The Disney Stories Debate

More on Disney's Tales

As you can see below, Heather Burtch’s article on Disney’s versions of classic tales has stirred some passionate response:

From Sam Cannarozzi:
My first three gut reactions in regards to disney (small "d"is intentional) were 1/ Are you nuts? 2/ Are you ~%$$/~!% crazy? and 3/ Are you out of your mind? Then I slept on that and came up with...the same conclusions. If one could somehow disconnect the story that disney purports to tell from the graphics and cut off the sound, then I think you could make some kind of appreciation. But it is abundantly clear that there is one and only one primordial quest for disney—$. There is no morality, no ethics, no research, just get out there and sell it. I sometimes wonder about a project between NSA and disney. I don’t know how I could handle that. I have the feeling that if art ever challenged $ in the 5O’s then good old Walt would have black–balled that as communism, too, as he did to people. Three examples support my humble opinion.

First, I read a fantasy magazine once in which a woman writer ask this same question (I sent this article to Storytelling Magazine but I don’t think they ever did anything with it). She concluded, NO, disney does not have the right to totally manipulate traditional tales as it does. I regret I didn’t keep the article or the woman’s name.
The other two examples are from articles in the International Herald Tribune. For Pocahontas, disney was consulting some Native Peoples whose history it is, but disney became frustrated because they were opposed. Disney shot back, "But it’s only a story!" "That is just the point,it is our story," answered an Amerindian woman. In the article on The Hunchback of Notre Dame the reporter couldn’t figure out for the damned of him how disney could get the story, plot etc. so wrong. Then he realized, disney didn’t make a mistake, they just changed whatever they wanted to. Nothing to understand. I further ask, if disney is so creative, then why do they have to massacre a traditional story. Let them stick to Tron (not that that was a topnotch movie, effects and the rest). Just get off the story turf. Sayin, "Hey, yeah, there are some things to admire in disney," is like sayin, "well, everyone has something good to say; just look at Hitler."Am I in the extreme? I don’t think so. Hope I have been clear, but as you can see, this for me is quite an emotional topic.

Heather Burtch responds:
My first gut reaction in regards to your letter was—did you read my article?

First of all, I made it clear that I was not commenting on movies like Pocahontas or The Hunchback. I, too, was disturbed by their telling of a Pocahontas story that had almost no basis in fact. I did feel there was some sensitivity in portraying the clash between Native Americans and Europeans and the misunderstandings involved. There was also an attempt to show something about Native American spirituality. But it shouldn’t have been called "Pocahontas."

Perhaps the same is true about The Hunchback,. I saw a clip recently following The Jungle Book movie which revealed that Disney had no desire to recreate Kipling’s stories but had his own vision. In my opinion, he should not have used "The Jungle Book" name then.

But I was not writing about these issues the article. I was referring to traditional stories. I was interested in creating a dialouge about this topic and the issue it raises. What, specifically, did you disagree with about my analysis? In what ways does Disney "totally manipulate traditional tales" that is different from what other storytellers do, or that takes away from the core message of the story? In another issue of Works in Progress, you discussed frame stories and how you substitute stories you like for for the ones that originally fit into these ancient frames. You mentioned using a story from one culture and fitting stories from other cultures into its frame. Why is it OK for you to make certain kinds of changes and not for Disney?

I’m not trying to be flip. I would really like to learn from this discussion. And I’m not trying to defend Disney—their treatments of fairy tales are certainly not my favorite. But I go back to my original question—is it better to hear Disney’s fairy tales or none at all?

From Alan Irvine:
I find that I generally agree with Heather Burtch’s assessment of Disney’s fairytales. Yes, Disney does change the stories in adapting them to film, but that is essential. They are taking stories from an oral medium, where they generally run from 10–20 minutes in length, to a visual medium where they run 75–90 minutes in length. Any story will change as it is adapted from one medium to another, the essential question is, as Heather said, how well is the central core of the story maintained? Heather dealt with this one in her article, and I find her arguments that in most cases the central story has been maintained convincingly. I think a second question that can be asked is how well did they adapt the story to the new medium? Here, too, I think Disney does very well. An example is Aladdin. As Heather mentioned, the original is a very rich story. It is not, however, a story with a lot of visual action. Indeed, it is barely a story. Aladdin simple goes through life encountering marvel after marvel, moving from wonder to wonder, acquiring greater and greater treasure. What plot there is exists only as a means of moving from one set of riches to the next. The descriptions are vivid, wonderful in their evocative detail, but simply showing picture after picture of Aladdin’s treasures is not much of a movie. (Aladdin: the Slide Show maybe?) The rich descriptions work well in the spoken medium (I love to perform this story for just that reason,) but a movie needs something more active. When I first read the story and began to work it up for performing, I could not help but admire Disney’s adaptation. I probably would have made the similar choices in their place.

Heather does complain about Disney’s penchanct for adding "a pair of characters basically unrelated to the plot for us to laugh at, dislike, and watch as they reveal their stupidity." Yet Disney is hardly unique in this. The buffoonish fools have been a mainstay of comedy for centuries. Virtually every one of Shakespeare’s comedies, for example, contains such characters, who exist for the very same reasons. Dogberry, the clownishly inept constable of Much Ado About Nothing, is one of the more famous.

If Disney is guilty of simplifying and "Americanizing" these classic tales, once again, they are hardly alone. Andrew Lang, the great compiler of folktales and fairytales, forthrightly admitted that in translating Aladdin into English, he took the liberty of removing the parts unsuitable for his audience. Upon reading his version of the tale, it is obvious that "unsuitable" meant everything not English, for he basically stripped away everything Arabian or Islamic, reducing the tale to a generic English folktale.

But if I generally agree with Heather about the quality of the individual tales, I must admit to sympathy with Sam Cannarozzi on the larger question of Disney. When Disney deliberately reschedules the release of its latest film to coincide with the release of another studio’s animated film in order to steal the rival’s audience, when Disney tries to co-opt American history and re-write it in its own image, when Disney repeatedly swallows up other creative companies and outlets, then I do get worried. A few years ago, Disney started negotiations to buy Henson Associates, Jim Henson’s studio. When the deal fell through, a lot of people were disappointed that these two creative forces would not be joining up, combining their talents. I was glad the merger never took place. Why should Disney own all the creative talent in the world? Shouldn’t there be other, different visions out there as well?

From Robert Rodriguez:
Viola, the latest issue of WIP., just great, three cheers. I especially loved Heather’s piece on Disney films and fairytales. That’s what we need in future issues, lots of inteliigent and thought-provoking pieces...

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