The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

[matrixschmatrix]

I think part of the distinction between, say, The Sword in the Stone and Bambi is that it feels like every single thing Bambi does feels as though it's meant to be a stage in life, a universally understood part of growing up, rather than an act of mythical heroism- which, incidentally, is part of why I found the movie dull. He learns to walk and talk, he plays with his friends, he comes to understand danger, he transfers affection from his mother to his father, he engages in combat for a mate, he successfully combats danger, he reproduces, and the cycle begins anew. It feels more metaphorical than fantastical, without any of the heightened sense of gods and monsters that come with stories of Arthur or Hercules or whomever else.

Again, though, I am also probably responding more negatively to the perceived politics of the work than I would otherwise because I was so unengaged with the whole story. But I think that to me the natural comparison is more with a My Neighbor Totoro than a Sword in the Stone- it feels like it's meant to feel familiar, down-to-earth, and intimate, rather than spectacular and heightened. And that comparison is, to say the least, unfavorable to Bambi.

[Mr Sausage]

I think part of the distinction between, say, The Sword in the Stone and Bambi is that it feels like every single thing Bambi does feels as though it's meant to be a stage in life, a universally understood part of growing up, rather than an act of mythical heroism- which, incidentally, is part of why I found the movie dull. He learns to walk and talk, he plays with his friends, he comes to understand danger, he transfers affection from his mother to his father, he engages in combat for a mate, he successfully combats danger, he reproduces, and the cycle begins anew. It feels more metaphorical than fantastical, without any of the heightened sense of gods and monsters that come with stories of Arthur or Hercules or whomever else.

It's a distinction without a difference, at least when it comes to my argument. The mythically heroic part is incidental since we're talking structure. The fantasy doesn't need to be a High Fantasy or outright myth, it just needs to show certain structural inheritances and a tendency towards archetype.

In this case, the fact that everything in Bambi is meant to be a "universally" understood part of life kind of shows how much of this story is meant to be archetypal. And as the story moves along, it needs to find increasingly more abstracted and universal narrativizations of certain givens. One of which is, of course, the father figure as awe-inspiring, protective, and aloof. But this also applies to the competition for the wife. The story is not metaphorical or allegorical, but it is archetypal, and as such is extremely simplified (which is why it works so well with animals, whose own lives are a lot more simple and intense in the same way). If Bambi shows us what all humans must experience, it also shows us what all living creatures must experience, so the politics are somewhat beside the point. It's a universal representation, not a specific one; you need to translate a bit to apply it to yourself.

Two suitors fighting each other for a woman is an easily recognizable Romance trope--I only mentioned The Sword and the Stone because I immediately thought "knights!" It is patriarchal, at least in this depiction, but it is an archetypal, generalized depiction of a universally understood phenomenon: that mating involves a competition among potential suitors. This is as true for humans as for deer. In our social reality, this involves meeting people, forwarding your most attractive qualities, and getting a date instead of someone else (it's not for nothing that seductive abilities get called "game" these days). In terms of the rest of the animal kingdom, all mammals outright battle each other for mating rights. Narrativising this general truth gives you epic competitions between increasingly heroic, mythical males, but the story doesn't need to be pitched that high to use the archetype. Social competition in our reality is highly complex, but can still be represented through very simple means: a primal, bestial fight.

The worst thing Bambi does is appeal to universal experience through universally understood narrative archetypes.

[Gregory]

Bambi is essentially a bildungsroman for readers/viewers who haven't yet come of age themselves.

For me, the worst thing that Disney's Bambi did was not traceable back to the book it adapted but rather the way that it piled on so much saccharine and cornball "wholesome values" (Gather round, everybody, and let us teach you a bunch of trite things about the meaning of love and courage and stuff!) that are ultimately just bland. Most of Disney's animated films strike me as bland like that, and I think the reasons were (a) that Walt actively discouraged the people making the films from using any kind of personal, individual style as animators and (b) was mainly interested in making films that would appeal to the widest possible audience rather than risk turning anyone off with any envelope-pushing.
At the same time, making a film for even the youngest of viewers in which a character is

Spoiler

killed, even though it was not really shown,

was fairly bold of them and really a jab to the emotions of a lot of young kids who have seen it.

