The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life

8. Disney and American Culture

8 Disney ana American CUlture DESPITE HIS halfhearted protestations of artlessness, Walt Disney emerged as a major figure in American culture during the 1930S. Audiences flocked to his lively and popular short films early in the decade and then to the pathbreaking feature-length movies. Disney's films and their "stars" were breathlessly followed in fan magazines and Hollywood gossip columns, while his career and the activities of his studio were charted in popular publications such as Time and Ladies' Home Journal. Highbrow journals of opinion like the New Republic and Art Digest debated the political implications and artistic merits of his work. And the economic impact of his enterprise was undeniable, as waves of Disney merchandise flooded the American landscape. Throughout this period, Disney himself began to assume a multifaceted persona, while the image of his products, which combined mischievous fantasy, childlike innocence, emotional warmth, and human resilience, became the focal point of skillful promotional campaigns that sought to tie it to dreams of material abundance. Both the man and his enterprise emerged as reassuring symbols of the American way oflife. 144 I The Disney Golden Age 1. Consuming the Disney Image In the decade after Mickey Mouse's first big splash, Walt Disney appeared before the public eye as much more than an engaging filmmaker. Through a variety of means - articles that painted glowing pictures of the man and his work, press releases and marketing strategies from the studio itself, serious debates on the impact and meaning of his films - a larger-than-life image grew in both size and complexity. During these years, one of the most persistent versions depicted Disney as "the independent artist:' By the time of Three Little Pigs, journalists were routinely describing him as an artistic soul who sought not only public approval but "to satisfy himself and his own ideals as earnestly as any poet in a garret." Comparisons to Charlie Chaplin popped up repeatedly. Filmmaker and critic Pare Lorenz, writing in McCall's, painted a typical portrait of Disney's single-minded integrity. The filmmaker, he wrote, "lives, eats, and sleeps his work, and there is no board of directors to tell him how to make pictures, nor what the public wants, nor what stars to use. He is completely divorced from Hollywood in fact as well as fancy ... There is not a writer, a director, a musician, not an actor making movies in the country today who can claim half that independence."! Nor was Disney averse to polishing this reputation. In an interview in the late 1930S, he noted that with a little pushing his studio could turn out feature films more rapidly. "But what's the use?" he concluded. "The quality might suffer and it wouldn't be worth it."2 On December 27, 1937, Time put Disney on its cover and ran a lengthy article entitled "Mouse and Man." While the story dealt with a number of themes, it mainly concerned Disney as an artist. In particular, it used Rembrandt and his studio as a metaphor to explain the nature of Disney and his work. Like Rembrandt, Disney sought "guaranteed independence" for his endeavors and was interested in profit largely because it allowed him "to buy better materials to make better pictures:' This conception revealed Disney to be "an artist, simple of purpose, utterly unself-conscious, superlatively good at and satisfied in his work, a thoroughgoing professional, just gagging it up and letting the professors tell him what he's done:'3 Another dimension of the Disney image pictured him as a "visionary genius:' This figure was a man whose creative brilliance touched all who knew him, inspiring his staff to realize his artistic dreams while entrancing audiences with flights of imagination. He appeared as a fountain of freeflowing ideas, not only envisioning plots and personalities and humor but anticipating far-reaching trends in motion pictures like sound and color. Disney himself, in a 1941 interview with The New Yorker, described his role as that of "pollen man." According to the reporter, the studio chief dashed around like a bee carrying pollen, saying, 'Tve got to know whether an idea Disney and American Culture I 145 goes here,' dumping some pollen into the chair, 'or here,' hurrying to our side of the room and dumping the rest of the pollen on our knees." Such creative capacity and exuberance led to paeans like one in the New...