Why did Tolkien dislike Disney?

[TheLostPilgrim]

I've read that Tolkien intensely disliked the work of Walt Disney and Disney in general--how come?

[Inziladun]

I'm sure others can elucidate, but there are indications he didn't like Disney's style of animation, for one thing. When discussing proposed illustrations of a German edition of The Hobbit, he criticized them as being

....too 'Disnified' for my taste: Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of...

Letters # 107

He seems to think "Disnification' to be a debasement of his work. Oddly, in my opinion, Peter Jackson could be guilty of similar sins.

In Letters # 234 he said the story of the Pied Piper was a "terrible presage of the most vulgar elements in Disney".

Vulgar has many meanings, but the two I think most likely to be relevant are:

1. crude; coarse; unrefined: a vulgar peasant, and
2. current; popular; common: a vulgar success; vulgar beliefs.

So he seems to have thought Disney an embodiment of crudeness and the "modern" fairy-tale he had no time for.

[Galadriel55]

I have not read anything about it, so my thought are only my opinion on the matter and should not be treated as facts.

Firstly, I would think Tolkien wouldn't want to have his characters depicted like this.

While he has comedy in TH and LOTR, it is not purely comedy followed by more ridiculous comedy and some more mockery and comedy and a touch of adventure to give a Happily Ever After. His characters and his plot have depth to them beyond the Disney, they have complexity, they are not so purely clack-and-white (aha, if it's a princess, she's gonna be the good one and she likely has some evil stepmother and/or which that hates her... Instead, is Gollum good or bad? Does Radagast need redemption? Is Feanor good, evil, manic, or all three?)

Secondly, on a similar note, Tolkien's characters are different. Disney's are pretty much the same. If you see a princess cartoon, that princess will almost always have some set characteristics, and all shehas to do is change her dress and hair colour to turn from Cinderella into Sleeping Beauty. The prince is of course this gallant hero who saves everyone. These characters don't even have personalities, they just have appearances.

Tolkien's characters, on the other hand, have personalities. You can't say Beren and Turin have the same personality placed into different plots, because they are vastly different. You can't even say Merry and Pippin have the same personality, even though they are like brothers.

I would say that TH is the simplest work in the canon, and you don't really have that many differences between the Dwarves' personalities. That's because you don't need that many differences. They are a small crowd. Some stand out from the crowd - we get a lot of characterization of Thorin, and only slightly less of Balin. And the rest are not treated as major characters.


So I think Tolkien wouldn't want his characters to be fitted into a stereotypical frame and have the whole movie ridiculing them by making them do random funny things like tripping over and falling into things and what have you. Disney seems to sift out all the details and depth and leave only the "fun" layer. And... that's not something an author would want to happen to his story. And this idea fits in well with what Inzil quoted.

[Morthoron]

Because Tolkien counted, and there were actually eleventy-one Dalmatians. Tolkien was always a stickler for numbers.

[jallanite]

Tolkien’s first recorded mention of Disney is in May, 1937, a few months before Snow White hit the screens.

Disney was then very much in the media about the film, which most commentators expected to bomb. A cartoon that one was expected to spend 83 minutes watching! It sound like a joke at the time. Most of these commentators had not noticed Disney’s more realistic shorts particularly and many of these were also flawed. The animated film The Old Mill which previewed the new more realistic style had not come out yet. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYEmL0d0lZE . This film is still one of film’s all time landmarks. Yet today it seems rather show-offy and attempts to punch up its story with gags.

Tolkien probably knew Disney as the most well-known producer of animated shorts and his opinions at that time was the common opinion among intellectuals who did not pay much attention to animation. He would have seen cheap Mickey Mouse spin-off books in bookstores which hardly impressed anyone and are now all out of print.

I read somewhere that Tolkien and C. S. Lewis saw Snow White twice. Lewis’ thoughts on the film are given at http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2005/1...lt-disney.html . Lewis had mixed opinions, being very impressed by some of Snow White and disgusted by much of it. Lewis reveals his abysmal ignorance of music by his use of the word jazz, when there is not a jazz passage anywhere in the film.

Lewis’ final comment is posh snobbery:

What might have come of it if the man had been educated — or even brought up in a decent society.

Still, Lewis’ mention of vulgarity in Disney comes out in other, later commentators. The studio’s method of adapting their sources was to gag them up and add musical numbers. Even among those who love the Disney films, there is a strong tendency to see Snow White and Pinocchio as the best and the later films as somewhat or very much dumbed down and weakened compared to their sources.

Peter Jackson’s treatment of Gimli in his films is the kind of thing that many people don’t like in Disney. There is too much added humour. The forced cuteness of Thumper in Bambi is an example which undercuts the possible magnificence of much of the rest of the film. In Cinderella the story is padded out with cat-and-mouse cartoon silliness. Disney’s Jungle Book is a yet another example of that kind of watering down. Also, many of Disney’s best animators left him for opportunities to make their own mark.

But though Tolkien was not a common viewer of cinema, apparently he had seen or heard enough of Disney that he was willing to spend considerable time discussing the possibility of a Lord of the Rings animated film. At that time feature-length animation was almost owned by Disney, as it still is in North America, and people tended to think of animation as the stuff that Disney did. Disney was far bigger than any of his competitors.

Currently the animated films connected with Hayao Miyazaki are in my opinion and the opinions of many others much superior. But whether Myazaki’s Studio Ghibli could do The Hobbit is somewhat dubious. Their adaptation of western fantasy, Tales from Earthsea, supposedly based on Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea tales, was a popular and critical disaster, the only disaster produced by Studio Ghibli. They generally produce their own material or drastically adapt material that they buy from others.