[matrixschmatrix]

I think the distinction between Bambi and a more heightened and mythological story employing the same archetypes is that, as a viewer, I assume that I should be able to relate to Arthur or Aragorn or Siegfried, that they should have enough recognizably human characteristics that we feel like the same species, but I don't assume that my life is meant to follow the same pattern. I actually really resent the idea that Bambi's experience, as it develops, is universal, because his experience is as you say atavistic and patriarchal and so forth. It doesn't apply to my life, and I don't like the idea of a kid feeling that it should necessarily apply to his or hers.

Yet, by making Bambi an everydeer figure, one who never seems to undergo anything meant to be read as outside the course of shared experience and also one who never seems to develop all that much of a distinct personality, it really does feel as though we're meant to see his bildungsroman as mapping on to our own- the idea that little children can distinguish between fantasy stories and stories meant to model a behavior for them seems to me not to apply here, as it's simply insufficiently fantastical. And while the combat and loss of a mother don't apply to Thumper and Flower, the sequence in which they are helplessly 'twitterpated' and pulled into the cycle of breeding further stresses the idea that this is inevitable and natural, regardless of how one feels about it before it happens.

[knives]

Where does the film say that Bambi's experience is universal for humans though? He's specifically cited as a prince in his first scene and is given a number of characteristics specific to deer. He's anthropomorphized, but the film goes out of its way to treat that as just a necessary evil much like the speech in Sleeping Beauty. I do agree that it is a rather not great film, but your reasons seem to be imposing cultural baggage the film doesn't pronounce itself of having.

[Mr Sausage]

I think the distinction between Bambi and a more heightened and mythological story employing the same archetypes is that, as a viewer, I assume that I should be able to relate to Arthur or Aragorn or Siegfried, that they should have enough recognizably human characteristics that we feel like the same species, but I don't assume that my life is meant to follow the same pattern. I actually really resent the idea that Bambi's experience, as it develops, is universal, because his experience is as you say atavistic and patriarchal and so forth. It doesn't apply to my life, and I don't like the idea of a kid feeling that it should necessarily apply to his or hers.

Yet, by making Bambi an everydeer figure, one who never seems to undergo anything meant to be read as outside the course of shared experience and also one who never seems to develop all that much of a distinct personality, it really does feel as though we're meant to see his bildungsroman as mapping on to our own- the idea that little children can distinguish between fantasy stories and stories meant to model a behavior for them seems to me not to apply here, as it's simply insufficiently fantastical. And while the combat and loss of a mother don't apply to Thumper and Flower, the sequence in which they are helplessly 'twitterpated' and pulled into the cycle of breeding further stresses the idea that this is inevitable and natural, regardless of how one feels about it before it happens.

Well, as knives says, Bambi is destined to be the great prince of the forest, just like his father was before him. He's a typical Romance hero. He is portrayed as something more special than the average deer. This is unarguably just a Romantic story of a king growing up, learning lessons, and suffering trials in order to take his place as the rightful ruler. This movie is not telling kids how to expect life to be, it's telling them an old, conventional narrative that just by way of cultural inheritance everyone knows to be old-fashioned and fantastical.

Calling a movie about talking deer "insufficiently fantastical" is the kind of thing that makes me put my head in my hands. I don't want to be rude or dismissive, but I have to wonder if you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing. Common sense alone should tell you that no kid watching two deer fight for mating rights to a third deer is going to understand it as a serious depiction of life, let alone more realistic than a story with human heroes. If anything, they are more likely to connect that moment to similar moments in other heroic narratives, not think to themselves, "yes, life truly is like that!" You'd have to be pretty paranoid to seriously believe this movie is infecting the minds of children.

Bambi's techniques are plain: appeal to a wide audience with cutesy animals and animation and a time-tested, conventional story.

Side-point: Siegfried/Sigurd and Arthur are both stories of kids raised in humble, average (or even poor) beginnings who, through a turn of events, realize they are in fact naturally more noble than those they grew up around and end up fulfilling their destiny of being grand heroes. Do you really believe this offers (young) readers or viewers less of an opportunity to feel that they are like the character--what kid hasn't felt like (s)he didn't belong?--than the story about the talking deer prince?

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, as knives says, Bambi is destined to be the great prince of the forest, just like his father was before him. He's a typical Romance hero. He is portrayed as something more special than the average deer. This is unarguably just a Romantic story of a king growing up, learning lessons, and suffering trials in order to take his place as the rightful ruler. This movie is not telling kids how to expect life to be, it's telling them an old, conventional narrative that just by way of cultural inheritance everyone knows to be old-fashioned and fantastical.

