Lewis and Tolkien had a hatred of Disney films specifically because of their watering down of classic fairy tales. I can’t help but think they had an inkling of what was going to happen to those fairy tales in the public consciousness
Yeah I don't think people today are aware that Disney was not entirely respected by critics in his day (which fueled his insecurities & need to be taken seriously)
They probably did but granted I have been a harsh critic of Tolkein and his criticisms of storytelling and his philosophy of literature. To me, his argument about the dwarves in adapting Snow White just comes off to me as shallow when granted, he was adapting said race from the Norse Mythos that inspired LOTR. And granted, as a mythology fan, I've never been that harsh with taking liberties with myths and their characters and I think Tolkein is trying to have his cake and eat it too when he wants to claim a superiority to demand some cultural purity of the dwarves from fairy tales when said dwarves were but facsimile of a facsimile of the myths long ago.
Check out Jess of the Shire essays, Tolkein privately sharing letter to friends of things he just doesn't like is hardly hate, most of this is clickbait Buzzfeed fluff. Like I'm sure Tolkein wouldn't even bother with Social media today toxicity today
The modern version of fairy tales becoming Disney's stories is Marvel comic books becoming Disney's stories. The adaptations they know they can't replace in the public consciousness, the ones that were not made by them such as Jackman's Wolverine and Maguire's Spider-Man, they bring it back and sell it as a love letter to the fans. The multiverse makes every Marvel film becomes a Marvel Cinematic Universe film and by consequence, Disney's Marvel.
I don't hate Disney (talking about the films, not the company btw), but I hate how powerful they are to the point that a lot of people think that pretty much every 2D animated film is made by them. There's even a page on TV Tropes called "All Animation is Disney" that talks about this phenomenon. I'm glad that I'm not really into Disney stuff anymore. When I watch Disney stuff now it's usually their obscure, dark, 80s stuff, stuff made by Fox, co-productions with other studios, and films made by defunct labels (Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures).
Yeah, I mention that a bit in the rest of this series, how their market dominance is such that the majority of non-Disney animated (American) films still try to imitate them, as if the Disney way is always the "right" way of doing animation.
I saw this happening in real time in my own growing up. The Greek name for Rapunzel is anthousa Xanthousa Chrysomallousa and I was 8 when tangled came out. Suddenly it was no longer Anthousa but Rapunzel, no prince, no lentil soup (complicated yes that is part of the story), and the girl was no longer the daughter of a she-dragon but rather the step daughter of a witch. kids my age didn't recognise the greek form and I was the only one who had a memory of the greek story everyone else had the Disney story.
You might cover this in another part but what helped Disney become such an oppressive cultural force, particularly internationally, is that many of those classic works were not as ubiquitous as they were in English speaking parts of the world. So with rare exceptions like Pinocchio in Italy or Hercules in Greece, the Disney versions are the most dominant with little if any resistance.
Actually I don't mention that, but I should have, because that's a very good point. Still, something like the story of Hercules (& Greek Mythology in general) used to be much better known by the average American schoolboy.
Gosh, there's so much stuff I like to bring up when people talk about the history of Disney. Ub Iwerks, a masked Chuck Jones standing outside the studio with a guillotine during the picket line (when he didn't even work there!), the lemmings (the lemmings alone, gosh), Al Hirschfeld's snippy reviews of their animated works, Harlan Ellison's supposedly getting hired and fired in one day, Carl Barks, isolated in his house miles east of the studio, churning out the material that would sustain the company in Europe for decades and not even allowed to put his name on it... a lot of this is off topic to point of your video, but there's so much wild business and marketing stuff in this company's history that I can't resist mentioning.
@@marcospisanis739 There are a lot of great one liners, but in his own way he predicted the live action remakes. He reviewed Snow White, talking about how Disney's cartoonier works had more expressive range than things pointing towards realism, then he says: "The striving for effect in Snow White is an unhealthy one. In Disney’s less ambitious works there is unity of figures and background. But now he is working back toward realistic photography. With a little imagination one can foresee the use of constructed miniature sets with four dimensional puppets mechanically operated on them. From this innocuous departure a “mediocre genius” could once more revolutionize the motion picture industry by reverting to human beings instead of puppets. The necessity of transforming plaster reproductions into imitation bronze and real bronze into imitation gold and real gold into imitation silver and real silver into imitation pewter or the hundreds of incongruities prevalent in industrial enterprise has never been successfully explained to me. You may put me down as an eccentric but I still prefer wood wood and metal metal and caricature caricature." Edit: "I admire the skill and organization required to assemble a major effort such as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and am properly impressed. If this comment seems captious it is deliberately so. My primary interest is the proper appreciation of caricature and its allied arts. With the accompanying hosannas which “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” have been justifiably receiving I feel it incumbent on me to inject a small voice of reason as one craftsman to another. And so, Mr. Disney, it is with regret and some anger that I feel you have made the biggest needle-point ever devised by man."
You know. This is why Steiner/Waldorf schools suggest delaying movie adaptions of fairy tales till kids are older, and have heard the originals, developing their imaginations in the process.
Although I understand the criticisms directed towards modern disney (i agree it sucks), i think the disney of the time Walt was alive deserves a lot of respect, as investigating you can see Walt put a lot of artistic effort on his works.
I hope I don't come off as too critical of his accomplishments, but as you'll see in the rest of the series, I do have my own criticisms of the "Disney Style"
@cartoonaesthetics i don't deny his art style is not for everyone, but personally i don't see much problem with it. I like all the different styles of the golden age of american animation. Disney, Fleischer, UPA, Warner Bros, Walter Lantz, MGM, etc. I like all their styles, i know some prefer certain styles over others, but i believe they are all artistically good, so i don't mind. I like Looney Tunes more, but i also like Mickey and friends. I prefer MGM's Tom and Jerry, but that doesn't mean i don't like UPA's Mr Magoo. I guess you could say i like everything of the golden age.
Did you know that Neil Degrasse Tyson said that Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than intelligence…” (?) So he probably never actually said that! 😂
Like your first part in your series on the Hate comics, I appreciate how you set up the culture around what you're talking about as not only does it lay the ground work for the main subject, but it also works as a piece on its own with the look into society. Like most, I remember watching Disney movies a good amount as a kid, but I never formed the same attachment to the company as other have. I do remember my mom always wanting us to go to Disneyland and my dad being against it so maybe that helped avoid such a strong connection (plus I watched a lot of different movies as a kid and gravitated to more "grown up films"). Seeing Disney (and the movie/TV industry in general) as this distributor of culture is really sad as it has in many ways stifled the imaginations of kids for generations. About two weeks ago, I was talking to a younger coworker and I recommended him an audiobook of a Conan story and a few days later, he told me that he couldn't get into it because he couldn't visualize it. As you said, we are in a post literate society. My comments aside, excellent video. I'm looking forward to the nexts parts.
So my GenX childhood was the mid to late '70s. I remember when older relatives would visit us, my uncles would rail against my reading comic books instead actual "Classic Literature" or spending my Saturday mornings watching cartoons instead being outside. Thing is, I still read a lot of classic literature back then, even though comic books and cartoons took up a significant portion of down time. Today, I meet young people who buy comics only for the art, and don't even read the story. Reading word balloons takes to much effort.
I don’t feel that Walt, at least in his own day, intended for such a generational dilution of storytelling through what his namesake company has done. I feel that its more one long game of telephone, where each subsequent passing of the torch removes more and more of what the initial work or concept was about. Both adapted works and Disney original creations. When you spend decades promoting, selling and reselling the same concepts with very little innovation or variation, core details of the original work, if not the entire work itself become lost in our collective consciousness. Most people can tell you very basic details about that work, usually based on the most recent retooling, but anything beyond the surface is foreign. There’s a reason why when I say “I am a fan of Mickey Mouse” more than a few people raise an eyebrow, because what I mean by that statement has been so diluted by decades of gentrified branding, product placement and a lack of passion towards the work itself. The art and artists that made the character beloved in the first place are completely forgotten by the masses. Only in the last decade have I seen people actually take Disney’s wholly original characters in new and interesting directions, if only in the television animation department. I also feel that in the race to make animation be viewed as “professional”, they started making what were essentially live action productions done on cels, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it sort of cannibalized their own successes like Donald or Mickey, to a point where they couldn’t do anything over the top or legitimately funny simply to appease a diluted visage of what Walt Disney Productions was actually known for.
