“I hope we don’t forget that it all started with a mouse,” Walt Disney is said to have said. But how do Mickey, Donald and Co. manage to captivate everyone?
Whether it’s the tears when Bambi’s mother died, the big laughs over Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck or the first favorite song you sang with the Frozen: Almost everyone who grew up with films and television has a formative memory associated with Disney. The Walt Disney Company is celebrating its 100th anniversary on Monday (October 16) and with it the many big and small moments in its history. But there is also criticism of the company.
The beginnings under Walt Disney
When he was just in his early 20s, Mickey Mouse inventor Walt Disney founded the Disney Brother Cartoon Studio with his brother Roy in 1923. The foundation stone has been laid for one of the largest corporations in the world. The first successes don’t take long to arrive. As early as 1928, Disney celebrated a world premiere with the first fully synchronized animated film “Steamboat Willie”. There for the first time: Mickey Mouse.
“Disney did a lot of things right really early on,” says Maike Reinerth. She is a media scientist with a focus on animation studies and media, politics and society, among other things. An example is the first full-length animated film “Snow White” (1937), in which, based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the princess takes the seven dwarves to her heart while singing. “It was a great success, especially at the beginning of the sound film era.”
Disney is also trying out a lot of technology at the beginning. For example, the special color film three-color Technicolor, which gives the three little pigs their pink cheeks in the 1933 short film of the same name. Or the spatially intensifying multiplan camera, which makes Pinocchio’s nose appear much longer in 1940. “On the other hand, Disney tried very early on to appeal to an age-diverse audience – this has actually been the case ever since,” Reinerth told the German Press Agency.
Films for everyone?
Especially in the 1950s, Disney discovered not only young viewers but also female audiences. Reinerth is not surprised that the romantic plot in “Cinderella” (1950), for example, was aimed not only at the children but also at the mothers.
At the time, the film was an international box office hit. From today’s perspective, he shows a typical characterization of the early Disney princesses, which represents “a close combination of rather over-idealized ideas of beauty plus more passive, female characters,” as Reinerth describes. The image of women there, which used to inspire enthusiasm, is now more likely to be criticized. “Fascination and criticism are very close together.”
But Disney doesn’t just use insensitive clichés when portraying women. Whether through racist-stereotypical Siamese cats in “Lady and the Tramp” (1955) or the rather negative portrayal of sexual minorities as villains, such as the sea witch Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” (1989), whose look on the US American drag queen Divine.
“When it comes to the question of diversity or social progress, Disney has always followed the mainstream rather than testing boundaries and daring to try new things, which is very possible in the field of animation,” says Reinerth. Disney was based on what was the social and cultural norm. Nevertheless, there has been a development towards greater sensitivity over the hundred years, even if the narrative is still mostly done through a Western and sometimes exoticizing lens.
Animation trendsetter
Despite Walt Disney’s early death in 1966, the company managed to retain its trademark: animation. “The films are actually very well animated,” said the expert. “Many of the techniques and processes that were developed at Disney very early on are still standard or at least formative today.”
The basic principles of animation, which are now considered standard techniques, go back to two of the original illustrators, says Reinerth. “What has characterized the Disney films from the beginning: that there is extremely realistic movement animation that makes the movements believable and the characters appear plausible, even if they are fantasy creatures.”
For example, the drawing style gives the audience a feeling for how heavy the elephants in “Dumbo” (1941) are when they all fall on top of each other in the circus. Due to the great openness to technology, decades-old films such as “Alice in Wonderland” (1951) with its psychedelic fantasy world and the Cheshire Cat still seem modern even today.
The Disney company owes its 140 Oscar awards not only to its animated films, but also to live-action films such as “Mary Poppins” (1964). The superheroes from Marvel, Captain Jack Sparrow from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films and little Yoda from the “Star Wars” series have long been part of the Disney family, which is intended to reach an ever wider audience.
Disney at your fingertips
The company also connected the real world with the fantasy world very early on. As early as 1955, in the first Disneyland in Anaheim (US state of California), what had previously only existed on the screen became tangible. Today there are six theme parks in North America, Europe and Asia. The New York Times once wrote that the sun never sets on the Disney universe.
The charm always includes a fair bit of nostalgia. “You want to give your children the opportunity to experience this as part of their childhood,” says Reinerth. Young people today are more likely to remember Elsa and her sister Anna with snowman Olaf from “Frozen” (2013) than Timon and Pumbaa, who support Simba in “The Lion King” (1994). Whatever the case: the fascination remains with young and old.