One rarely spends half an hour looking at the equivalent of baby pictures for a Romantic hero, and while there is identification of him as a prince, there's very little shown to distinguish him in any particular respect- it's a story of growing up, not a story of a quest or a mighty deed.

Calling a movie about talking deer "insufficiently fantastical" is the kind of thing that makes me put my head in my hands. I don't want to be rude or dismissive, but I have to wonder if you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing. Common sense alone should tell you that no kid watching two deer fight for mating rights to a third deer is going to understand it as a serious depiction of life, let alone more realistic than a story with human heroes. If anything, they are more likely to connect that moment to similar moments in other heroic narratives, not think to themselves, "yes, life truly is like that!" You'd have to be pretty paranoid to seriously believe this movie is infecting the minds of children.

I personally know people who have shown their children Bambi as a way to broach a conversation about dealing with death, and I do genuinely believe that one of the reasons it's so known and beloved is that it's seen as a good and wholesome movie to show one's children, as is generally thought of Disney movies.

I want to get back to a point I made in my initial post, which is that this works in much the same way a lot of the Disney nature documentaries do: it's taking the apparently natural world and forcing exceedingly human narratives on to it (one imagines the differences between this and a Werner Herzog take on the same subject.) As such, it suggests a powerful naturalistic fallacy, implying that the parallels between animal life as filtered through the Disney perspective is the way that human life should be- thus, using talking deer reinforces the sense of heteronormativity and patriarchy and so forth, rather than reducing it.

I don't at all think the anthropomorphization is incidental- one of the things Disney stresses over and over again in the story meetings that serve as the commentary on the blu release is the importance of paralleling Bambi's life with that of a human child- and thus, the selection of those 'natural' elements of conflict over a mate and so forth implies that this too must have a clear parallel with human life, as the depiction of nature we see has been so carefully shorn of elements that remind one of the alienness of an animal.

Bambi's techniques are plain: appeal to a wide audience with cutesy animals and animation and a time-tested, conventional story.

I think you're actually underestimating the thought and artistry that went into the production, here- it's not something tossed off, it's something worked over for months and for which technical elements of the animation and the effects of those elements were extremely carefully thought out indeed. Then, too, having Bambi's mother shot is not at all a convention of a story for very young children, and the effect of it is quite shocking in context- if Disney were simply looking for something that would go down smoothly, it certainly would not have been included.

Side-point: Siegfried/Sigurd and Arthur are both stories of kids raised in humble, average (or even poor) beginnings who, through a turn of events, realize they are in fact naturally more noble than those they grew up around and end up fulfilling their destiny of being grand heroes. Do you really believe this offers (young) readers or viewers less of an opportunity to feel that they are like the character--what kid hasn't felt like (s)he didn't belong?--than the story about the talking deer prince?

You were the one who argued that children don't think mythological or legendary stories are models for their own lives, not me. But again, I want to point out the sheer quantity of time this movie spends on the very simple and consciously paralleled-to-human elements of Bambi growing from infanthood, which are a part of no heroic legend I can think of; does one see Arthur in diapers, or learning how to speak? Making this a complete birth-to-reproduction cycle fundamentally changes the kind of story we're seeing.

Honestly, I'm trying to put into words my emotional reaction to this movie, so I apologize if I am not as coherent as I would like to be. I would say, though, that as you mentioned that you haven't watched it in a while, and as I was genuinely surprised at its apparent priorities and way of going about its storytelling when I saw it, I think that regardless of whether we agree at that point, my viewpoint would be clearer if you gave it a rewatch.

[Mr Sausage]

One rarely spends half an hour looking at the equivalent of baby pictures for a Romantic hero, and while there is identification of him as a prince, there's very little shown to distinguish him in any particular respect- it's a story of growing up, not a story of a quest or a mighty deed.

I assume Bambi gets on to his heroic deeds later--although he does fight off wolves or something, so this is no ordinary deer. But it hardly matters if he does. You've become so hung up on incidental details (like just how heroic this or that figure is) that you've lost sight of the point: this is about the narrative and symbolic structure of Romance. And this has it.

I personally know people who have shown their children Bambi as a way to broach a conversation about dealing with death, and I do genuinely believe that one of the reasons it's so known and beloved is that it's seen as a good and wholesome movie to show one's children, as is generally thought of Disney movies.