Excellent video! I've been terrified of what "gEnErAtIvE" (really, it's all THEFT) AI's been doing to young minds because we're actually seeing in real time how even very smart kids are growing much slower and more cumbersome in their thinking due to basically having ChatGPT finish their thoughts for them, so they're not practicing thinking up anything for themselves anymore, and it's actually to the point now that many kids can't even LOOK UP anything online for themselves anymore, instead relying on Alexa or something to look it up for them and then just spit out an answer they can't even independently verify anymore. How very interesting (and horrifically sad) that the HUGE reason why Disney's adaptations of literature and folk tales are so culturally dominant now is because, basically, the Disney versions of these classic works have been finishing kids' imaginations of said classic works for them like stuff like "gen" AI's been finishing kids' thoughts and research for them.
Kinda, yeah. Like I mentioned, around 75% of the animated films Walt produced were based on pre-existing material. And a lot of their biggest live-action hits were based on pre-existing material, too.
I remember the first animated movie I ever saw in theaters was Secret Of Nihm back when I was 12. I prefer that film to any Disney film. The darker tone and epic scale in that feature is what made it stay in my mind long after seeing it, unlike most Disney stuff which is happy-go-lucky.
I'm sure the Secret of NIMH is a good film but I watched it just after reading the book which made it less enjoyable for me because of how much got changed
As a Disney fan, Ive always gravitated towards their original films. My favorite of all time being The Black Hole. Seems that during their "dark period" the company had fresh ideas that unfortunately tanked to the public.
everytime i see the shot of walt at 12:48, i must think how young and cool he looks, with that collar especially. so much different to the "uncle walt" persona he did later on.
You know I’d argue that this is the same problem with coco melon. Among various other issues. I’ve read that part of the reason literacy levels are declining is because mothers don’t sing nursery rhymes anymore, poetry and rhythm are important for children learning. But nowadays, they don’t sing the songs themselves, they let the internet do it for them.
That’s not the point though. You’re right, but it’s getting worse. Tv has never been more convenient than it is now. Before this age, men and women would still tend to have to soothe their babies personally, rather than artificially pacify them with tv. You ever seen videos of babies running into rooms because of the cocomelon theme?
Yeah it's pretty bad. Stuff like Cocomelon is particularly insidious because that's not even storytelling, just stimulus-response which has been deliberately engineered to be addictive to developing baby brains.
I’ve really enjoyed all the videos you’ve put out so far. Plenty of western animation fans say that the medium needs to be appreciated as an art form, but there’s not enough people talking about it online with any depth or history. Please keep doing what you’re doing
Thanks man, that's really what I'm aiming for. I hope it doesn't come off as pretentious, but I think cartoons deserve to be discussed as an art form that's a part of our lives & affects us all, because they do.
Thank you for this and your Hate series. I've always felt isolated in my love for classic fairy tales. Breaks my heart to see them only being talked about in comparison to the Disney adaptions.
12:37 Yes, emphasis on hand-drawn. The actual first actual feature-length animated movie, *The Adventures of Prince Achmed* in 1926, was a stop-motion feature. You got to put that emphasis when talking about *Snow White* because most don't know the most about animation history, and just assume *Snow White* was the first animated feature film in general. Just putting that note here, whilst listening to this video while I have to read something for a college class.
@ Overall with this video, I've come to appreciate the early Disney adaptations on a much more mixed level today than I did as a child. Most I haven't read the original versions of (Winnie-the-Pooh is the only one I remember reading as a child), but have gotten other adaptations of them. It was only just recently I decided to read the original *Bambi: A Story of Life in the Forest* after watching through Disney's *Bambi* , and now that I'm old enough, I can appreciate both the original and the adaptation on their own merits.
when i was a child my parents would sit at bedtime and make up stories for me. surely the 19th century novel boom is a surplantation of that much more primordial phenomenon
Watching Walt himself be recorded in colour’s never not surreal. He’s always seen as a historic figure of sorts, so seeing footage of him in a relatively modern fashion always sends me in a bit of a loop. Also, very *unfortunate* design for a toy at 31:21. Surprised that got through without anyone in its initial development process noticing.
Well, when Disney's weekly show became "The Wonderful World of Color" in 1961, people did get to see him in color a lot, but I know what you mean. As a figure of the past, my mental image of him is usually b&w
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@@cartoonaesthetics Also why I'm desensitized to Walt in color, but seeing Walt in HD is strange.
It's nice to get a fair portrait of Walt Disney for a change. Too many people conflate the man with the company, most specifically the soulless corporation that it is today, which has very little to do with Walt. Funny how little of what is covered in this video applies to me personally: I grew up with Disney's old shorts and comics (the Italian ones), but never with the movies. And had fairytales read to me in kindergarden in their original form.
That's fortunate for you. I'm a Looney Tunes kinda guy but some of their old shorts were great. You were also fortunate to grow up with Topolino! That's some of the best Disney stuff ever.
Watching Tangled at 16 was the first time i truly understood this. Princess and The Frog was just way too different from the source material in setting, but both films had a very Lasseter like middle act of two opposite characters going on a journey while meating wacky side characters.
Yeah, I don't particularly mind Princess and the Frog because that's more of its own thing (they even reference the original story as a pre-existing story within it) but Tangled was practically what inspired this series in the first place, so far as turning a unique fairy tale into just another formulaic Disney Princess movie. In the second or third part I'll be talking more about that
I never liked Disney as a kid. For a start I didn't have much exposure to their media to begin with. My parents didn't have Sky which at the time was and probably still is the only way to get Disney Channel in the UK, and I mostly preferred to watch what I already had on DVD, which included little to no Disney, anyway. And also my mum wasn't all that into shoving brands down my throat fortunately. I did end up becoming aware of Disney from a young age, however, as many do. Eventually, when I was 6 (by which time I knew of Disney and had seen some of their stuff) I was introduced to Club Penguin, which by this time was owned by Disney. At some point, I descovered that Disney did not always own Club Penguin, and that before it was owned by Disney a lot less features were locked behind a paywall. This is what caused my lifelong resentment for Disney. Some other kids at school thought the same way so we even had a conspiriacy to blow up Disneyland LMAO. The Disney aquisition of Star Wars obviously never sat well with me and when Star Wars Rebels was launched when I was 10 I naturally rejected it (much to my dad's confusion because I liked Star Wars). I did eventually go to Disneyland when I was 15 (against my will) and I never saw it as some magical place that you must go to when you're a kid, to me it was just like all the other theme parks I've been to but bigger. I was very content with the stuff that I did grow up with and hyperfixated on and still enjoy to this day, even if some of it has now fallen to the evil mouse. I'm glad I never let one corporation control my childhood.
You went to Disneyland? Uh, how was it?? (By the way, the massive ad campaigns have made many generations think Disneyland is ESSENTIAL to a childhood experience. But not every kid enjoys it. I've read MANY accounts of people who were disappointed by their visits to a Disney park.)
I’m very far off from becoming a father, but I’ve thought quite a bit about what kind of stories I’d want to introduce my children to, as well as what stories, if any, I should be vetting. I believe it’s very valuable to a child’s cultural and intellectual growth that they are told these old stories in their original form, and to illustrate the idea that, while fun movies, the Disney versions are merely adaptations.
Great video as always I never did think about how ubiquitous Disney was in culture but again I didn't even live in a super Disney household yet one of the first VHS tapes I ever owned was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and I was never read the original grimm story growing up. Actually the old fairy tales i was read as a kid be it by parent grandparent school teacher etc like Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood were ones without major Disney feature length adaptations. It really does consume cultural canon even though i never thought of it that hard in the past.
