Quote:
Originally Posted by Mithalwen
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Those pictures are
hideous!
I always judge my Tolkien artists by the quality of their Hobbits, and as soon as they come out looking like the sort of comedy Leprechaun sold in a seaside gift shop, that artist goes down the pan for me. Hobbits are just smaller Men. It's not hard to do them right!
Disney...never liked it. The only thing I could bear for years was The Jungle Book. I have mellowed a bit now and can even permit their version of Winnie the Pooh (having read the original to ye childe, it actually has some slightly distasteful bits, so I am begrudgingly content with a sanitised version), and I love the Pixar films and things like Pirates. But Mickey Mouse etc still leave me utterly cold.
Maybe it wasn't just the artwork that worried Tolkien but the inevitable sanitisation that comes with Disneyfication - not for nothing has that phrase entered the language to describe anything airbrushed to make it more 'cute'.
I should think Tolkien will have seen some Disney films, after all he was raising children in an age before television and many went to the cinema on an almost daily basis, especially during WWII. Children would often spend an entire Saturday in there watching an endless stream of cartoons for a penny or two. Nobody went to 'see a film', you went to see a film, the news, a few cartoons, maybe another film...
But one element not mentioned is that the British have an incredibly strong tradition of comics/animation/illustration all of their own. Disney has always been just one amongst many options in this country. Tolkien's children will have had access to Rupert the Bear and DC Thomson titles such as The Beano and The Dandy, amongst others. Not sure UK based animation was a huge strength back in the mid 20th c but it certainly is now. Disney would have had reasonable cinema success in the UK, but it didn't have much success with comics/books. I think it's likely Tolkien's awareness of their output will have come from cinema visits.