Was it wrong for Disney to censor Fantasia to remove the character Sunflower?

This post is an expanded version of something I wrote on Quora.

One of the most controversial aspects of Disney’s Fantasia is the censorship of the character Sunflower from the Pastoral Symphony segment of the film.

Sunflower is a centaurette (female centaur) who is depicted as being a hybrid of a young black girl and a donkey.  She is shown performing duties as a servant to the other centaurettes who are depicted in a wide variety of pastel colors.

Beginning in the 1960s, Sunflower was deemed a racist and negative depiction of black people, and her scenes in the film were deleted.  Beginning in 1990, the scenes were restored, but the shots she was in were cropped (zoomed in) so that she could not be seen, except for one that was.  For the 2010 DVD and Blu-ray release, Some scenes had Sunflower digitally erased, and others were cropped to a smaller extent than in earlier releases, all to reduce graininess.

There is much debate over whether she should’ve been removed from the film.  There are those who say that she should be censored in order to move away from the attitude of depicting black people as negative stereotypes.  Others say that she shouldn’t be censored because such portrayals were very common in animated films of the time, and that removing them is the same as saying that they never existed in the first place.  Some believe that there should be a middle ground; in other words, for example, the late film critic Roger Ebert felt, “While the original film should, of course, be preserved for historical purposes, there is no need for the general release version to perpetrate racist stereotypes in a film designed primarily for children.”

Also of note: There are other black characters in the segment.  There are two identical unnamed centaurettes who are part young black women and part zebra and another young black girl donkey centaurette named Otika who in the original rolls out a red carpet; in all versions currently available, Otika is digitally removed so that the red carpet appears to unroll by itself, and the zebra centaurettes have never been altered or removed from the film.

Sunflower

Otika

Sunflower’s scenes can be viewed here and here.

Goopy Geer: Warner Bros. Very Own Goofy

Warner Bros. was having some bad luck in creating a starring character for the Merrie Melodies series. The first two, Foxy and Piggy both were short-lived characters, appearing in only three and two short films, respectively.

For a while, the Merrie Melodies consisted of one-shot characters, that is to say, characters that were created for one cartoon, and never used again.  These cartoons were: Red-Headed Baby; Pagan Moon; Freddy the Freshman; and Crosby, Columbo and Vallee.  A month after the latter-most cartoon, there was a short featuring a new starring character; it was called Goopy Geer.

 

This short was about a tall, lanky humanoid dog, named Goopy Geer, who first played the piano, and who was very dedicated to it.  Goopy looks similar to the Disney character Goofy, who debuted shortly after in the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey’s Revue,  and whose original name was Dippy Dawg; because Goopy and Goofy debuted in the same year (1932), it is thought that the similarities between the two are coincidental, and that neither was a rip-off of the other.  Promotional drawings depicted him as a black dog, but in all of his cartoon appearances, Goopy was white.  Interestingly, his un-named girlfriend, a short dog, previously debuted in Freddy the Freshman.

A month later, the short, It’s Got Me Again! was released; it was a one shot, and it featured mice who were never seen again.  After that, Goopy appeared again in a short subject called Moonlight for Two.  It seemed that Warner Bros. had a star character for the Merrie Melodies; however, Goopy made only one more appearance in The Queen Was in the Parlor, and he was dropped.  He later made a brief cameo in the Bosko Looney Tunes short, Bosko in Dutch.

Following that, the Merrie Melodies series focused on one-shot characters until the late 1930s.

Goopy made one last screen appearance, around sixty years later, when he appeared in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, “Two-Tone Town”.  He is redesigned as a black dog, in line with how he appeared in original promotional drawings.

 

Piggy: The Pig Warner Bros. Had Before Porky Pig, or, Mickey Mouse in Pig Form

After Foxy, the previous starring character of the Merrie Melodies was dropped, a replacement debuted just a month after Foxy’s last appearance in a theatrical cartoon short subject.  He was Piggy.  Piggy debuted in a short called You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’!, where he played the saxophone in a night club.

Piggy looked a lot like Mickey Mouse, only as a pig.  He still looked less like Mickey mouse than Foxy did, but even then it is likely that there was no intention to copy Mickey Mouse because because Mickey, Piggy, and Foxy were based on sketches of mice that Hugh Harman drew in 1925, while Harman was working for Disney.

Piggy appeared in one additional short in the series called Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land, which was later banned from TV and home media, due to containing portrayals of black people that are now considered offensive; it was one of eleven shorts that are called the Censored Eleven, and I will discuss them in a future post.  Then he was discontinued.

Friz Freleng revived the character in 1936 under a brand new design.