Even though I watched quite a few of their movies, mostly from the Rennissance era, I didn’t see many of their short films on tv. Mainly it was Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and a little Popeye mixed.
@@richardthefox3412 yeah I think in the early days of the Disney channel they showed them semi regularly but now it’s like a niche animation interest even though they’re Disney. I guess the company just doesn’t think they appeal to modern audiences
@@cartoonaesthetics The B&W Mickey's will probably never be reshown because execs have this schizophrenic beliefe that kids hat black and white and they don't wanna piss of toon fans by doing a ted turner
In the 70s, there was a syndicated show called The Mouse Factory (check the archive). In the 80s, Disney Channel had Mouseterpiece Theater, which provided a pretty narrow view of their shorts, and DTV, a music video show that featured a much broader range of clips. By the 90s, the old shorts vanished, and they attempted to replace them with new ones for ABC on Mickey Mouse Works, followed by House of Mouse in the 2000s.
I once read the original Bambi and it's sequel by Felix Salten. Being an Austrian myself I found an older version of the book at a flea market. It surprised me how different it was from the Disney version (like half of the movie characters are actually not even in the story but that makes sense, Felix Salten was Austrian and we don't have skunks lol) and I have to say I enjoyed the book actually more than the movie. The themes and characters feel more fleshed out and mature. The scene where Bambi loses his mother is so much more haunting than Disneys tame version. The saddest part is that a lot of people don't even know it is based on a book.
It says a lot, too, that Bambi is still considered one of the darker early Disney movies for the scene where his mother is shot. I'll be referencing it in the next part of this series.
Amusingly, while my mom’s childhood would have been imprinted with Disney, but somewhere into her becoming an adult and having kids, she couldn’t stand any of it, so my childhood was immensely non-Disney, despite their 70’s and 80’s influence. Did go to the theme parks once or twice. Watched some things myself that showed up on cable. But the first Disney movies I ever watched were in high school (Beauty and the Beast, Fantasia on someone’s VHS, others that friends had as home movies…) Prior to that I’d already been into Robotech way longer, and raw anime as a freshman, so…. Nothing of it has ever stuck.
Plenty of fantasy and fables, tho. Obviously Grimm would have been in my childhood, other myths and legends like Arthurian, but Tolkien would have been most-formative even from single digit ages.
"You'll see a wounded sense of intergenerational corporate trust staring right back at you." I, now, look forward towards the next videos. Then, I'll look back later. Mirrors are not required.
I never really did "grow up" on Disney when I was a kid, save things like Yin-Yang-Yo and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go on Jetix, and later on various live-action sitcoms and (usually Canadian-made) "action cartoons" on Disney XD. My childhood television watching hours, particularly as they pertained to cartoons, were primarily an eclectic mix of Cartoon Network (including Adult Swim and Boomerang), Nickelodeon (especially Nicktoons, whenever possible), Disney XD, and 4KidsTV (later the CW4Kids, later Toonzai). In retrospect, I was really lucky to have such a childhood, as it didn't allow for any one "brand" to strongly imprint on me such that I made it part of my identity.
You were lucky - as I hope to extrapolate in the rest of this series, once they get their hooks into you at an early age it's really hard to free your mind!
One aspect that bothers me the most about parents who raise their children exclusively on Disney or Disney-Adjacent media is the commonly sited reason that "Disney movies are more wholesome and innocent. I can't have my kids reading the original fairy tales, do you know how violent those things are!" Especially as the definition of violence shifts from Cinderella's sisters cutting off their toes to basic slapstick. I think the idea that children cannot handle anything even remotely violent or scary is one of the most under-discussed aspects of why the modern child's upbringing is so terrible. You briefly talked about how children often used fairy tales to learn harsh lessons on reality in a safe environment, but I think it goes far beyond indirectly teaching kids not to trust suspicious strangers. The complete aversion to showcasing anything negative is causing children to not even understand basic aspects of existence such as pain, disagreement or death itself. Call me crazy if you will, but I think there's a direct line between Disney movies slowly being less willing to show the main villain getting killed, and modern people being eager to share war footage of people being violently murdered while they use the words "unalive" and "game ended" to describe the acts committed.
I completely agree, & in the rest of this series I will touch on some of the unrealistic expectations about life which an all-Disney diet creates for children (& adults!)
By the way. I highly recommend Hungarian folktales for you and your little girl. You’ve probably already heard of it. Authentic word for word Hungarian folktales tales, animated in a beautiful rustic style, like an illustrated manuscript. Also the Andrew Lang books, he has fairy tales from all over the world.
Welcome! I think it kinda counts as Soviet animation? All of it is free on RUclips by the way. So no extra charge. m.ruclips.net/video/VmL6CYzXgow/видео.html
Nice of you to play Funeral March of a Marionette. It had an influence on a character I drew up. Even when it turned more robotic than a puppet. Thank you for further informing me on ways to stray further away from Disney. Directly read the source material they adapted and forget they crap they produced.
Well just to jump ahead a little - in the second part of this series I enumerate some of my criticisms of "The Disney Style" but at the end of the series I conclude that it's fine for Disney versions of things to exist, so long as we don't treat them like they're the primary versions
Honestly, I don't think it was just Walt's fault, it was also due to the Hay's code that prohibited movies from being too "immoral". Same reason why Tweety has yellow feathers instead of being nude per his original appearance, and why Yosemite Sam spouts out angry gibberish instead of actually swearing at Bugs.
I'n glad how your video shows both the troubles with Disney and how Walt himself never intended to start such a problem. Despite his flaws, Walt himself was quite the artist in a sense! Despite that, he was as much of a human as everyone else.
Thanks. Disney is not my thing (if that's not obvious) but I still tried to be fair to Walt & his accomplishments. Wait until the next part though, lol, because I do have some criticisms about "The Disney Style" which, of course, was his creation.
Another issue to consider is the simple fact that some parents may simply prefer their kids watch the Disney versions over reading the books because some of these stories originally can be quite dark, violent, or just depressing. I don’t know how many parents these days would WANT their kids reading the original versions of Pinocchio or Cinderella. Pinocchio is an asshole, Cinderella’s stepsisters cut their toes to fit in her slipper, and then there’s how The Little Mermaid DIES at the end of the original story. I don’t doubt that a lot of parents that know the original stories would rather their kids consume the more sage and sanitized versions of these stories Disney provides
It's nice to see a critical perspective on Disney that isn't complaining about wokeness. I know this is super off-topic to the essay series, but I find it so fascinating how, after the 1941 strike, a lot of former animators and story people would go on to produce animation with such radically different design and animation sensibilities (the UPA guys, Bill Melendez at Warner Bros. and his work on the Peanuts specials), yet people like Andreas Deja or Sergio Pablos or James Baxter who leave Disney, their sensibilities hardly changed at all. It goes to show Disney's tight grip over the animation pipeline (for their movies), and how his sensibilities seeped into many of his best artists, and then in turn, how those artists inspired and influenced the next generation of animators.
Yeah, absolutely. I get into that a little in the rest of the series, although Disney's stylistic influence is kind of a subject onto itself that would require its own video to really explore
@ when this series is done I’ll need a little break from Disney first!
7 дней назад
I also think the worst of the Disney influence (the non union stuff) also spread... Hanna-Barbera in the 70s (when they were making millions of literal RERUNS of Scooby-Doo, let alone new content) was highly anti union and was a reason why Filmation (who was pro-union to the point where Lou Scheimer, CEO of Filmation, outright HATED outsourcing overseas, unlike Disney and H-B) was a direct threat to H-B in the first place.
I liked how you opened with the telling of your variant of how you and your daughter loved a closer to the original tale of Rapunzel. I have so much more to say but I'll have to leave it for later.
