Why did Tolkien dislike Disney?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Note the many items on the right-hand side of this blog, each of which lists still more Disney publications in Britain. Your belief in the rarity of Disney print publications in Britain of the 30s is only your own incorrect personal beliefs which are not born out by the facts.

I spend a lot of time in second hand bookshops browsing children's books and I have never encountered any Disney books older than the 50s/60s. Yes, they existed, but the facts borne out by my own hours spent looking through kids' books do not bear out that they were that common. Yet you can still find a lot of old Rupert annuals etc from the period.

Nothing posted by anyone but you even suggests that Tolkien ever bought any Disney books for Priscilla or anyone else. Why do you persist in this absurdity?

Relax. It's my opinion. Of course I have known a lot of older British people (and still have the privilege of having two parents who lived through the 30s) and they all saw hours and hours of Disney cartoons at the cinema. Cinema was cheap fun and a primary source of news broadcasts, and everyone went there. And yes, millions of people were too poor to afford books and food (this is not the place to put you right on that point), but a visit to the flea pit provided an escape from the sheer misery that was life in 1930s Britain. Disney cartoons were so popular, they would even be shown at the interval during local theatre and musical productions, and at church events. We already know Tolkien wasn't a hermit and he'd have had many chances to see these cartoons that were everywhere as they were so popular.

Sorry, but I will persist that Tolkien's most likely exposure to Disney was from cinema. It's based on experience and knowledge of culture here. These books clearly weren't that popular, as borne out by the lack of them in the thousands of hours I've spent in second hand bookshops (and you can buy all kinds of raggedy old comics and chewed books from the first half of the 20th c so unless they have all been squirelled away they can't be that common). However, cinema going was something everyone did - going to see a mixed bag programme that would maybe have a film, some news, a couple of cartoons etc.

There's also the 1930s British book shopping experience to take into account. Bookshops weren't shops conducive to casual browsing, in common with most shops in the UK until the 1950s stock was mostly kept out of reach of 'casual browsers' and you would normally need to ask to view items. Books were expensive and most borrowed them from the public library. Browsing in the modern sense would only have happened in more casual shopping environments like markets or Woolworths (in fact Penguin paperbacks were first sold here). Tolkien's wife was more likely to have come into contact with the cheaper end of publishing doing her Saturday shopping (not something men ever got involved with); an Oxford bookshop would have been extremely unlikely to have ever lowered itself to stock comics, kids' books and paperbacks and the like.

In 1937 the place Tolkien is most likely to have seen Disney in print would be in the newspaper. I have access to the British Newspaper Archive and have been looking what's held there. Hype for Snow White in 1937 was all over, and some titles carried Mickey Mouse strips (just found one now in a 1930 edition of the Hull Daily Mail after a quick search of the British National Newspapers archive). There's also an item about one of the books in a 1934 Gloucestershire Echo - priced at 2s 6d, a whole day's pay, which might explain rarity. It's also recommended as a special gift item for children (which shows that it was regarded as expensive) - and it's always possible the two younger Tolkien children were given suchlike as special Christmas or birthday gifts by other relations in the 30s.

In 1964 T refers to Disney's 'pictures', which in the UK would always have meant his films. 'Pictures' is what British people called films until recently.

Nowhere have I found suggested anywhere in this thread before now that it was about “the likelihood of where he encountered Disney”. What I see is you and you alone claiming that Tolkien could not have encountered Disney from books because there weren’t any Disney books in Britain, or hardly any. That just isn’t true. You were mistaken.

You first mentioned Disney books. I disagree with you that they were of much importance in shaping Tolkien's opinion of Disney. Hey Ho. It's not going to go anywhere from hereonin so I'd suggest leaving it there.