1963 - The Sword in the Stone

Now it’s time for us to enter what I’m calling the Mourning Period. This was a time marked by the declining health and eventual death of Walt Disney. The movie we’re viewing today was produced and released while Walt was still alive, but shows many of the other signs of the era, including slashed budgets, cheaper animation, and overly cautious production. This is not to say that all the films of this era are bad. Two of them are quite good, and one is at least okay. Two of them, however, are not so great, and this is one of those. Depressed? So am I. So get yourself a leg of mutton and flagon of mead, and let’s talk about The Sword in the Stone.

Stop trying to make "fetch" happen!

1961 - One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Well, after the lengthy production and less-than-hoped-for returns of Sleeping Beauty, the company was starting to feel that feature animation was more trouble than it was worth. Fortunately, the form was saved by a weird little dude named Ubbe Eert Iwerks. Ub was a longtime animator at Disney. He had already done his bit for the company financially, through little tiny things like developing the live-action/animation hybrid technique and inventing Mickey Mouse.

"Oh, don't mind me, just saving your company again."

 But never satisfied with being an unrecognized legend, he went for it again, developing a new form of animation called xerography. See, the way they used to animate was the lead animators would make pencil drawings, and their staff would ink each frame onto an animation cel. Using a camera based on a Xerox machine, Ub figured out a way to transfer the pencil drawings directly to the cel, eliminating the costly, time-consuming, and labor-intensive inking process, and going straight to the colorists. Of course, it also eliminated the jobs of like 400 animators, but hey, omelets and eggs. So, armed with a fancy new tool, the rights to a good book, and fond memories of Lady and the Tramp, the team went to work. Feeling the inexorable march of progress as machines take our jobs? So am I. Wait, no I’m not. Well, regardless, get some Kibbles and Bits, unless you’re Bits-intolerant, in which case, the SoyBitz are okay, and you can hardly tell the difference. Let’s talk about One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

1959 - Sleeping Beauty

Well, as I said last time, Walt’s ambition was at a peak. He wanted to go back to traditional fairy tales, and he wanted to go BIG. This movie spent four years in development, involved more detailed character design and background painting than ever before, utilized a new stylized form of design, was filmed in the INSANELY wide Technirama format. It was nominally an adaptation of Perrault’s “La Belle et la Bois Dormant” (The Beauty Asleep in the Woods) but also with a healthy dose of the Grimms’ “Briar Rose”. The pre-release publicity was huge, on TV and in print. Biggest of all, the newly-built Disney Land made the Sleeping Beauty castle its centerpiece, complete with mosaics depicting scenes from the film that was still TWO YEARS off. So was it a success? Well… That’s a big question. Inquiry to your emotive state? Assertion of agreement. Suggestion of food and let’s talk about Sleeping Beauty.

1955 - Lady and the Tramp

So Peter Pan was a massive success. I don’t begrudge it this, since it was the 1950s, and we were still in a state of dizzy, post-war stupidity. And besides, I’m glad for that, since once Walt gets some cash in his pocket, he starts taking risks. And this movie was a big one. It’s such a classic today, and there have been several movies along the same lines, so it’s a bit weird to think how unusual it was that there was a movie so completely about dogs. This film was also Disney’s first ever completely original story. It had its genesis in the short story “Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog”, which they had tried vaguely to make into a short. When a friend of Walt’s got a spaniel puppy, he decided that a hobo mutt and a pampered pedigree meeting would make suitable material for a feature, and said “HEY YOU GUYS WE’RE MAKING A DOG MOVIE NOW OKAY?” (Yes, he talked like that. Little known fact.) Feeling a bit mangy? You should see a vet. But before that, get some Alpo and a fresh bowl of water, and let’s talk about Lady and the Tramp.

Seven classes of portrayals of minority characters

So I've been horribly sick for the past two weeks, and when I haven't been sick, I've been working, so I'm a bit behind on - well, everything. But as I've been working my way through the Lady and the Tramp review, I've been considering why the stereotypes in that movie (and there are a LOT) barely offend me at all, while the Indians in Peter Pan threw off the whole balance of what was already a very tepid movie. In the end, I developed seven classes of minority portrayals, which I've illustrated here (just click if it's too small to read):

Now, I just want to be clear, this isn't a scale where 1 is worst and 7 is ideal. (1 is definitely worst, though) It's just seven classes that these characters can be placed into, in an attempt to explain my reactions to them, and the reactions people in general have.

Any of these classes can be used poorly, and any of them can be used well. Even 1 has its place in storytelling. For example, Chin-Kee from American Born Chinese is an undeniably racist collection of Chinese stereotypes, but is used to confront the reader with the existence and source of these stereotypes, as well as the fact that there is no functional difference between "good" and "bad" stereotypes. Type 2 is more often than not EXTREMELY problematic, but it can also give characters like Scrooge McDuck, who I would unhesitatingly place as one of my favorite characters in all of fiction. Type 7 may seem like an ideal of color-blindness, but can just as easily lead to tokenism and the negation of real racial experiences. Type 4 may seem like lazy writing, but it's just as often a function of plot economy.

What I'm saying is that the classes aren't at all useful for determining what's offensive or not, which is the whole reason I came up with them in the first place. Dangit. Oh, and for those of you who don't speak Disney, I've translated into Star Trek.

Two notes: 1) That's English stereotypes on Bashir, not Arab ones. 2) I love O'Brien, we all do, but come on, the first time we see him in his downtime, he's complaining that his wife doesn't cook him enough potatoes.

1953 - Peter Pan

Okay, so Alice didn’t exactly burn up the box office, and I get that Walt was probably feeling a bit blue, but did he have to lash out at us like this? What we have here for our 14th entry is, make no mistake, a bad movie. It’s a well-animated movie and a fondly-remembered movie, but it’s bad. I went in not expecting badness. I even took steps to ensure that I would be viewing it as objectively as possible, by watching with my friend Justin, who is far less judgmental of movies than I am. Didn’t work for either of us. But since I try to avoid being overly negative, I think the best way to balance this is to talk about a good thing for every bad thing I mention, and then pass judgment. Sound fair? Good. So get yourself some invisible food that only turns real when you throw it at Dante Basco (this can be ordered from most gourmet specialty shops in Los Angeles), and let’s talk about Peter Pan.

1951 - Alice in Wonderland

So after the bonkers success of Cinderella, it was time for Walt to return to his two favorite pastimes: Fulfilling his lifelong goals and making unprofitable movies. See, Walt had always loved the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll. His early work in Hollywood included a series of silent live action-animation hybrids dubbed “The Alice Comedies”, which took inspiration from the books. In the mid-30s, he had intended to produce a full-length Technicolor version of those, going so far as to do screen tests with Mary Pickford as Alice. So why did they settle on Snow White instead? Why did he spend 12 years developing Alice before it finally saw release? Well, the books are essentially unfilmable. They’re meandering, mostly plotless, unashamedly weird works based on logic puzzles and literary wordplay, and the main character has absolutely no arc or dramatic through line. But ol’ Uncle Walter was convinced he could make it work. Wary? So am I. So eat and drink anything that suggests that you do, and let’s talk about Alice in Wonderland.