father of animation nor the inventor. Notable examples of animation that predate Disney include The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) by J. Stuart Blackton and Fantasmagorie (1908) by Émile Cohl. First seen in Feline Follies (1919), Felix t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Making Disney Magic
• 2. The World According to Disney
• 3. Disney Dollars
• 4. Disney Values
• Acknowledgments
• Further Reading
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author