@@cartoonaestheticsWell I finally finished the video. I was watching but had to deal with work. So TBH, I'm disappointed that I had some expectations that weren't discussed but I think thats cause you're doing something different to begin with. I was hoping there'd be a discussion of Walt's history of him being perceived as this "Perfect American" which also happens to the title of a Phillip Glass minimalist opera about Walt's life. But I guess what I was thinking about was more the expose on Disney as of his anti-unionist moves, his testimonies at the House of Un-American Activities, but granted this is more about Disney and culture consciousness.
@@marcospisanis739 Once you start talking about Disney and/or Walt it's almost impossible to keep it brief - I mean, this series is just on one thesis & it's still going to take about 90 minutes. Walt's biography is a fascinating enough subject but most of the biographical detail I included is just in this first part.
Well, at least Disney didn't touch and can't touch what has become my favorite fairy tale. It's pretty much a fairy tale Disney wouldn't dare to adapt or try to.
Great introduction to disneys gorilla grip on childhood. I myself always been unhappy with the companys influence on society. Shame i dont have a solution to this, bigger than all of us of course. But whatever im saying, its good to point out whats going on. Good video!
I’ve been listening through all of the wizard of oz books and have tried to look into analysis of it, and every video I find is about the movie. The only thing anyone seems to know is that in the books, the slippers are silver. It’s a great movie, but there is so much to the books no one knows about. Like how in the first one the tin man has a kill count of over 40 lol
I wasn't particularly interested in the Wizard of Oz movie but somehow the Oz books became THE childhood book series for me (along with the works of Roald Dahl.) I read all 14(?) of them & yeah, it's amazing how much fantastical stuff Baum came up with. Besides Return to Oz, the only movies that incorporate any of it beyond the first book / musical film are obscure cheapies, & early silent films.
@@cartoonaesthetics part of why I like it is the sheer fantastical nature of it. The Wheelers from Ozma of Oz are some of the strangest and most disturbing characters I’ve read about. I also study a lot of occultism, and it’s interesting to see Baum’s theosophical influence come through. One interesting example is the “favorite colors” of the land are tied to theosophical color theory. It was also very interesting when he directly described the incantation to make the life powder work as “Kabbalistic”
Nice! Nice! Nice! lol. I’ll have to look into it for my nieces. But I’ll read the books to them first. My mom has an old Cinderella book from her childhood, that isn’t based on the Disney version
@ After this series I'd like to do kind of a "Fairy Tale Buyer's Guide" type video for the really good versions I've found of different stories, like the Rapunzel one
Never liked Disney or Ghibli. I especially hate how commercialised everything they do is. I especially dislike Hayao Miyazaki. I do think Miyazaki’s manga effort Nausicaa is a masterpiece though. His films appeal too much to the western audience. I did like Fleischer cartoons and to some extent Van Beuren.
@@cartoonaesthetics If anime becomes like Disney or Western Cartoons, what is the justification of its existence? Sure Japanese animation now was influenced by western cartoons, but can stand on its own merit now. Czech animation, Soviet animation are interesting to me because they are distinct from western style animation. What people find creepy or unappealing is intriguing and comforting for me. When things become mainstream it is because they appeal to mainstream tastes. As someone who has always been rejected by everyone around me, it doesn't appeal to me. So I am just speaking of personal preference. It's not that I hate animated Japanese movies- I like Ghost in the Shell series and movies by Satoshi Kon. Also I heard rumors Miyazaki is just a difficult person to deal with and anyone who has no humility (despite their immense talent) is repugnant to me (as someone with no skills/talent).
Okay besides the horrendous modern Disney ,Atleast past Disney (even though sanitized) help revolutionize animation ie helped to inspired osama tsuka vast catalogue of anime and manga
I subscribed because Peter Bagge was a huge discovery for me when i begant to expand my taste in comics. I stayed because i was curious to see what came next. I am intrigued and enthusiastic for parts 2 and 3 of this mini-series and if someday, down the line there will be a mini-series about Ralph Bakshi ans John K., i would not be surprised but interested in seeing your thoughts and point of view.
@@cartoonaesthetics You might also consider doing an episode on Dave Sim in regards to his self-publishing efforts. And yes, I am fully aware how problematic he is as a human being.
I was ambivalent in my attitude toward Mickey Mouse in my childhood. But now that Disney has become the corporate corrupt Woke Distard, I’m at the point I can’t stand the sight or sound of that obnoxious dorky rodent mascot.
The wokeness, which is just an across-the-board cultural phenomenon, is kind of the least of my problems with Team Rodent (as author Carl Hiaasen once dubbed them)
Started to enjoy the video.. until I realized what channel this was, and the Twitter account associated with it. Not gonna enjoy a John K. apologist's work.
Lewis and Tolkien had a hatred of Disney films specifically because of their watering down of classic fairy tales. I can’t help but think they had an inkling of what was going to happen to those fairy tales in the public consciousness
Yeah I don't think people today are aware that Disney was not entirely respected by critics in his day (which fueled his insecurities & need to be taken seriously)
They probably did but granted I have been a harsh critic of Tolkein and his criticisms of storytelling and his philosophy of literature. To me, his argument about the dwarves in adapting Snow White just comes off to me as shallow when granted, he was adapting said race from the Norse Mythos that inspired LOTR. And granted, as a mythology fan, I've never been that harsh with taking liberties with myths and their characters and I think Tolkein is trying to have his cake and eat it too when he wants to claim a superiority to demand some cultural purity of the dwarves from fairy tales when said dwarves were but facsimile of a facsimile of the myths long ago.
Ritsu spotted.
Check out Jess of the Shire essays, Tolkein privately sharing letter to friends of things he just doesn't like is hardly hate, most of this is clickbait Buzzfeed fluff.
Like I'm sure Tolkein wouldn't even bother with Social media today toxicity today
@ best girl!
The modern version of fairy tales becoming Disney's stories is Marvel comic books becoming Disney's stories. The adaptations they know they can't replace in the public consciousness, the ones that were not made by them such as Jackman's Wolverine and Maguire's Spider-Man, they bring it back and sell it as a love letter to the fans. The multiverse makes every Marvel film becomes a Marvel Cinematic Universe film and by consequence, Disney's Marvel.
Yes 100%
I don't hate Disney (talking about the films, not the company btw), but I hate how powerful they are to the point that a lot of people think that pretty much every 2D animated film is made by them. There's even a page on TV Tropes called "All Animation is Disney" that talks about this phenomenon.
I'm glad that I'm not really into Disney stuff anymore. When I watch Disney stuff now it's usually their obscure, dark, 80s stuff, stuff made by Fox, co-productions with other studios, and films made by defunct labels (Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures).
Yeah, I mention that a bit in the rest of this series, how their market dominance is such that the majority of non-Disney animated (American) films still try to imitate them, as if the Disney way is always the "right" way of doing animation.
@@cartoonaesthetics I honestly prefer the stuff that tries to imitate them over most actual Disney movies.
I sort of go with classic movies and stuff made by Pixar (and things made by Fox too, like Jingle All The Way & Home Alone)
I saw this happening in real time in my own growing up. The Greek name for Rapunzel is anthousa Xanthousa Chrysomallousa and I was 8 when tangled came out. Suddenly it was no longer Anthousa but Rapunzel, no prince, no lentil soup (complicated yes that is part of the story), and the girl was no longer the daughter of a she-dragon but rather the step daughter of a witch. kids my age didn't recognise the greek form and I was the only one who had a memory of the greek story everyone else had the Disney story.
@vasilistheocharis164 wow, you really got to enjoy the raw material more than most
You might cover this in another part but what helped Disney become such an oppressive cultural force, particularly internationally, is that many of those classic works were not as ubiquitous as they were in English speaking parts of the world. So with rare exceptions like Pinocchio in Italy or Hercules in Greece, the Disney versions are the most dominant with little if any resistance.
Actually I don't mention that, but I should have, because that's a very good point. Still, something like the story of Hercules (& Greek Mythology in general) used to be much better known by the average American schoolboy.
