My feelings about Disney are more tied in to his status as an animator -- though I prefer the Fleischers and Tex Avery, etc. Animation has its own canon which on some level is relatively divorced from content (i.e., style of art, etc.). And looking at it from that perspective, Disney was a groundbreaker.

That said, I hope I never see WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE Disneyfied. Ugh.

Let's pretend that it's about 210 years ago when the Brothers Grimm (Jakob and Carl Wilhelm) started "improving" what they heard, first of all by writing down those stories. They claimed, I understand, that they were being faithful to the original stories, if not with verbatim transcriptions, then with the spirit of elements of a fairy tale. THEN they were translated into English!

Cut to: The 1990's. The Brothers Disney (Walt and Roy and honorary brother Michael Eisner) started "improving" on the many different versions they'd read, first of all by animating those stories. They claim, I understand, that they are being faithful to the original stories, if not with verbatim transcriptions, then with the spirit of elements of a fairy tale. THEN they added music!

My point is, like the famous Grimms, Disney merely created a new VERSION of a story and no more. Those who love the German oral traditions probably gagged at what the Grimms transcribed; those who loved what the Grimms wrote refused to acknowledge English translations as faithful; and those who trust the word as pure scoff at cinematic efforts as disrespectful, unreliable and wrong.

Let us respect what the Disney studios as one effort to tell a story oft-told, much like Stephen King tells the Dracula story (*Salem's Lot*) and "The Monkey's Paw" (*Pet Sematery*). It's just a version to the original tale that's not supposed to create aversion to the original tale.

My earlier comment about Bettelheim waiting for the Disney version of Sendak was meant to be purely humorous, if not snide. My apologies for your nightmares, daymares and webmares.

It is too simplistic to compare the commercial products of Disney to the meticulous research of the Brothers Grimm. When educated people defend such as the "Lion King" or Disney's "Winnie the Pooh" as "just fun" I assume the lack of selectivity results from hours spent in the passivity of TV watching rather than in more mentally fulfilling hours of reading. I would appreciate ideas about encouraging K-2 children to turn off the TV. Would like to promote the idea more effectively at my school.

Beth Wiley (response to Foster)

Jim Maroon writes:
"Wellll.... I wouldn't go so far as to call Disney films folklore. They are more like adaptations of folklore. As for being passed down, they are disqualified from folklore there, as well, since they are passed on verbatim to each new generation."

I can't agree with your view of folklore. I see it as something alive and changing. What was once oral tradition is now manifested in our media. I don't think you can have an adaption of folklore - the reality of these stories is their constant evolving, changing, adapting nature. We may not like Disney's Cinderella, but it seems to me to be as viable a form of folklore as any other. In fact, maybe more so since Disney is so much popular culture (and isn't folklore?) And as for verbatim transference - I think everyone takes in Disney in his or her own way depending on other exposure to the tales. But, that is my reader response stance to everything.

jfisher@tenet.edu (Mission/McAllen, TX) writes:
"It's just a version to the original tale that's not supposed to create aversion to the >original tale."

Actually, I suggest dropping the idea of "original tale." That is where the trouble starts - what is the original tale anyway? According to my research, the original Cinderella is Asian. So what? It sure doesn't matter when viewing the Disney version. Those that hate it do so because it simplifies, sanitizes, and makes overly cute the Perrault telling. Still, I totally agree with the idea about versions - that is what we are all doing with these tales, revising and retelling, from Perrault to the Grimms to Disney to Sendak (see "Dear Milli").

On Sat, 25 Feb 1995, Monica R. Edinger wrote:
"We may not like Disney's Cinderella, but it seems to me to be as viable a form of folklore as any other. In fact, maybe more so since Disney is so much popular culture (and isn't folklore?)"

This reminds me of the "Americanized" version of Goldilock and the Three Bears. In the "original" (sorry, Monica ;P) tale, Goldilock is an old lady and after she's found intruding someone else's house, she jumps out of the window and dies. But, I don't think too many people are bothered by this fact...not many people know of that version and I think very few (if any) are fond of that story. I think you're right about how we react to the Disney version of a folktale/fairy tale depends on how much we know about the traditionally "popular" version and how strongly we're attached to that version. I felt "betrayed" by Disney's _Beauty and the Beast_ because I believe the "lesson" of that tale is how Beauty sees through the Beast's appearance to his gentle heart which has always been there (I love the Beast...but more because I read McKinley's retelling, which of course differs a lot from the short fairytale.) In the Disney version, they make Beauty the changing power that turns the Beast into a nice guy. To me, the depth has lost and it becomes just another "love is powerful" type of romance. And those three blonds following Gaston remind me too much of Hollywood starlets. I just can't buy those characters.

(I didn't intend to ramble on such. Oh, well.)

I find myself torn in discussions of Disney. I don't like what has often happened in the Disneyfication of fairy tales--especially the way that gender roles tend to become more rigid and torturous than, say, the Grimms' made them (and I use "made" intentionally, if awkwardly, for the Grimms may have been meticulously careful about some aspects of recording, but they also meticulously changed some aspects as well). At the same time, like Monica Edinger, I realize that what Disney offers is simply another version of a folktale.

Yet a potent other version. I do want to interrogate my students' sense that the Disney version is the "right" one. And I suspect that it's important to distinguish between "popular" culture and mass culture, consumer culture. Between, say, children's "own" culture, or culture produced by children, and culture intended to profit from them. At the same time, it's valuable to acknowledge that the two cultural forms are no longer readily distinguishable--that children can use the products of consumer culture for their own ends.

Part of what I'm getting at, in a muddled way, is that I want to respect children's interests, desires, culture. I also want to be alert to the ways that my kneejerk dismissals are not just age based but class based as well, upper middle class. (My thinking here has been influenced by recent books by Ellen Seiter and Marsha Kinder, SOLD SEPARATELY and PLAYING WITH POWER, though neither deals with Disney per se.) I want to be respectful of children's reactions and concerns, not just tell them what's good for them.

I also want (like someone on the list--Jim Maroon?--sorry, erased the message) to recognize that animated features are a different genre, a different medium--with different strengths and capabilities. I may be tired of the trademark doe eyes of Disney's heroines, for instance, yet in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST I love the Busby-Berkeley "Be Our Guest" sequence. I'm not sure if it is suitably integrated with the story (is it?), and it's probably all too celebratory of the virtues of consumer culture, but it's a dazzling set piece. I'm also struck that the two best-known film versions--Disney's and Cocteau's--not only find the need to animate inanimate objects but include a rival suitor, one interestingly, dialectically, related to the Beast: it's probably one way for film to externalize internal conflict. And somewhere I read that the Disney writers consciously went back to Mme Le Prince de Beaumont's early version for some details, including Belle's bookishness.

And yet--and yet--my misgivings linger. I'm apprehensive, but also a little excited, that the next Disney animated feature, after POCAHONTAS, will be based on Fa Mu Lan, the Woman Warrior.

Or to turn away from Disney--and let my misgivings be multiplied by bafflement--how does one base a feature film on JUMANJI (90 minutes of what?)? Starring Robin Williams, no less (playing the hunter who uncomfortably, to say the least, sits on the chimney of the dollhouse?).