Piggy appeared in two cartoons, At Your Service Madame and Pigs Is Pigs; the first depicted him as the part of a family, and the latter featured him the main protagonist; both portrayed him as a glutton as is defining character trait.

Piggy did not appear in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, “Two-Tone Town”.

 

 

 

Foxy: Warner Bros.’ Very Own Mickey Mouse

When Warner Bros. created the Merrie Melodies series, they needed a character to be the star.

Rudolf Ising assumed supervision of the new series, while Hugh Harman began directing Looney Tunes shorts as a solo director.  Ising created Foxy, who looked very familiar.

As you can see, Foxy looked almost like Mickey Mouse.  The biggest differences are the ears and the tail.

It may appear that Foxy was a rip-off of Mickey Mouse, but that is not true.  In 1925, Hugh Harman, who was working for Walt Disney at the time, along with Ising drew some mice.  These mice were later used by Disney and Ub Iwerks to create Mickey Mouse.  Harman figured that since he made the original drawings, it was perfectly acceptable for him and Ising to create a character based upon them.  And so, Foxy was born.

Foxy debuted in 1931 in the short, Lady Play Your Mandolin.  He would appear in two more shorts, Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! and One More Time, before being retired; in fact, he was killed off in his last short.

Foxy would be brought back to life in 1990s in the show Tiny Toons Adventures, where he and his previously unnamed girlfriend, who is now called Roxy, are,  along with another largely forgotten early Warner Bros. cartoon character, Goopy Geer (whom I will talk about in a future post) live in the black-and-white part of Acme Acres.  They have been long forgotten over many decades, and so, Babs Bunny and Buster Bunny decide to give them another taste of the spotlight.

Foxy has lived on in home media releases and even on television.  In 2000, Cartoon Network aired a special hour-long episode of their documentary series ToonHeads called The Lost Cartoons, which featured pieces of Warner Bros. animation that either had been rarely seen, if at all, since their original releases, or had never been seen by the public at all.  This special featured Lady, Play Your Mandolin! and it was later released on the first volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection.

 

 

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: Disney’s First Cartoon Star

Before there was Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney had a rabbit.

Previously, Walt Disney made a series of live-action/animation hybrid short films called the Alice Comedies.  They focused on a young real-world girl who ventured into the cartoon world where she had lots of adventures.  However, after three years, the series was discontinued due to money constraints.

There was a need for a new series of cartoons.  Disney’s distributor, Charles Mintz, told Disney about how the studio Universal, wanted to release cartoons.  A deal was made with Universal, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was created.

The first cartoon in the series, Poor Papa, depicted Oswald as being old and tired.  The bosses at Universal did not like the short and the portrayal of Oswald, and therefore, Disney made a new one, Trolley Troubles, where Oswald was depicted as being much more young, spirited, and energetic.  This cartoon was released in 1927, whereas Poor Papa did not see the light of day until 1928.

Oswald became very popular, and he was even the first character created by Disney to be made into merchandise.

However, things would not be this way forever.

When time came to negotiate a new contract with Charles Mintz, Disney asked for a 20% budget increase in order to improve the quality of animation of his shorts.  Mintz not only rejected his request, he said that Disney would have to accept a 20% budget decrease; the reason was financial constraints, but Mintz promised more money if things turned around.  Then it got worse.  Mintz revealed that he was already hiring away Disney’s staff as part of a new commitment.  Since Walt Disney did not own the rights to Oswald, he had no choices other than to accept Mintz’s terms or to walk away.

Disney finished his contract, and he left, accompanied by only a small number of his former staff including, most importantly, Ub Iwerks.  Disney vowed to make sure that he works for nobody other than himself, and he also made sure that he owned the rights to whatever characters he created so that no matter what, nobody could stop him from making cartoons with those characters.  Disney and Iwerks created Mickey Mouse, and the rest is history.

Meanwhile, Mintz oversaw the production of more Oswald cartoons.  Some of his staff included other men who were instrumental in the history of animation including Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and Friz Freleng.

Then things went south.

After Mickey Mouse appeared in the first cartoon with synchronized sound, Steamboat Willie, which of course was a huge success, Universal was angry that he had allowed Disney to walk away.

Mintz attempted to get Disney to come back.  But Disney refused to accept his terms.  The terms were hardly any better than the previous terms that he previously offered Disney.  The terms would be that Universal would own Mickey Mouse, Disney would get a small increase in pay, and a lack of control over his staff.  Disney said no.  Oswald cartoons eventually moved to sound, but that   Universal later fired Mintz and his studio in 1929, and they hired Walter Lantz to make more cartoons with Oswald.  Mintz would find a new home making cartoons for Columbia Pictures

Lantz changed the course of Oswald, making his shorts more and more driven by fantasy.  Eventually, as Disney created his signature style of being very cute, Lantz tried to emulate it, but Oswald gradually lost his popularity, being phased out in 1938.