Gosh, there's so much stuff I like to bring up when people talk about the history of Disney. Ub Iwerks, a masked Chuck Jones standing outside the studio with a guillotine during the picket line (when he didn't even work there!), the lemmings (the lemmings alone, gosh), Al Hirschfeld's snippy reviews of their animated works, Harlan Ellison's supposedly getting hired and fired in one day, Carl Barks, isolated in his house miles east of the studio, churning out the material that would sustain the company in Europe for decades and not even allowed to put his name on it... a lot of this is off topic to point of your video, but there's so much wild business and marketing stuff in this company's history that I can't resist mentioning.
It's hard not to go off on a hundred tangents when you're talking about Disney!
Really? Al Hirschfield? Funny because Hirsfield would later influence animators to make the Rhapsody in Blue segment of Fantasia 2000.
@@marcospisanis739 There are a lot of great one liners, but in his own way he predicted the live action remakes. He reviewed Snow White, talking about how Disney's cartoonier works had more expressive range than things pointing towards realism, then he says:
"The striving for effect in Snow White is an unhealthy one. In Disney’s less ambitious works there is unity of figures and background. But now he is working back toward realistic photography. With a little imagination one can foresee the use of constructed miniature sets with four dimensional puppets mechanically operated on them. From this innocuous departure a “mediocre genius” could once more revolutionize the motion picture industry by reverting to human beings instead of puppets. The necessity of transforming plaster reproductions into imitation bronze and real bronze into imitation gold and real gold into imitation silver and real silver into imitation pewter or the hundreds of incongruities prevalent in industrial enterprise has never been successfully explained to me. You may put me down as an eccentric but I still prefer wood wood and metal metal and caricature caricature."
Edit: "I admire the skill and organization required to assemble a major effort such as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and am properly impressed. If this comment seems captious it is deliberately so. My primary interest is the proper appreciation of caricature and its allied arts. With the accompanying hosannas which “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” have been justifiably receiving I feel it incumbent on me to inject a small voice of reason as one craftsman to another. And so, Mr. Disney, it is with regret and some anger that I feel you have made the biggest needle-point ever devised by man."
I never heard that Chuck Jones story
Wait, what's this about Harlan Ellison at Disney?
You know. This is why Steiner/Waldorf schools suggest delaying movie adaptions of fairy tales till kids are older, and have heard the originals, developing their imaginations in the process.
I loved those guys on the muppets, had no idea they were so wise too
Although I understand the criticisms directed towards modern disney (i agree it sucks), i think the disney of the time Walt was alive deserves a lot of respect, as investigating you can see Walt put a lot of artistic effort on his works.
I hope I don't come off as too critical of his accomplishments, but as you'll see in the rest of the series, I do have my own criticisms of the "Disney Style"
@cartoonaesthetics i don't deny his art style is not for everyone, but personally i don't see much problem with it. I like all the different styles of the golden age of american animation. Disney, Fleischer, UPA, Warner Bros, Walter Lantz, MGM, etc. I like all their styles, i know some prefer certain styles over others, but i believe they are all artistically good, so i don't mind. I like Looney Tunes more, but i also like Mickey and friends. I prefer MGM's Tom and Jerry, but that doesn't mean i don't like UPA's Mr Magoo. I guess you could say i like everything of the golden age.
Did you know that Neil Degrasse Tyson said that Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than intelligence…” (?) So he probably never actually said that! 😂
lol
Like your first part in your series on the Hate comics, I appreciate how you set up the culture around what you're talking about as not only does it lay the ground work for the main subject, but it also works as a piece on its own with the look into society.
Like most, I remember watching Disney movies a good amount as a kid, but I never formed the same attachment to the company as other have. I do remember my mom always wanting us to go to Disneyland and my dad being against it so maybe that helped avoid such a strong connection (plus I watched a lot of different movies as a kid and gravitated to more "grown up films").
Seeing Disney (and the movie/TV industry in general) as this distributor of culture is really sad as it has in many ways stifled the imaginations of kids for generations. About two weeks ago, I was talking to a younger coworker and I recommended him an audiobook of a Conan story and a few days later, he told me that he couldn't get into it because he couldn't visualize it. As you said, we are in a post literate society.
My comments aside, excellent video. I'm looking forward to the nexts parts.
@@ahatt96 thanks for the high praise, I’m glad you enjoy what I’m doing. Maybe your dad knew what he was doing!
So my GenX childhood was the mid to late '70s. I remember when older relatives would visit us, my uncles would rail against my reading comic books instead actual "Classic Literature" or spending my Saturday mornings watching cartoons instead being outside. Thing is, I still read a lot of classic literature back then, even though comic books and cartoons took up a significant portion of down time. Today, I meet young people who buy comics only for the art, and don't even read the story. Reading word balloons takes to much effort.
@ Sad!
I don’t feel that Walt, at least in his own day, intended for such a generational dilution of storytelling through what his namesake company has done. I feel that its more one long game of telephone, where each subsequent passing of the torch removes more and more of what the initial work or concept was about. Both adapted works and Disney original creations.
When you spend decades promoting, selling and reselling the same concepts with very little innovation or variation, core details of the original work, if not the entire work itself become lost in our collective consciousness. Most people can tell you very basic details about that work, usually based on the most recent retooling, but anything beyond the surface is foreign.
There’s a reason why when I say “I am a fan of Mickey Mouse” more than a few people raise an eyebrow, because what I mean by that statement has been so diluted by decades of gentrified branding, product placement and a lack of passion towards the work itself.
The art and artists that made the character beloved in the first place are completely forgotten by the masses.
Only in the last decade have I seen people actually take Disney’s wholly original characters in new and interesting directions, if only in the television animation department.
I also feel that in the race to make animation be viewed as “professional”, they started making what were essentially live action productions done on cels, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it sort of cannibalized their own successes like Donald or Mickey, to a point where they couldn’t do anything over the top or legitimately funny simply to appease a diluted visage of what Walt Disney Productions was actually known for.
Very good points
If you're talking about the 2017 DuckTales series and the Paul Rudish Mickey Mouse shorts, people hate these two.
@ Those seem like they have completely different audiences. Rudish's Mickey had a much longer run though
Excellent video! I've been terrified of what "gEnErAtIvE" (really, it's all THEFT) AI's been doing to young minds because we're actually seeing in real time how even very smart kids are growing much slower and more cumbersome in their thinking due to basically having ChatGPT finish their thoughts for them, so they're not practicing thinking up anything for themselves anymore, and it's actually to the point now that many kids can't even LOOK UP anything online for themselves anymore, instead relying on Alexa or something to look it up for them and then just spit out an answer they can't even independently verify anymore.
How very interesting (and horrifically sad) that the HUGE reason why Disney's adaptations of literature and folk tales are so culturally dominant now is because, basically, the Disney versions of these classic works have been finishing kids' imaginations of said classic works for them like stuff like "gen" AI's been finishing kids' thoughts and research for them.
Jeez, good analogy
@@cartoonaesthetics Thank you so very much! :D
This was a pretty brilliant assessment of something I hadn’t really bothered to think about. I am impressed. Well done! Subscribed!
Thanks! I hope you enjoy the rest of the series.
@ looking forward to it
So what you're saying is that Disney has ALWAYS made their $$$ off of remakes. Only now, they're remaking their own remakes of the original stories.
Kinda, yeah. Like I mentioned, around 75% of the animated films Walt produced were based on pre-existing material. And a lot of their biggest live-action hits were based on pre-existing material, too.
I remember the first animated movie I ever saw in theaters was Secret Of Nihm back when I was 12. I prefer that film to any Disney film. The darker tone and epic scale in that feature is what made it stay in my mind long after seeing it, unlike most Disney stuff which is happy-go-lucky.
Those 80s Bluth films are very interesting. Sort of like Dark Disney
Ironic considering Bluth was inspired to animation by Disney's Snow White, buy yeah, his films do tend to be much less watered down.
I'm sure the Secret of NIMH is a good film but I watched it just after reading the book which made it less enjoyable for me because of how much got changed
As a Disney fan, Ive always gravitated towards their original films. My favorite of all time being The Black Hole. Seems that during their "dark period" the company had fresh ideas that unfortunately tanked to the public.
