Why did Tolkien dislike Disney?

[davem]

Ironic that the Estates of both men have so much in common when it comes to their approach to copyright.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by davem

Ironic that the Estates of both men have so much in common when it comes to their approach to copyright.

Of course, any consideration of one copyright being more worthy of protection than the other is purely subjective.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by davem

Ironic that the Estates of both men have so much in common when it comes to their approach to copyright.

I see nothing ironic about it.

Do you think the estate should permit any and all use of material under their copyright for free because Disney is very protective?

Another probable reference by Tolkien to Walt Disney’s Snow White occurs in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), page 23 (emphasis mine):

But we do not talk about dwarf as often as we talk of man, or even goose, and memories are not good enough among men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now relegated (such is their fate and the fall of their great pride) to folktales, where at least some shadow of the truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense tales where they have become mere figures of fun who do not wash their hands.

This appears to be a reference to the scene in Disney’s Snow White in which Snow White forces the dwarfs to wash their dirty hands before dinner. I know of no other account in which dwarfs do not wash their hands.

[MCRmyGirl4eva]

Disney has some charm to it that I will always love, but personally, I find that they always fall short of the true message of stories for the sake of entertainment. Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, and Little Red Riding Hood became a ton of... Wait... I can't say that word here. I mean, come on! Ariel dies in her real story, and the guy marries someone else!

However, when I was little, I loved the movies. I always will, though I can now see the flaws in Disney and Pixar. It's an individual opinion, and Tolkien didn't like it. Well, I guess that's too bad.

It could also have something to do with the fact that Walt Disney started his animation company to help the Germans with war expenses in WWII.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by MCRmyGirl4eva

It could also have something to do with the fact that Walt Disney started his animation company to help the Germans with war expenses in WWII.

I don't know the truth of that matter, but from what I've gathered that seems to be a urban legend without much credibility.

In fact, Disney, like Warner Bros., used their cartoons to promote US patriotism and denounce the Axis during WWII. This article explains the propaganda elements there.

At any rate, as virulently opposed to Nazi Germany as Tolkien was, I cannot imagine that he would not have seized on any supposed Nazi sympathies of Disney as an excuse to dislike Disney Studios all the more, and you'd think Tolkien would have made mention of that at some point.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

It could also have something to do with the fact that Walt Disney started his animation company to help the Germans with war expenses in WWII.

***????

It's amazing some of the stories which have circulated about Disney, based on God knows what varying agendas; I've seen a video where an Iranian professor calls him a Jew (he was an Irish Presbyterian), and that his Tom & Jerry cartoons (MGM/Hanna-Barbera* of course) were Zionist propaganda!

Disney began his animation company in 1925 and his iconic first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, premiered in 1928. At this time of course there was no war on, and Germany was governed by the weak but democratic Weimar government. When WWII started Disney did get involved- as a major producer of US propaganda cartoons supporting the war effort and assailing the Axis (including "Education for Death – The Making of a Nazi" and the tasteless but Oscar-winning "Right In Der Fuhrer's Face"), as well as a large number of training films for the military. In fact it could be argued that Government war work 1942-45 saved a company which had taken huge losses on Pinocchio and Fantasia, both box-office flops.

Here's a sampling: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/85033

*Jewish Zionists? No, Lebanese-Americans- in other words, Arabs!

[jallanite]

Doing some research, I find that from 1931 almost all Disney book material was produced by Whitman Books, mostly as part of their inexpensive Big Little Books line. When Whitman started, most children’s books usually appeared only at Christmas time in most stores, but Whitman’s inexpensive publications changed that. See http://www.biglittlebooks.com/historyofBLBs.html .

In Britain these normally appeared as Giant Midget Books®. Tolkien could have seen these books in various bookstores. From these Tolkien might have gotten his idea that the Disney Studio was influencing American children’s book illustration, which was not true. Rather Disney animated stories and newspaper strips were the origins of the illustrations in some of these books which reprinted Disney material.

The books usually had pictures from their source material and text on alternate pages and sold for 10¢ in the US and Canada for about 300 pages, whereas in the U.S. The Hobbit sold for 495¢ ($4.95). Obviously most kids would be more open to almost 50 books about Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, the Lone Ranger, Dick Tracey, Flash Gordon, and other popular characters over one book about something called a hobbit which didn’t even have a newspaper strip and didn’t appear in film serials.

It is not surprising if Tolkien were predisposed to see Disney as trash. But the film Snow White surprised most of those who had poo-pooed it before its release by being an astounding success. By May 1939 Snow White’s total international gross of $6.5 million made it then the most successful sound film of all time. Disney had won. Sergei Eistenstein called it the greatest picture every made. Many today would at least admit that it is one of the greatest films.

C. S. Lewis made a fool of himself in his one comment on the film. What Tolkien thought about it is now known, other than he classed it a one of the tales in which Dwarfs appear as figures of fun, which was indeed Disney’s intention, so that’s OK. Although Disney was not sure that his scene of the Dwarfs’ weeping when they thought Snow White was dead would really work. Would audiences really feel grief for comic animated characters? The scene worked splendidly.

Like most film viewers, despite my misgivings about much Disney output, I very much like his Snow White. Therefore, I would like to see Tolkien liking it. But the animator Hayao Miyazaki is on record as not liking Disney’s Snow White, and I have more respect for Hayoa Miyazaki than for Disney.

Many American comic strips and many American animated cartoons modify faces so that human eyes instead of being wider than they are tall (like <•><•>), are taller than they are wide (that is two eyes look something like (•)(•) ). This ought to bother people, except that they are so used to it in a cartoon that they don’t notice it. For example, in Disney’s Snow White the more human characters like Snow White and the Witch have normal human eyes but the Dwarfs have turned eyes.

Perhaps that was what Lewis was on about when he wrote:

Dwarfs ought to be ugly, of course, but not in that way.

Perhaps he was not so used to the turned-eye convention that the look of the faces bothered him. They might have seemed to him to express overmuch an American sense of flat cartoonishness to his eyes.