Oswald was revived in 1943, in a short film called The Egg-Cracker Suite, but this attempt was a failure because Oswald was depicted as being very cute, when by that time, most audiences favored abrasive, assertive cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Universal’s own Woody Woodpecker, among others. This was his last appearance in a theatrical cartoon, except for a cameo in a 1952 Woody Woodpecker cartoon.

Fast-forward to 2006.  The Walt Disney Company negotiated with NBCUniversal for the rights to Oswald.  By trading sportscaster Al Michaels to NBCUniversal, Disney got in exchange, the rights to the Oswald character and the surviving Disney Oswald cartoons.

The cartoons were released in December of 2006 under the Walt Disney Treasures collection (Only 13 shorts were known to exist at the time, but two more were discovered since then).  Oswald began appearing in videos games, Disney theme parks, and even in short films (2013’s Get a Horse).  This is a happy ending for a Disney’s very first cartoon star.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_the_Lucky_Rabbit

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/OswaldTheLuckyRabbit?from=Main.OswaldTheLuckyRabbit

 

 

 

 

 

Qualitative Content Analysis of Disney Princesses

I originally wrote this for my Communication Research class, this past semester.

Content Analysis of Disney Princesses

Ellis Sutton

Abstract

The purpose of this content analysis is to analyze the Disney Princess characters based on how well they are as media depictions of women.  In other words, the characters will be analyzed based on how they fit in or do not fit into to traditional gender roles; how they subvert and/or maintain traditionally female expectation; and how feminist they are portrayed.

Content Analysis of Disney Princesses

The Disney Princesses are among the most well known animated characters of all time.  Many girls have looked up to them.  They can be seen everywhere from, of course, the movies, and various forms of merchandise such as clothing, Halloween costumes, dolls, candy, and anything that one could possibly think of.  It’s clear that these characters are a gold mine for The Walt Disney Company.  However, not everyone is keen on the Disney Princesses.  Countless individuals have criticized the franchise, accusing Disney of doing things such as stereotyping girls, telling girls that being princesses is the only thing that they can do and/or should strive for, and of the movies themselves, being negative and anti-feminist portrayals of women that serve to reinforce patriarchal and traditional expectations of women.

This content analysis will analyze six of the  official Disney Princesses: Snow White from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Cinderella from Cinderella; Aurora from Sleeping Beauty; Ariel from The Little Mermaid; Belle from Beauty and the Beast; and Jasmine from Aladdin.  I will analyze them based on what their goals are (that is to say, whether they have goals that conform to traditional expectations of women and girls or not); and how assertive they are (in other words, the question of whether or not they stand up for themselves when they are able to, and if they take the initiative to reach their own goals, or if they do nothing while others simply do stuff for them).  In addition, I will quantify the number of times that they engage in assertive declarations and actions; I will define assertive declarations and actions as any instance where the Disney Princesses, through words and/or actions, stands up for one’s self and/or others.

The purpose of mentioning the goals of the Disney Princesses is to address a common criticism of the franchise.  Several of the characters have been accused of having goals and dreams that are nothing more than wanting a man to be with.  Such critics charge that the movies send the message that the only thing a woman should aspire to is to find her one true love.  In this paper, I will examine whether the Disney Princesses only care about romance, or if they care about more than simply romance.

To begin with, I will start with the very first Disney Princess: Snow White from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  Personality wise, Snow White is portrayed, above all, as a kind and sweet-hearted individual.

At the beginning of the film, she is cleaning the outside steps of the castle, while wearing rags, as her evil stepmother, the Queen, has forced her to do as a result of the Queen’s jealousy of Snow White’s beauty.

I have counted only one assertive declaration and/or action that Snow White engages in.  The only assertive thing she does is running away when the Hunstman informs her that the Queen wants her dead.  The rest of the film, Snow White expresses her dreams, wishes, and hopes, which seem to be nothing more than her true love one day finding her, and carrying her off into the distance where they will be happy together for the rest of their lives.

Next is the title character of Cinderella.  I have counted three assertive declarations and actions that she engages in.  Cinderella is a multi-faceted young woman.  She is a gentle and kind person, as exemplified by the fact that she has befriended several of the birds and mice who live in the large chateau she lives in; mice are often viewed as pests, but since she is treated horribly by her step-family, she can clearly empathize with people and even animals who would likely be mistreated as well.

Moving on, Cinderella is a strong and assertive woman and human being, but only as much as she can be.  Even though her family abuses her and treats her as servant, Cinderella remains optimistic, and does not allow the abuse she has suffered to make her into a bad person.  She almost always maintains a positive attitude.  At times, Cinderella does get frustrated; she complains about the sound of the morning bell of the clock of the palace, and at one point she says, “Oh now what do they want?” when her stepsisters yell to her to do some sort of task for them.