Yeah, I love Return to Oz
everytime i see the shot of walt at 12:48, i must think how young and cool he looks, with that collar especially. so much different to the "uncle walt" persona he did later on.
He looks like a Greek pimp.
Young Walt could "get it"
You know I’d argue that this is the same problem with coco melon. Among various other issues.
I’ve read that part of the reason literacy levels are declining is because mothers don’t sing nursery rhymes anymore, poetry and rhythm are important for children learning. But nowadays, they don’t sing the songs themselves, they let the internet do it for them.
I fail to see how that's something new. Television has been used as an electronic babysitter long before the internet.
That’s not the point though. You’re right, but it’s getting worse. Tv has never been more convenient than it is now. Before this age, men and women would still tend to have to soothe their babies personally, rather than artificially pacify them with tv. You ever seen videos of babies running into rooms because of the cocomelon theme?
@ Undoubtedly it's been getting worse, but it's not a new phenomena. Before Cocomelon there was The Teletubbies, same brand of brain-numbing junk.
Yeah it's pretty bad. Stuff like Cocomelon is particularly insidious because that's not even storytelling, just stimulus-response which has been deliberately engineered to be addictive to developing baby brains.
@ No, it's not new - but it's worse
I’ve really enjoyed all the videos you’ve put out so far. Plenty of western animation fans say that the medium needs to be appreciated as an art form, but there’s not enough people talking about it online with any depth or history. Please keep doing what you’re doing
Thanks man, that's really what I'm aiming for. I hope it doesn't come off as pretentious, but I think cartoons deserve to be discussed as an art form that's a part of our lives & affects us all, because they do.
The song you chose to end this video with is perfect! Well done.
@@jerksoup69 the great Stan Freberg!
@@cartoonaestheticshe was the voice of the Beaver in Lady and the Tramp funny enough.
Thank you for this and your Hate series. I've always felt isolated in my love for classic fairy tales. Breaks my heart to see them only being talked about in comparison to the Disney adaptions.
You're so welcome!
12:37 Yes, emphasis on hand-drawn. The actual first actual feature-length animated movie, *The Adventures of Prince Achmed* in 1926, was a stop-motion feature. You got to put that emphasis when talking about *Snow White* because most don't know the most about animation history, and just assume *Snow White* was the first animated feature film in general.
Just putting that note here, whilst listening to this video while I have to read something for a college class.
I appreciate your fact-checking, because yes, I did want to be specific about that
@ Overall with this video, I've come to appreciate the early Disney adaptations on a much more mixed level today than I did as a child. Most I haven't read the original versions of (Winnie-the-Pooh is the only one I remember reading as a child), but have gotten other adaptations of them. It was only just recently I decided to read the original *Bambi: A Story of Life in the Forest* after watching through Disney's *Bambi* , and now that I'm old enough, I can appreciate both the original and the adaptation on their own merits.
Achmed was not the first, just the oldest surviving
@ Ah yeah.
when i was a child my parents would sit at bedtime and make up stories for me. surely the 19th century novel boom is a surplantation of that much more primordial phenomenon
@@HolographicSweater that’s a good point, but this series is already going to be long enough without covering the whole history of that transition
You've earned a subscription from me. Amazing video.
Thanks man. I hope you enjoy the rest of the series
Watching Walt himself be recorded in colour’s never not surreal. He’s always seen as a historic figure of sorts, so seeing footage of him in a relatively modern fashion always sends me in a bit of a loop.
Also, very *unfortunate* design for a toy at 31:21. Surprised that got through without anyone in its initial development process noticing.
He rocked the "1980s drug lord" look in 1937
Well, when Disney's weekly show became "The Wonderful World of Color" in 1961, people did get to see him in color a lot, but I know what you mean. As a figure of the past, my mental image of him is usually b&w
@@cartoonaesthetics Also why I'm desensitized to Walt in color, but seeing Walt in HD is strange.
Wonderful video. Can't wait for the upcoming parts
Thank you!
It's nice to get a fair portrait of Walt Disney for a change. Too many people conflate the man with the company, most specifically the soulless corporation that it is today, which has very little to do with Walt.
Funny how little of what is covered in this video applies to me personally: I grew up with Disney's old shorts and comics (the Italian ones), but never with the movies. And had fairytales read to me in kindergarden in their original form.
That's fortunate for you. I'm a Looney Tunes kinda guy but some of their old shorts were great. You were also fortunate to grow up with Topolino! That's some of the best Disney stuff ever.
Watching Tangled at 16 was the first time i truly understood this. Princess and The Frog was just way too different from the source material in setting, but both films had a very Lasseter like middle act of two opposite characters going on a journey while meating wacky side characters.
Yeah, I don't particularly mind Princess and the Frog because that's more of its own thing (they even reference the original story as a pre-existing story within it) but Tangled was practically what inspired this series in the first place, so far as turning a unique fairy tale into just another formulaic Disney Princess movie. In the second or third part I'll be talking more about that
I never liked Disney as a kid. For a start I didn't have much exposure to their media to begin with. My parents didn't have Sky which at the time was and probably still is the only way to get Disney Channel in the UK, and I mostly preferred to watch what I already had on DVD, which included little to no Disney, anyway. And also my mum wasn't all that into shoving brands down my throat fortunately. I did end up becoming aware of Disney from a young age, however, as many do. Eventually, when I was 6 (by which time I knew of Disney and had seen some of their stuff) I was introduced to Club Penguin, which by this time was owned by Disney. At some point, I descovered that Disney did not always own Club Penguin, and that before it was owned by Disney a lot less features were locked behind a paywall. This is what caused my lifelong resentment for Disney. Some other kids at school thought the same way so we even had a conspiriacy to blow up Disneyland LMAO. The Disney aquisition of Star Wars obviously never sat well with me and when Star Wars Rebels was launched when I was 10 I naturally rejected it (much to my dad's confusion because I liked Star Wars). I did eventually go to Disneyland when I was 15 (against my will) and I never saw it as some magical place that you must go to when you're a kid, to me it was just like all the other theme parks I've been to but bigger. I was very content with the stuff that I did grow up with and hyperfixated on and still enjoy to this day, even if some of it has now fallen to the evil mouse. I'm glad I never let one corporation control my childhood.
Yeah, but that becomes harder when one mega-corporation keeps buying up other ones!
You went to Disneyland?
Uh, how was it??
(By the way, the massive ad campaigns have made many generations think Disneyland is ESSENTIAL to a childhood experience. But not every kid enjoys it. I've read MANY accounts of people who were disappointed by their visits to a Disney park.)
I’m very far off from becoming a father, but I’ve thought quite a bit about what kind of stories I’d want to introduce my children to, as well as what stories, if any, I should be vetting. I believe it’s very valuable to a child’s cultural and intellectual growth that they are told these old stories in their original form, and to illustrate the idea that, while fun movies, the Disney versions are merely adaptations.
Exactly!
Great video as always I never did think about how ubiquitous Disney was in culture but again I didn't even live in a super Disney household yet one of the first VHS tapes I ever owned was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and I was never read the original grimm story growing up. Actually the old fairy tales i was read as a kid be it by parent grandparent school teacher etc like Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood were ones without major Disney feature length adaptations. It really does consume cultural canon even though i never thought of it that hard in the past.
In the next couple parts I will be talking a lot about the impact of VHS on Disney's cultural dominance
Even though I watched quite a few of their movies, mostly from the Rennissance era, I didn’t see many of their short films on tv. Mainly it was Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and a little Popeye mixed.
