Why did Tolkien dislike Disney?

[Bêthberry]

Anyone who cannot appreciate Fantasia must have some kind of ideological blinders. My parents loved it and so did my kids; in fact, it was one of their favourite videos, so there's some cross-generational appreciation. Add me into the mix too.

Fantasia is immune to the criticisms one can make of the later Disney, with its stereotypical princesses, wicked step mothers, and expurgation if not bowlderisation of the terror in the original fairy tales.

I suspect Tolkien had too much respect for real fairy tales to like that dumbing down. Lewis I have no liking for, so I'd best not comment at length on his thought. Remember his silly comment about myth being "lies through silver"? At least it gave us Tolkien's defense of myth in Mythopoeia.

[Mithalwen]

But even Priscilla was 13 in 1940. I didn't see Fantasia other than clips on "Screen Test" until I was grown up and wasn't that bothered. My mother loathed and vetoed cartoons however I know she was taken to see Snow White as a very young child (had a Doc model to prove it- merchandising is not a new thing!!!). I don't know if that put her off...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

But even Priscilla was 13 in 1940. I didn't see Fantasia other than clips on "Screen Test" until I was grown up and wasn't that bothered. My mother loathed and vetoed cartoons however I know she was taken to see Snow White as a very young child (had a Doc model to prove it- merchandising is not a new thing!!!). I don't know if that put her off...

Same here. I never saw Fantasia until I had the Internet at home. Disney classic animation things just aren't shown on UK TV even now. You can get a Sky sub to their channels or buy DVDs (and even then they are only available for a few months before being discontinued), but you just won't see them on BBC or ITV. The only way a child can get 'into' Disney in this country is if their parents make a conscious decision to do so.

I wasn't exactly starved for animation when I was a child. There were endless things to watch that meant I was barely aware of Disney until I was a teenager. Hanna -Barbera's Top Cat; The Flintstones; Whacky Races; and Scooby Doo. European stuff like Barbapapa and Ulysses 31, or action from Battle of the Planets, Godzilla and Spider-Man. And the classic series made by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin - Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog - I'd venture to say that if you randomly sampled 100 middle aged Brits to find out which animation they felt a strong sentimental attachment to, anything by Postgate/Firmin would be mentioned by the majority, Disney not so much. And that's because once TV came along, Disney chose not to be part of it here, not even on video cassette, and there was just so much more available (they have certainly caught up since - there can't be a kid alive who hasn't seen Nemo/Toy Story/Cars).

But...I think Tolkien was highly likely to have seen Disney at the cinema though. Priscilla may have been a young teenager but they grew up more slowly back then (and Priscilla was keen on cuddly toys until she grew up), and from what I hear Snow White was enjoyed by all ages. I wonder if there is anything in the Hammond/Scull books or the letters? Maybe his cinema visits were too trivial to be noted?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Did Fantasia even make it to the UK while the war was on?

----------

Tolkien often compares Disney unfavorably to Arthur Rackham, whose somewhat Gothicized realism is a world away from "cute", even when amusing.

http://garybuckley.files.wordpress.c...9/img_0174.jpg
Could we have an Ent here? (Note: the tree is a rowan).

http://truehate.files.wordpress.com/...kham-bears.jpg
These are *not* the 3 Bears as Disney would have done them!

Snow White and her short roommates:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Snow_White.jpg

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

----------

Tolkien often compares Disney unfavorably to Arthur Rackham, whose somewhat Gothicized realism is a world away from "cute", even when amusing.

That has to be an ent, and those bears give a sense of what he would do with Beorn. The Snow White one also suggests he could have done Gimli and Galadriel well..

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Did Fantasia even make it to the UK while the war was on?

Almost certainly. Most films did as it was seen as very important to keep morale up with a constant stream of entertainments. Gone With The Wind was shown more or less continuously throughout the war, and I remember my nan saying she'd seen it more than a dozen times.

Originally Posted by jallanite

Rupert the Bear first appeared in 1920 and so was probably known to the Tolkien family, but in May 1937 The Dandy and The Beano could not be. The Dandy was first published later that year in December and The Beano was first published the following year. Something in May 1937 or before had made Tolkien think that there was a real danger of American childrens’ book illustrations being influenced by the Disney studios.

Disney films were also not included on North American networks, other than portions of them in some of Disney’s own programs: Disneyland (renamed later) and Micky Mouse Club, and on a few other later Disney programs. Disney, unlike other film production companies, refused to sell any television rights to his older films.

Dandy/Beano are examples of types of wildly popular cartoon/comic available in the UK. His children may have been too old by then (though his grandchildren will probably have picked them up later, along with the fantastic Eagle Comic), but there were plenty of other options that were popular. I can't remember the title but my dad, born in the 30s, collected a popular cartoon series at the time, he snipped them out of the Sunday paper and pasted them in a book so he could read them all at once.