Cinderella is assertive, as said previously, only to the extent that she can be.  When the palace sends out a decree that “every eligible maiden” (which I assume means, any young woman who is of marriageable age, and who is not already married or engaged to be married) is to attend a ball in honor of the Prince, to help him find a woman to marry, Cinderella points out that she can go as well.  Her stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella, mock such a notion, that the Prince would be interested in a girl who is a servant.  Cinderella, however, stands up for herself, stating that regardless of how they treat her, she is still a member of the family, and the royal decree never said that servant girls are not to be counted as “every eligible maiden.”  Her stepmother, Lady Tremaine, concedes that Cinderella is right, and gives Cinderella permission to go to the ball, but only on the conditions that Cinderella finishes all of her chores and finds a dress that is proper to wear to a ball.

I would like to expand upon how Cinderella’s assertiveness only goes so far.  While, Cinderella does defend her right to go to the ball, she does little else other than saving the mice around the chateau.  Part of this has to do with the time period the movie is set in.  A woman in those times likely would not have had many options for an independent life.  One might say that Cinderella could run away, but then she would likely be homeless, or be forced to take a job as servant for another family, who might very well abuse her as well.  Not to mention, if she ran away, her stepmother could potentially badmouth her to people who might otherwise be interested in considering her for employment.

With regard to goals, Cinderella does not seem to live the principle of “The only thing a woman should want is a man.”  What she really wants is freedom.  Cinderella longs to be happy, and to be cherished and valued by somebody.  Ultimately, of course, it is marriage that provides Cinderella with her ticket to the life she wants.

Despite her successful attempts at being assertive and standing up for herself to her step-family, there are still many other times where she is powerless.

Next is Aurora from Sleeping Beauty.  It’s rather hard to analyze her, from a general standpoint, or from a feminist standpoint, because Aurora is very undeveloped as a character.  In total I have counted zero assertive declarations and actions.  She is depicted as being kind and beautiful, but that’s all that she is.  She is a romantic at heart, and she is a big believer in how dreams are destined to come true.  However, Aurora never does anything to make her dreams come true; she is passive rather than assertive.  While picking berries in the forest, she tells her animal friends that she has met her true love multiple times in her dreams, but is convinced that she will meet him in real life because as she says, “If you dream a thing more than once, it’s sure to come true, and I’ve seen him so many times.”  Moments later, Aurora does in fact the meet her dream lover, Prince Philip.  They embrace each other, but when Aurora realizes that she must return home, she runs away, but invites Philip to her birthday celebration .  When the three Good Fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather (who have raised her under the name of Briar Rose, and told her that they are her aunts),  tell her that she is a princess and is betrothed to be married to  Prince Philip (she is unaware that the young man she met is in fact Prince Philip, and he is unaware that she is Aurora; they never even learned each other’s names) she cries in devastation.  Aurora does not stand for her right to marry whomever she wants, she goes along the the Good Fairies back to the castle.  Shortly afterwards, Maleficent hypnotizes her into pricking her finger on a spinning wheel, leading to her going into a deep slumber that can only be awaken by receiving true love’s kiss.   Yet, her passiveness ultimately leads to her  getting all she desires: her one true love.

It is interesting to note that given Aurora’s flatness as a character, the Good Fairies are more well-drawn and developed than she is.  In fact, one can make the argument that they are the true main characters of the film.  They could also be more easily defended on feminist grounds.  First, they are not typical female characters.   They are depicted as being old (though as supernatural beings, they are likely immortal and at least hundreds of years old), and they are not “conventionally attractive.”  Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are depicted appearance wise as short and overweight; Aurora, by contrast, is tall and thin.   They all are assertive, and they take the initiative to protect Aurora.  They conclude that the only way to keep Aurora safe from Maleficent is to raise her in seclusion.  When this ultimately fails, however, they still do all they can to break the spell.  They rescue Prince Philip, who had been captured by Maleficent when he came to their forest home to see Aurora.  While Prince Philip does defeat Maleficent, he does so with their help; the Good Fairies give him a magical sword and shield.  The Good Fairies are the active protagonists of the story, and they even participate in the “typically male” action of rescuing the damsel in distress.  They secure the happy ending for Aurora and Philip.