@@richardthefox3412 yeah I think in the early days of the Disney channel they showed them semi regularly but now it’s like a niche animation interest even though they’re Disney. I guess the company just doesn’t think they appeal to modern audiences
@@cartoonaesthetics The B&W Mickey's will probably never be reshown because execs have this schizophrenic beliefe that kids hat black and white and they don't wanna piss of toon fans by doing a ted turner
In the 70s, there was a syndicated show called The Mouse Factory (check the archive). In the 80s, Disney Channel had Mouseterpiece Theater, which provided a pretty narrow view of their shorts, and DTV, a music video show that featured a much broader range of clips. By the 90s, the old shorts vanished, and they attempted to replace them with new ones for ABC on Mickey Mouse Works, followed by House of Mouse in the 2000s.
I once read the original Bambi and it's sequel by Felix Salten. Being an Austrian myself I found an older version of the book at a flea market. It surprised me how different it was from the Disney version (like half of the movie characters are actually not even in the story but that makes sense, Felix Salten was Austrian and we don't have skunks lol) and I have to say I enjoyed the book actually more than the movie. The themes and characters feel more fleshed out and mature. The scene where Bambi loses his mother is so much more haunting than Disneys tame version.
The saddest part is that a lot of people don't even know it is based on a book.
It says a lot, too, that Bambi is still considered one of the darker early Disney movies for the scene where his mother is shot. I'll be referencing it in the next part of this series.
@@cartoonaesthetics Oh that's cool, I was wondering if it would be mentioned in the video so I am looking forward to it.
Amusingly, while my mom’s childhood would have been imprinted with Disney, but somewhere into her becoming an adult and having kids, she couldn’t stand any of it, so my childhood was immensely non-Disney, despite their 70’s and 80’s influence. Did go to the theme parks once or twice. Watched some things myself that showed up on cable. But the first Disney movies I ever watched were in high school (Beauty and the Beast, Fantasia on someone’s VHS, others that friends had as home movies…)
Prior to that I’d already been into Robotech way longer, and raw anime as a freshman, so…. Nothing of it has ever stuck.
Plenty of fantasy and fables, tho. Obviously Grimm would have been in my childhood, other myths and legends like Arthurian, but Tolkien would have been most-formative even from single digit ages.
@@cthellis hell yea
"You'll see a wounded sense of intergenerational corporate trust staring right back at you." I, now, look forward towards the next videos. Then, I'll look back later. Mirrors are not required.
Thanks for vid king, please keep making those!!
You're welcome, thank you for watching!
I never really did "grow up" on Disney when I was a kid, save things like Yin-Yang-Yo and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go on Jetix, and later on various live-action sitcoms and (usually Canadian-made) "action cartoons" on Disney XD. My childhood television watching hours, particularly as they pertained to cartoons, were primarily an eclectic mix of Cartoon Network (including Adult Swim and Boomerang), Nickelodeon (especially Nicktoons, whenever possible), Disney XD, and 4KidsTV (later the CW4Kids, later Toonzai).
In retrospect, I was really lucky to have such a childhood, as it didn't allow for any one "brand" to strongly imprint on me such that I made it part of my identity.
You were lucky - as I hope to extrapolate in the rest of this series, once they get their hooks into you at an early age it's really hard to free your mind!
One aspect that bothers me the most about parents who raise their children exclusively on Disney or Disney-Adjacent media is the commonly sited reason that "Disney movies are more wholesome and innocent. I can't have my kids reading the original fairy tales, do you know how violent those things are!" Especially as the definition of violence shifts from Cinderella's sisters cutting off their toes to basic slapstick.
I think the idea that children cannot handle anything even remotely violent or scary is one of the most under-discussed aspects of why the modern child's upbringing is so terrible. You briefly talked about how children often used fairy tales to learn harsh lessons on reality in a safe environment, but I think it goes far beyond indirectly teaching kids not to trust suspicious strangers. The complete aversion to showcasing anything negative is causing children to not even understand basic aspects of existence such as pain, disagreement or death itself.
Call me crazy if you will, but I think there's a direct line between Disney movies slowly being less willing to show the main villain getting killed, and modern people being eager to share war footage of people being violently murdered while they use the words "unalive" and "game ended" to describe the acts committed.
I completely agree, & in the rest of this series I will touch on some of the unrealistic expectations about life which an all-Disney diet creates for children (& adults!)
By the way. I highly recommend Hungarian folktales for you and your little girl. You’ve probably already heard of it. Authentic word for word Hungarian folktales tales, animated in a beautiful rustic style, like an illustrated manuscript. Also the Andrew Lang books, he has fairy tales from all over the world.
Cool, I'll look into that! Thanks!
Welcome! I think it kinda counts as Soviet animation? All of it is free on RUclips by the way. So no extra charge.
m.ruclips.net/video/VmL6CYzXgow/видео.html
Excellent work, looking forward to the next parts.
Thank you for watching!
'culture creation companies' is one of the grimmest phrases I've heard in a minute [and it has been a particularly dour minute!]
There's some things that we can do without (and that's good)
@@cartoonaesthetics everybody's looking for the same thing
Nice of you to play Funeral March of a Marionette. It had an influence on a character I drew up. Even when it turned more robotic than a puppet.
Thank you for further informing me on ways to stray further away from Disney. Directly read the source material they adapted and forget they crap they produced.
Well just to jump ahead a little - in the second part of this series I enumerate some of my criticisms of "The Disney Style" but at the end of the series I conclude that it's fine for Disney versions of things to exist, so long as we don't treat them like they're the primary versions
Great video looking forward to the next part
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Honestly, I don't think it was just Walt's fault, it was also due to the Hay's code that prohibited movies from being too "immoral". Same reason why Tweety has yellow feathers instead of being nude per his original appearance, and why Yosemite Sam spouts out angry gibberish instead of actually swearing at Bugs.
Yeah but if you look at the pre-code Fleischer studios you gotta admit, they were a lot more racy than Diz
I'n glad how your video shows both the troubles with Disney and how Walt himself never intended to start such a problem. Despite his flaws, Walt himself was quite the artist in a sense! Despite that, he was as much of a human as everyone else.
Thanks. Disney is not my thing (if that's not obvious) but I still tried to be fair to Walt & his accomplishments. Wait until the next part though, lol, because I do have some criticisms about "The Disney Style" which, of course, was his creation.
Another issue to consider is the simple fact that some parents may simply prefer their kids watch the Disney versions over reading the books because some of these stories originally can be quite dark, violent, or just depressing. I don’t know how many parents these days would WANT their kids reading the original versions of Pinocchio or Cinderella. Pinocchio is an asshole, Cinderella’s stepsisters cut their toes to fit in her slipper, and then there’s how The Little Mermaid DIES at the end of the original story. I don’t doubt that a lot of parents that know the original stories would rather their kids consume the more sage and sanitized versions of these stories Disney provides
Yes, I'll be getting more into that in the next part of the series
One of history's great Judy Testers
You're thinking of Max Fleischer
I'm looking forward for the rest of this!
Hope you enjoy it!
It's nice to see a critical perspective on Disney that isn't complaining about wokeness.
I know this is super off-topic to the essay series, but I find it so fascinating how, after the 1941 strike, a lot of former animators and story people would go on to produce animation with such radically different design and animation sensibilities (the UPA guys, Bill Melendez at Warner Bros. and his work on the Peanuts specials), yet people like Andreas Deja or Sergio Pablos or James Baxter who leave Disney, their sensibilities hardly changed at all. It goes to show Disney's tight grip over the animation pipeline (for their movies), and how his sensibilities seeped into many of his best artists, and then in turn, how those artists inspired and influenced the next generation of animators.
Yeah, absolutely. I get into that a little in the rest of the series, although Disney's stylistic influence is kind of a subject onto itself that would require its own video to really explore
@@cartoonaesthetics I'd love to see that video one day.
@ when this series is done I’ll need a little break from Disney first!
I also think the worst of the Disney influence (the non union stuff) also spread... Hanna-Barbera in the 70s (when they were making millions of literal RERUNS of Scooby-Doo, let alone new content) was highly anti union and was a reason why Filmation (who was pro-union to the point where Lou Scheimer, CEO of Filmation, outright HATED outsourcing overseas, unlike Disney and H-B) was a direct threat to H-B in the first place.