There is also a long standing tradition of book illustration in the UK with a lot of highly lauded artists around in the late 19th and early 20th C that Tolkien will have been well aware of. Disney had a lot of competition in a country used to Kate Greenaway, Alfred Bestall, John Tenniel, Beatrix Potter, Randolph Caldecott, etc. And if you look at the art he produced and the art he liked for his own work (e.g. Pauline Baynes and her nice sketchy, inky drawings) then I'm not surprised he didn't go for Disney style which was all about large planes of colour and emphatic shapes - which works very well on screen but wasn't everyone's aesthetic (I can't personally complain about the modern Pixar stuff which is beautiful).

[Mithalwen]

Wasn't cinema going at it's peak in the UK during WW2? The war meant there was full employment and rationing meant that there wasn't much else to spend your money on. The cinemas also showed Newsreels as well as the features so it was information as well as entertainment, Even little towns like the one I live in had their own "flea pit".

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Dandy/Beano are examples of types of wildly popular cartoon/comic available in the UK. His children may have been too old by then (though his grandchildren will probably have picked them up later, along with the fantastic Eagle Comic), but there were plenty of other options that were popular. I can't remember the title but my dad, born in the 30s, collected a popular cartoon series at the time, he snipped them out of the Sunday paper and pasted them in a book so he could read them all at once.

I do not doubt that there were many comic strips before The Dandy and The Beano. Rupert the Bear dates to 1920. And there were doubtless some spin-off books based on such characters. The population of Canada is smaller than that of Britain and the UK, but even here there were books telling the adventures of Maggie Muggins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Muggins ), written by author Mary Grannan (http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/g/grannan_mary.html ), though the series only aired, so far as I know, on CBC radio and later on CBC Television in Canada.

Sticking one’s favourite strips into a scrap book was also something I did as a child.

There is also a long standing tradition of book illustration in the UK with a lot of highly lauded artists around in the late 19th and early 20th C that Tolkien will have been well aware of. Disney had a lot of competition in a country used to Kate Greenaway, Alfred Bestall, John Tenniel, Beatrix Potter, Randolph Caldecott, etc.

Disney had competition if you must use that word in the US as well: Howard Pyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle ), Andrew Wyeth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wyeth ), Wanda Gág (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_G%C3%A1g ), W. W. Denslow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace_Denslow ), Kurt Wiese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wiese ), and so forth.

But nothing in American illustration that I am aware of fits with Tolkien’s fear of American children’s illustration being influenced by Disney, unless he had seen books incorporating Disney art and other art derived from American animated cartoons.

Further research shows that Whitman’s Giant Midget Books® line based on their North American Big Little books was founded in 1940, and so they also were likely not seen by Tolkien in 1937 or before. The customs of those days was that a U.S. publisher often partnered with a U.K. firm to publish the same book, as happened with The Hobbit. I find that some early Whitman books starring Mickey Mouse are also listed on the web as being published by Collins in London. See https://www.google.ca/search?q=%22Mi...use%22+collins for some of these books on some of the pages listed.

As far as I can find almost all animated shorts in the early days of film animation were produced in the U.S., and none at all in Britain. So this would have created a demand in Britain for books based on the animated films seen, which Collins was able to fulfill thanks to Whitman. I do not know whether the Mickey Mouse daily strip was published in any British newspaper.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by jallanite

As far as I can find almost all animated shorts in the early days of film animation were produced in the U.S., and none at all in Britain. So this would have created a demand in Britain for books based on the animated films seen, which Collins was able to fulfill thanks to Whitman. I do not know whether the Mickey Mouse daily strip was published in any British newspaper.

I think it's most likely that Tolkien had seen Disney at the cinema. I don't know that any Disney books really took off here. I'm a bit fond of rooting through old children's books in second hand bookshops and I confess I've never seen any Disney ones older than ones from about the 50s or 60s. I also think that if Tolkien didn't like the art style then he's not that likely to have picked up the books for his children unless they pestered him - and apart from Priscilla (possibly) were probably too old to do that by this time?

What is the exact date of his first comment about Disney?

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

And the classic series made by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin - Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog - I'd venture to say that if you randomly sampled 100 middle aged Brits to find out which animation they felt a strong sentimental attachment to, anything by Postgate/Firmin would be mentioned by the majority,

Bagpuss was voted the most popular children's programme ever.... love the Firmin Postgate stuff - it was the noise of cartoons proper that irritated my Mum so these missed the cut...and now Ishall have the mouse song as an ear worm all day...