Moving ahead thirty years, is The Little Mermaid.  It’s protagonist, Ariel, is very different from the previous three Disney Princesses.  I have counted four assertive declarations and actions that she engages in.  She is first and foremost, the type of girl who is curious about what lies beyond her own experiences.  Ariel is obsessed with life on land, and to that end, she has collected countless items from sunken ships.  This is important, because the movie shows that Ariel is assertive, and that she rebels against the narrow expectations that are imposed upon her.  She knows that there is more than just the sea, and she longs to be apart life on land, to become human, and follow her heart’s yearning.  She is the most assertive Disney Princess thus far.  Her main goal in life is not to find a man, but to live a life that is completely different so that she can finally find happiness.

Also, Ariel is noteworthy as the first Disney Princess to save the life of a man.  When there is a huge storm, Prince Eric is thrown overboard his ship, and Ariel rescues him from drowning. She is immediately in love with him.

Later on, when Ariel’s father, King Triton, finds out about her feelings for Eric, and he angrily expresses his disapproval.  This leads two Flotsam and Jetsam, Ursula’s two pet eels, to lure Ariel away to Ursula’s lair so that Ursula can use Ariel to gain control of the kingdom from Triton.

The scene where Ariel makes her deal with Ursula to become human is interesting in how women’s roles in society are discussed.  Ursula demands Ariel’s voice as payment.   Ursula tells Ariel that on land, men prefer it if women never speak.  This is interesting to me because rather than depicting a protagonist behaving in an anti-feminist manner, they portray an antagonist as such.  This specific portrayal seems to imply that it is in fact a bad thing for women to never speak their minds.

Next is Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  I have counted six assertive declarations and actions that she engages in throughout the film.  She is perhaps the most complex Disney Princess thus far.  Belle is an intellectual.  She has a huge love for reading books and expanding her mind into new horizons.  Because of this she is considered odd, as her society does not consider it suitable for a woman to be very educated, and therefore, Belle has no friends in her village.  The lack of a human connection has made Belle into an independent women.  Belle is not happy with her life, and the thing she wants most of all is to live a happy, adventurous, and fulfilling, and to have someone (not a romantic partner, necessarily, but SOMEONE) who can understand and respect who she is.

This leads to some conflict with Gaston who wants to marry Belle, but she does not like him because he is arrogant, narcissistic, and does not consider women to be equal human beings like men.  This is evidenced by Gaston stating outright that women should not read because then they would get ideas and such.  Gaston also has no respect for Belle’s right to make her own choices.  He attempts to marry her without her consent, having already set up a wedding and everything.  He plans for her to be a traditional and submissive wife, but Belle firmly rejects him.  Belle shows herself to be assertive in standing up to Gaston for her rights.

After this, the horse Phillipe, returns without Belle’s father, Maurice.  Belle rides him to the castle where Maurice is being prisoner by the Beast.  Belle once again shows her assertiveness in offering to take Maurice’s place as the Beast’s prisoner.

The film is often accused of romanticizing abusive relationships, and Belle is often accused of having Stockholm syndrome.  I disagree with both of those notions.

First of all, from the beginning, Belle is assertive towards the Beast whenever she is able to.  When the Beast demands that she join him for dinner, she firmly states that she will not eat dinner with.  Given how little respect he has for her, she wants nothing to do with the Beast.  Belle also shows some rebelliousness, in fulfilling her thirst for knowledge.  She goes to the West Wing of the Castle, despite the Beast telling her not to.  When he catches her, he responds with explosive anger, seriously scaring Belle in the process.  She immediately runs away into a pack of wolves.  The Beast follows after Belle to save her, but this leads to him being injured.  She takes him back to castle to treat his wounds, and when the Beast complains about how Belle caused the entire ordeal by running away, she counters that she would not have run away if she hadn’t scared her.  He responds that she should have stayed out of the West Wing, and she responds that he needs to learn how control his anger.

This leads to the Beast making significant changes in his life and in how treats Belle.  He notices that Belle is sad, and she is still keeping her distance from him.  He wants to do something for her, to make things better for her, and he introduces her to the castle’s library which contains more books than she had ever seen before in her entire; it is far larger than the bookshop in her village, certainly.  This shows that he is cares about what she is interested in.  Belle and the Beast begin spending more and more time together, with the Beast treating Belle with the utmost respect.  This is proof that the film does not romanticize an abusive relationship.  If anything, the film shows that people will respond favorably only to people who try to treat them with genuine respect.

Also of note is the fact that the film does not depict Belle trying to change the Beast.  She does not try to be nice to him so that he will not disrespect her, and she certainly does not cower in fear for the majority of the time before the Beast starts being kind to her.  She stands up to him, and refuses to submit to his demands.  In fact, the entire reason she is at the castle is by choice, in order to save her father.  She willingly puts aside her suffering for the sake her father.

The above shows that Belle has a lot of agency.  Every action she takes in the film is her own choice.  This combined with the fact that Belle rebels against certain traditionally female roles is clear proof that Belle is a highly feminist portrayal of women.