For those unfamiliar with Miyazaki, I present what some have called the greatest sequence in film, the original Japanese version of a quiet musical number from Whisper of the Heart: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkk...ese_shortfilms . There is no Disney-style humour but lots of gentle humour of character if you look at the expressions on the faces of the two performers. The girl Shizuku is at first stiff, shy and embarrassed about performing but gains confidence. She has previously met the old shop-keeper and they have become instant friends, which explains his wink to her.

Here is a sample of Studio Ghibli output from a number of films: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcKVUkiorkA . I admit that only highlights presented like this make Miyazaki look somewhat garish. It is the quieter moments that make his films what they are.

There is little that would be called vulgarity and no dancing and singing salt shakers and no musical numbers, except the one I presented and one in My Neighbors the Yamadas.

I was a fan of Disney when a child, but have since turned away from most Disney output. Even as a child I could see that a lot of it offered cheap substitutes for better things. Carl Bark’s Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge tales were two of the exceptions. And there I was puzzled that outside of the comic books the studio seemed not to be interested in presenting what to me was the real Donald or Uncle Scrooge. When Disney Studios did adapt Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge stories for the television series Duck Tales, they naturally changed them for the worse and vulgarized them and watered them down.

I suspect Tolkien mostly ignored Disney output as common, vulgar, and silly stuff in which he had no interest.

I entirely agree with Galadriel55’s analysis.

[Mithalwen]

http://briansibleysblog.blogspot.co....max-results=10

No disrespect to the responses above but the drawings Brian Sibley gives on his blog may be all the answer we need!

[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.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

http://briansibleysblog.blogspot.co....max-results=10

No disrespect to the responses above but the drawings Brian Sibley gives on his blog may be all the answer we need!

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.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

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.

I think there is a profound difference between Disney's silly cartoons like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, which I could never stand (I'm a Warner Bros. fan all the way -- give me a war of words between Bugs and Daffy or Pepe LePew calling for his love, "Jullio, Jullio, herefore art me, Romiette!"), and Disney's animation from his studio's classic period.

I have purchased (ostensibly for my daughter, mind) the remastered additions of everything from Disney's classic period, and the results are a stunning artistic and technological achievement in animation. It is ridiculous to even compare such artistry to Japanese Anime, which is computer generated and every character looks like a Speed Racer clone. We are talking about artists creating thousands of hand-painted cells, not Pikachu, Dragonball Z or Ghibli drek.

Look at the artwork of Fantasia, Pinocchio or Bambi. The impressionist paintings of Tyrus Wong for the backgrounds in Bambi are breathtaking, and who has not felt a visceral shock when Bambi's mother is shot? Like Tolkien's Sauron in LotR, Disney did not physically reveal his villain, Man, but that makes the evil all the more abhorrent. Likewise, the attack of Monstro the whale and violent actions of the sea in Pinocchio are landmarks in animation. And finally, I still love to watch Mussorgky's "A Night on Bald Mountain" followed by "Ave Maria" in Fantasia. Of course, one can't go wrong with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.

I think a few folks here are not giving Disney much credit, and neither did C.S. Lewis, who had a lot of gall to denigrate Disney, what with his inane hodge-podge of mythological miscellany and overt allegory in his Narnia series. One could be just as disdainful of Lewis in that regard. Can anyone say stuffed shirt?

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Anyone who cannot appreciate Fantasia must have some kind of ideological blinders.

Fantasia is immune to the criticisms one can make of the later Disney

See http://www.brainpickings.org/index.p...-philip-glass/ for an account in which Igor Stravinksy strongly blames Disney for what Disney did to his Rite of Spring in Fantasia. Stravinsky called Disney’s transformation in that film an “unresisting imbecility.”

Again and again I have seen complaints of a work being untrue to the original. There are almost always those who support the original and those who support the adaptation and can’t understand what the fuss is about.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Tolkien's children will have had access to Rupert the Bear and DC Thomson titles such as The Beano and The Dandy, amongst others.

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.

[THE Ka]

This topic really caught me by surprise and is an interesting point.

I think another part of the difference is simply how Tolkien intended his work to be read and thought of and how Disney chose to narrate stories.

We are all rather familiar with how Tolkien wished his works to be thought and viewed of more as legend, as accounts of great deeds, trials, etc. that could be seen as happening in a far off age where specifics don't matter as much as messages and eternal themes do. Stories that survive for quite a long time specifically because what they tell and their core values.

Disney pulls a lot of its source material from fairy tales, most of its older works from Grim tales. Which, if anyone's read the original stories you know they are quite different from that of Disney's interpretation. I think what Tolkien might have seen from this is similar to what others have pointed out, the almost excess of humor at the sake of message until all of these tales meld into one.

Before anyone goes on a witch hunt saying that Tolkien does indeed have humor and songs in his work so he is only being a snob of comedy towards Disney, he doesn't do so at the sake of his tales' core themes. There is little difficulty for a child to read The Hobbit and both enjoy the humor and become enamored by the struggle of the characters, or the message.
If anything it's a balancing act of knowing that your work is for children, but like many very old traditional tales (in the way of legends) which usually you would tell a child because of the advice/message they carry.

Maybe looking at how Disney treated Grim's original works, Tolkien felt quite hesitant to hand over or entertain the idea of giving them access to his books.

... Which after seeing those sketches, I'd be saying a firm 'Heck no!' too.