That's admirable of Lou Scheimer but he's still probably the worst major animation producer in history
Great stuff ❤
@@anthonyschultz6801 glad you liked it!
I liked how you opened with the telling of your variant of how you and your daughter loved a closer to the original tale of Rapunzel. I have so much more to say but I'll have to leave it for later.
It's going to weave back around to Tangled by the end of the series, of course
@@cartoonaestheticsWell I finally finished the video. I was watching but had to deal with work. So TBH, I'm disappointed that I had some expectations that weren't discussed but I think thats cause you're doing something different to begin with. I was hoping there'd be a discussion of Walt's history of him being perceived as this "Perfect American" which also happens to the title of a Phillip Glass minimalist opera about Walt's life. But I guess what I was thinking about was more the expose on Disney as of his anti-unionist moves, his testimonies at the House of Un-American Activities, but granted this is more about Disney and culture consciousness.
@@marcospisanis739 Once you start talking about Disney and/or Walt it's almost impossible to keep it brief - I mean, this series is just on one thesis & it's still going to take about 90 minutes. Walt's biography is a fascinating enough subject but most of the biographical detail I included is just in this first part.
Well, at least Disney didn't touch and can't touch what has become my favorite fairy tale. It's pretty much a fairy tale Disney wouldn't dare to adapt or try to.
Disney is the largest publisher of children's books.
There really does not need to be an entire "children's book" industry
Wonderful video!
Thank you!
Making this video 33 minutes... Idk if that was intentional or not but either way its serendipitous as hell.
I understand that reference
@cartoonaesthetics those zany masons
Great introduction to disneys gorilla grip on childhood. I myself always been unhappy with the companys influence on society. Shame i dont have a solution to this, bigger than all of us of course. But whatever im saying, its good to point out whats going on. Good video!
Hope you enjoyed!
Good show. Glad Disney didn't steal my childhood because it belonged to Looney Tunes.
Good show
Great video.
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!
19:07 you know, i had this same when it comes anime, I watch it first then read the source material
Anime tends to stick pretty close to the manga it adapts, at least compared to what Hollywood does to American comics
I’ve been listening through all of the wizard of oz books and have tried to look into analysis of it, and every video I find is about the movie. The only thing anyone seems to know is that in the books, the slippers are silver. It’s a great movie, but there is so much to the books no one knows about. Like how in the first one the tin man has a kill count of over 40 lol
I wasn't particularly interested in the Wizard of Oz movie but somehow the Oz books became THE childhood book series for me (along with the works of Roald Dahl.) I read all 14(?) of them & yeah, it's amazing how much fantastical stuff Baum came up with. Besides Return to Oz, the only movies that incorporate any of it beyond the first book / musical film are obscure cheapies, & early silent films.
@@cartoonaesthetics part of why I like it is the sheer fantastical nature of it. The Wheelers from Ozma of Oz are some of the strangest and most disturbing characters I’ve read about. I also study a lot of occultism, and it’s interesting to see Baum’s theosophical influence come through. One interesting example is the “favorite colors” of the land are tied to theosophical color theory. It was also very interesting when he directly described the incantation to make the life powder work as “Kabbalistic”
@@lucyalicenox5871 I should read up on that stuff, of course it was all over my head as a kid
Classic Disney movies not Cocomelon millennial parents
I mean, if only the biggest problem was that parents were only showing their kids Snow White, Pinocchio & Fantasia!
@ give them looney tunes too
Dig up Joe Matt and interview him.
Maybe! Bagge letting me interview him really helped legitimize me as an interviewer
great video
Thanks man glad you enjoyed it
What’re the live action fairy tale adaptions you used in the beginning?
Shelley Duvall's Fairy Tale Theater
Nice! Nice! Nice!
lol.
I’ll have to look into it for my nieces. But I’ll read the books to them first. My mom has an old Cinderella book from her childhood, that isn’t based on the Disney version
@ After this series I'd like to do kind of a "Fairy Tale Buyer's Guide" type video for the really good versions I've found of different stories, like the Rapunzel one
That would kick ass
Maybe Disney stole my childhood, because i barely remember any of it!
Better file a claim
Thank you
You, are welcome
Do you have an idea for when part 2 will be out? (Or when you’ll stream again?)
I'm glad you're champing at the bit - my goal is to have it out by the end of February, but I can't be more specific than that. Hang tight!
Underrated
Thanks
Never liked Disney or Ghibli. I especially hate how commercialised everything they do is. I especially dislike Hayao Miyazaki. I do think Miyazaki’s manga effort Nausicaa is a masterpiece though. His films appeal too much to the western audience. I did like Fleischer cartoons and to some extent Van Beuren.
Is appealing to a Western audience bad?
@@cartoonaesthetics If anime becomes like Disney or Western Cartoons, what is the justification of its existence? Sure Japanese animation now was influenced by western cartoons, but can stand on its own merit now. Czech animation, Soviet animation are interesting to me because they are distinct from western style animation. What people find creepy or unappealing is intriguing and comforting for me. When things become mainstream it is because they appeal to mainstream tastes. As someone who has always been rejected by everyone around me, it doesn't appeal to me. So I am just speaking of personal preference. It's not that I hate animated Japanese movies- I like Ghost in the Shell series and movies by Satoshi Kon. Also I heard rumors Miyazaki is just a difficult person to deal with and anyone who has no humility (despite their immense talent) is repugnant to me (as someone with no skills/talent).
Pretty neat essay, hope for more
And actually as a commie I like Goofy more as a working class hero
lol. "Prole Troop," weekdays on the Disney Afternoon
@@cartoonaesthetics I can't wait to meet Bill Farmer, I'm gonna ask him in Hop Pop voice to say "Eat the Rich" as in Amphibia, it's a meme
Your Twitter just got suspended
I got scammed / hacked - follow @spum_donor instead!
Update - I got my old handle of @spumdonor back, thankfully, even though the original account is gone
H2BH
Hey I think your twitter account was hacked because I got a dm from you there saying you and your friends reported me
Sorry, I've been dealing with it all day. You should report it to X because I don't think I can get that account back. Follow @spum_donor instead
Update - I got my handle of @spumdonor back (original account is gone though)
Okay besides the horrendous modern Disney ,Atleast past Disney (even though sanitized) help revolutionize animation ie helped to inspired osama tsuka vast catalogue of anime and manga
There's plenty to appreciate
When were you a dad?
When I fathered children
@@cartoonaesthetics how old is she?
@cartoonaesthetics
Hmmm...yes. The floor is made out of floor.
I subscribed because Peter Bagge was a huge discovery for me when i begant to expand my taste in comics. I stayed because i was curious to see what came next.
I am intrigued and enthusiastic for parts 2 and 3 of this mini-series and if someday, down the line there will be a mini-series about Ralph Bakshi ans John K., i would not be surprised but interested in seeing your thoughts and point of view.
Thanks man, I'm glad you liked this first part. I will of course be doing stuff on Ralph & John in the future, too
@@cartoonaesthetics You might also consider doing an episode on Dave Sim in regards to his self-publishing efforts. And yes, I am fully aware how problematic he is as a human being.
I was ambivalent in my attitude toward Mickey Mouse in my childhood. But now that Disney has become the corporate corrupt Woke Distard, I’m at the point I can’t stand the sight or sound of that obnoxious dorky rodent mascot.
The wokeness, which is just an across-the-board cultural phenomenon, is kind of the least of my problems with Team Rodent (as author Carl Hiaasen once dubbed them)
Started to enjoy the video.. until I realized what channel this was, and the Twitter account associated with it.
Not gonna enjoy a John K. apologist's work.
Okay I love you bye bye
@@cartoonaesthetics What kind of comment is that? I'm just saying, you don't exactly give off good vibes on Twitter with the stuff you say.
No he was the John K Respecter,
I was the John K Apologist
@@tootslootandshoot Why would anyone want to support John K at all with him both being an abuser and a sexual creep?
I don't wanna support John Kricfalusi because he hurts poor women