Finally, I will discuss Jasmine from Aladdin.  Jasmine is the first non-white Disney Princess, and she is from a culture that is known for being very oppressive towards women, namely the Arab/Islamic world.

Jasmine’s conflict at the beginning of the film is how her father, the Sultan, is forcing her to get married.  By law, all princesses must be married to a prince.  Jasmine, however, does not like any of the princes that her father invites to the kingdom of Agrabah.  She tells him that she wants to marry for love.  Jasmine also laments about how she has very little agency.  She expresses how being a princess is not always fun; she has never been outside the palace walls, and always has servants telling her what to do, with regard to performing her princess duties, I presume.

Jasmine realizes that she has to take control of her own life.  At night she runs away from the palace.  The following day, Jasmine is incognito, wandering through the marketplace.  She sees a young boy trying to reach an apple, and she gives it to him.  However, the merchant, angry at her for stealing the apple tries to chop her hand off, Aladdin, who witnessed the ordeal quickly intervenes, saying that Jasmine is his sister who is crazy.  Far from being a helpless damsel in distress, Jasmine is able to play along and act as though she is mentally ill.

Later on, Jasmine does more to show that she is assertive, she is able to use a stick to jump between the roof of two buildings, just as Aladdin has; “I’m a fast learner,” she says.  When the guards capture Aladdin, she attempts to use her royal authority as a princess to tell them to stop, only to be told that Jafar is the one who ordered Aladdin’s arrest.

Other assertive things Jasmine does throughout the rest of the film include, standing up to Jafar for having Aladdin arrested by the palace guards; admonishing her father, Jafar, and Aladdin (who is disguised as Prince Ali) about how they are demonstrating a complete lack for her rights to make her own choices about whom to marry and telling them, “I am not a prize to be won!”; calling out Aladdin for lying about being who he was; and helping to distract Jafar when Aladdin tries to sneak back in the castle.

Jasmine engages in a total of eight assertive declarations or actions within the running time of the film.

In conclusion I have analyzed how often several Disney Princesses engage in assertive behaviors.  It is clear that as time moved on, the filmmakers recognized that women are capable and strong, and the films more and more began to reflect that.

Obscure Warner Bros. Cartoon Characters: Bosko

This post is the first of a series, where I will educate you about things about the Looney Tunes cartoons that most people don’t know.

The Looney Tunes are among the most famous cartoon characters in the world.  The gang of Bug Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, Tweety, Marvin the Martian, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, and the Tasmania Devil are loved around the world for their humor and overall zaniness.

However, it did not start with them.  It was several years before such characters first saw the light of day and became famous.

First, let’s step back in time to the late 1920’s.  There were two animators named Rudof Ising and Hugh Harman.  They worked for Walt Disney on the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons for Universal.  Things were good, and the cartoons were a success.

Then Disney had Oswald taken from, as he owned no legal rights to Oswald.

Charles Mintz, Disney’s distributor, set up a new studio, and hired away most of the staff including Harman and Ising.  They made more Oswald cartoons, but things went south.  Disney struck gold with Mickey Mouse, and Universal was angry that Mintz had let him go.  After failed attempts to get Disney to come back, Mintz and his studio was dismissed by Universal, and they hired Walter Lantz to make cartoons for them.

Harman and Ising were in need of another job.  Harman had previously created Bosko and copyrighted him, so that no one could take him from them.

They created a short pilot cartoon called Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid, which is credited as being the first animated cartoon with extended dialogue.  This short pilot got the attention of film producer Leon Schlesinger who decided to feature Bosko in a series of cartoons that he would sell to Warner Bros. called the Looney Tunes.  The short was not seen publically until the around the beginning of the 21st century.

Bosko was first seen by a public audience in 1930 in a cartoon called Sinkin’ in the Bathtub which was first appearance of his girlfriend, Honey.  From then, Bosko starred in 38 more cartoons, and he proved to be quite popular.

Bosko’s cartoons are noted for having little to no plot, and for their reliance on music.

There is also the nature of the character himself.  Nowadays, Bosko is often deemed an offensive character because his design is based on blackface caricatures.  In his pilot film and his first theatrically released cartoon, he even spoke with a stereotypical black accent.  Later cartoons gave him a falsetto voice.  Despite his appearance, however, Bosko was generally portrayed personality-wise (though like many cartoon characters of the time, he had little to no personality) without any of the common black stereotypes of the time.  He was depicted as an everyman, a kind-hearted fellow, and above all good-natured.  In later years, Ising denied that Bosko was meant to be a black stereotype, but this is rather hard to believe due the fact that he was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as a “Negro boy.”

