“With a smile and a song …”: Walt Disney and the Birth of the American Fairy Tale

Abstract

Following the premiere of Walt first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, dir. William Cottrell and David Hand), New York Times film critic Frank S. Nugent hailed the film as significant cinematically as D. W Griffith's Birth oj a Nation (One Touch of 5). Indeed, for a picture that was labeled Disney's folly because of the costs the studio had to defend, version of the fairy tale of the lost princess and seven little men became the highest grossing film of 1938, earning more than $5 million in the first year of its release (Nugent, This Disney Whirl 5). Disney was awarded a special Oscar for Snow White in 1938, a true testament to its high level of popularity and critical acclaim.Disney's connection to the fairy-tale world is now well established, with the studio receiving similar levels of acclaim for their productions of Cinderella (1950, dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske), The Little Mermaid (1989, dir. John Clements and Ron Musker), Beauty and the Beast (1991, dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise), and their latest installment, Tangled (2010, dir. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard), a loose retelling of the Grimms' version of Rapunzel. However, despite its many accolades, scholars have struggled with adaptation of classical fairy tales.Because of the seemingly innocent nature of Disney animation and its subsequent association with childhood through fairy tales and because of prominent position within the paradigm of popular culture, scholars have identified Disney films as somehow worthy of special treatment. In their analytical work From Mouse to Mermaid, Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells highlight the challenges faced by those wanting to engage in analysis of Disney films. They argue that legal institutions, film theorists, cultural critics and loyal audiences all guard the borders of Disney film as 'off limits' to critical enterprise (3). Steven Watts identifies this tension as a conflict between popularity and critical reception. He argues that Disney's enormous popularity has contributed to dismissal in critical circles. Commercial success has been viewed in inverse proportion to cultural significance (84). The problem with Disney seems to be the paradoxical underlying notion that populist sentiment cannot be viewed in unison with cultural importance. As such, many of the current works on Disney are deductive in nature, analyzing any Disney animated production in exclusive, not inclusive, terms.However, the tide seems to be turning in favor of constructive scholarship on Disney. Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan's recent analysis of the later animated productions of Disney introduces a new notion for animation scholars to consider. They argue, We must not just ask questions about Disney, we must ask questions about the questions we ask about (3). As our society changes sociologically, economically, and politically, the terms of critical engagement with these texts must also necessarily change.Douglas Brode was one of the first Disney scholars to examine Disney animation in a positive light and to take these terms of engagement into consideration. In his work From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture, Brode highlights an illuminating fact. The evolution of ideology in Disney animation in the 1930s and 1940s was crucial to the formation of a radicalized value system that played a key part in the youth revolution of the 1960s (Brode, Walt 6). The importance of Brode's scholarship lies in recognizing the underlying importance of the values transmitted through Disney animation and their far-reaching consequences. In his later work Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment Brode puts the live-action and animated films of Disney under analysis and argues how these features and shorts actually helped to foster tolerance of diversity in American society. …