Bosko’s life at Warner Bros., however, would not last.  In 1933, Harman and Ising got into a budget dispute with Schlesinger.  They wanted more money to improve their cartoon’s quality and make them in color.  Schlesinger said no, and the two men left, taking Bosko with him.

They eventually found a new home at MGM.  They created the Happy Harmonies series, which debuted in 1934.  Bosko appeared in two cartoons with his original design.  Then he was redesigned as a realistic black boy, which seems to provide more proof Bosko being conceived as a black caricature.  However, he was unable to reproduce his success.  Eventually, in 1938, Harman and Ising were let go by MGM because they regularly went over budget with their cartoons.  MGM created their own in-house cartoon studio.

Bosko remained largely forgotten in decades.  His cartoons got their best exposure in a long time, when in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nickelodeon aired them as part of their showing of the Looney Tunes.  However, they were soon removed.

Bosko and his girlfriend Honey appeared on an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures called “Fields of Honey,” where Babs Bunny attempts to find a female cartoon character to have a role model, and she helps Honey, and as is eventually revealed, Bosko, to find a new audience.  This episode redesigns Bosko and Honey as dog-like characters, who resemble the main characters of the Animaniacs.

Bosko has lived on, despite his obscurity.  Many of cartoons have fallen into the public domain, and they have appeared on low-budget home media, YouTube, and even official releases by Warner Bros.

While Bosko may seem dated and insensitive by today’s standards, it is important to not that without him, we would not have the famous Looney Tunes cartoons that we do today.

My Favorite Pieces of Classical Music Monday: My Favorite Pieces of Classical Music: Part 13

Happy Monday!

Today I will share one piece of music only.

The Skaters’ Waltz

From Wikipedia:

“Les Patineurs Valse or The Skaters’ Waltz or Die Schlittschuhläufer-Walzer (German), Op. 183, is a waltz by Émile Waldteufel.

Known in English as The Skaters’ Waltz, it was composed in 1882 and was inspired by the Cercle des Patineurs or ‘Rink of Skaters’ at the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. His introduction to the waltz can be likened to the poise of a skater and the glissando notes invoke scenes of a wintry atmosphere. The other themes that follow are graceful and swirling, as if to depict a ring of skaters in their glory.^{[citation needed]} Bells were also added for good measure to complete the winter scenery. It was published by Hopwood & Crew and was dedicated to Ernest Coquelin who was the younger brother of two celebrated actor brothers of the Comédie Française.”

It has all of the traits I like in music: sweet melodies and airy sounds.

Also, due to this piece depicting ice skating it makes me want to go ice skating.

I first discovered this piece through a Mickey Mouse cartoon called On Ice.  It was played at the beginning.  Very fitting.  It also features in another Disney cartoon called Winter.

 

TV Tropes Tuesday: TV Tropes: Screwed by the Lawyers

This trope is about how legal issues can prevent creative works from seeing the light of day or that causes their suppression from release.

Many such works are in such a predicament because of disputes over who has the rights to release them.  For example, the 1960s Batman series was made by 20th Century Fox.  However, Batman is owned by DC Comics which since 1969, has been owned by Warner Bros. who has the rights now to make works involving DC Comics characters.

Marvel also has some legal issues.  When it was bought by Disney, the existing licensing deals with the various studios were most unaffected.  Disney would later buy back the rights to the Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America (These make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) from Paramount, but several other studios still have the film rights to other Marvel properties such as 20th Century Fox, who owns the rights to X-Men and The Fantastic Four, and Sony who owns the rights to Spider-Man.  As such, its unlikely that there could be a crossover movie with all X-Men and Spider-Man, for example, unless.  Another Marvel-related issue with this trope is that the Disney merger led to the end of the animated The Spectacular Spider-Man series; Sony at the time held the film and animation rights to Spider-Man, but returned the animation rights to Marvel in order to keep the film rights.  However, various factors prevented Marvel and Disney from continuing that series because Sony owned the rights to their specific version of Spider-Man, which would have forced Disney and Marvel to license it; it would seemingly defeat the purpose to regain the animation rights and license certain rights from Sony.  As a result, the show ended because no company could move forward with it.

A common reason for TV shows not being released on home media is music rights.  Often, when shows seek the rights to use music, they only get the rights to use it for TV showings.  To release the shows on DVD would requiring contacting the rights holders of the music and creating new agreements to use the music.  Very often, it is difficult and expensive to gain those rights, so the shows are either never released on home media, or they are released with the music changed or with the scenes featuring the music cut out.  MTV had a deal with record companies to use their music for free; this negatively affected shows such as Daria, for example, which was not released on DVD for many years and when it finally was released on DVD, the music was changed. Nowadays, some shows secure the rights to use the music for all forms of distribution.

Some works are legally screwed because they are based on other works.  The 1959 film adaptation of Porgy and Bess is one such work.  It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn who leased the rights for only 15 years.  After that, the rights reverted back to the Gershwin Estate who had control then on out over the film’s distribution.  They don’t like the film because it was not faithful enough to the original opera.   Ira Gerswhin felt that film disrespected his late brother George’s work; in fact, for years, he resisted offers to adapt it to film because he thought it would be “Hollywoodized.”  The music from the original opera was reorchestrated, and much was cut out so that the film would more closely resemble a musical than an opera..  It was pulled from distribution in 1974, and only rarely has it been legally seen public.

 

My Favorite Pieces of Classical Music Monday: My Favorite Pieces of Classical Music: Part 11: Fantasia 2000

I’m sorry to post this a day late, but I felt rather tired, as I did not get much sleep on Sunday night, and I could not focus on completing it; I decided not to skip this post because I figured, “better late than never.”

I talked about the original Fantasia before, but today I will talk about its sequel, which was 60 years in the making.

As the original Fantasia was being developed, Walt Disney intended for it to be a perpetual entertainment experience.  In other words, people it would be regularly rereleased with new segments replacing some of the old ones.  According to Wikipedia: “Disney had wanted Fantasia to be an ongoing project, with a new edition being released every few years.^[145] His plan was to substitute one of the original segments with a new one as it was complete, so the viewer would always see a new version of the film.^[71] From January to August 1941, story material was developed based on additional pieces, including Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner, The Swan of Tuonela by Jean Sibelius, Invitation to the Dance by Carl Maria von Weber, Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,^[13][71].”

However, that would never happen.  There were many reasons.  First, Disney wanted to release Fantasia as part of a roadshow exhibition.  However, his distributor, RKO Radio Pictures, refused to handle the film because of its length (124 minutes) and because money, materials, and time required to install the new Fantasound sound system in the theaters.  RKO allowed Disney to distribute the film himself.  However, due to the limited release (Fantasia played in only thirteen different roadshow engagements), the fact that the film couldn’t be released in Europe because of World War II, and high costs, the film failed to turn a profit.  The plans to update Fantasia were cancelled.  Disney did make two films consisting of musical segments, Make Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948), but they were not true updates to Fantasia, and were different in style.

Disney’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, however, belatedly fulfilled his uncle’s dream by producing Fantasia 2000, which opened in IMAX theaters on January 1, 2000 (mirroring the special road hshow release of the original).  The film featured 7  new segments plus the return of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; instead of having one host, each segment had a different host or hosts.

The film begins with a compilation of scenes from the original Fantasia with Deems Taylor’s introduction heard in voice-over, and then the first number is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which acompanies a story of abstract butterflies fleeing their more sinister counterparts; this segment mirrors the abstract animation of the Tocatta and Fugue from the original.

The second segment uses the music of Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome to tell the story of a pod of humpback whales who can fly.  Steve Martin formally welcomes the audience to the film, and then the film changes its focus to violinist Itzhak Perlman who introduces the segment.

The third segements features the jazzy Rhapsody in Blue, the signature piece of George Gershwin, which tells the story of four New Yorkers (drawn in the style of caracaturist Al Hirschfeld) during the Great Depression who all have different dreams: Duke, a construction worker who longs to be a drummer for a jazz band; Jobless Joe, who wants a job; Rachel; a little girl who wants nothing more than to spend more time with her busy parents; and John, who wants to leave his overly demanding wife.  It is introduced by music producer and mogul Quincy Jones who is accompanied by the piece’s pianist.

Next, Bette Midler gives the viewer information on several pieces and concepts that were considered for a new Fantasia, but they never made it to the screen.  Eventually, the Disney animators chose to Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, but struggled to find the right music for it, finally settling on Dmitri Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto.  First composed in 1957, it is the newest piece in any of the Fantasia films.

Next, James Earl Jones introduces the Finale of The Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saens.  This piece answers the age-old question “What happens if you give a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?”  It’s definitely the funniest piece in the film.

Next, Penn and Teller introduce The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the only returning piece from the original Fantasia.

Next, James Levine introduces a piece featuring Donald Duck, The first four Marches of Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance set to the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, featuring Donald as Noah’s assistance.

Finally Angela Lansbury introduces, Igor Stravinky’s Firebird Suite.  This segments features a wood sprite bringing a forest back to life after the winter, but then she awakens the Firebird, who lives in a volcano…

While, I don’t think that Fantasia 2000 matches the original, I still feel it’s a worthy feat, with the right amount of diversity, style, and tone.  I wish that Disney would make another one, but I can’t see that happening anytime soon.