I've seen lots of things that parents assumed were good and wholesome that turn out, on closer inspection, kind of not to be. But we're not having an argument about the assumptions of parents.

I want to get back to a point I made in my initial post, which is that this works in much the same way a lot of the Disney nature documentaries do: it's taking the apparently natural world and forcing exceedingly human narratives on to it (one imagines the differences between this and a Werner Herzog take on the same subject.) As such, it suggests a powerful naturalistic fallacy, implying that the parallels between animal life as filtered through the Disney perspective is the way that human life should be- thus, using talking deer reinforces the sense of heteronormativity and patriarchy and so forth, rather than reducing it.

There is an enormous gap between "forcing...human narratives on to" the natural world and "[this is how] human life ought to be." You have not yet managed to bridge that gap. You seem to've taken it as a given that Bambi's world is our own in a flimsy disguise, that Disney idealizes this world, and therefore that its world is what our world should be. There are way too many unaccounted assumptions here for me to take it seriously.

Firstly, the idealizations in this movie (especially the ones you picked out) are not Disney's own, they are centuries, centuries old. Like I said, if knights were doing this, you probably wouldn't notice. The fact that these are so conventional speaks powerfully against the idea that they are genuinely being recommended. Convention means: 'I do it because it has been done.' I submit that they are there because they are effective as story beats, because they always have been, not because the makers really wanted kids to think they need to battle each other to win a fair maiden or something.

There is a difference between identifying how the structure and symbols of a narrative work and what their implicit values are, and wagging your finger and making bizarre accusations about indoctrination. The values you found are in there, but you're trying way too hard to turn this into something dastardly. There are other reasons they're there than because Bambi is propaganda. In the end, the movie's narrative isn't modeling life for kids, it's reflecting traditional stories.

You were the one who argued that children don't think mythological or legendary stories are models for their own lives, not me.

And by and large they don't. But you are convinced that children are way more likely to want to fight for maidens after seeing Bambi than want to be Sigurd, and from that perspective, no, I don't think so. I think children see themselves in the earlier portions, but find the later heroic stuff less realistic and more like the ripping good stories they hear at bed-time. I also think that, given the choice, a kid would much rather be Sigurd or Herakles or Arthur than Bambi, easily.

But again, I want to point out the sheer quantity of time this movie spends on the very simple and consciously paralleled-to-human elements of Bambi growing from infanthood, which are a part of no heroic legend I can think of; does one see Arthur in diapers, or learning how to speak? Making this a complete birth-to-reproduction cycle fundamentally changes the kind of story we're seeing.

Keep in mind that any heroic legend you might think of (although why do you keep returning to heroic legend? I keep saying Romance. There are non-heroic versions of that) takes place a long time ago. Any growing up depicted is going to be very different. Not to mention they weren't written as children's books.

I assume Bambi shows these quotidian aspects of growing up because they're identifiable. Otherwise, anyone watching would feel alienated. Once again, you're getting caught up on incidental surface details and forgetting that Romance is structural. Doesn't take long to show it:

Notice the structure of the film: the abrupt bi-part move from childhood--identified with the maternal and therefore with nurturing, growth, and safety--to adulthood, identified with the paternal, and therefore independence, duty, heroism. Notice childhood is concerned with safety and education, where adulthood is concerned with love and combat and heroic action. This is real, real archetypal stuff. It's almost programmatic. The parental figures in the movie are heavily symbolic, but not in a way that's particular to 1940's ideology or has a specific social function.

Notice, too, the common Romance fixation on the number three (there are always three suitors, or someone has to wait three days, or live three nights, or fight three challengers): in the maternal phase, Bambi, Thumper, Flower. In the paternal phase, Bambi and his two friends. I could go on.

I think you're actually underestimating the thought and artistry that went into the production, here- it's not something tossed off, it's something worked over for months and for which technical elements of the animation and the effects of those elements were extremely carefully thought out indeed. Then, too, having Bambi's mother shot is not at all a convention of a story for very young children, and the effect of it is quite shocking in context- if Disney were simply looking for something that would go down smoothly, it certainly would not have been included.

I don't remember saying anything about how much time or effort went into this. But, anyway, this is a false argument: that because the death of Bambi's mother is unconventional, therefore the rest of the movie must not be very conventional, either. It's the opposite: it's only because the movie is so conventional that it can get away with that hard left turn. If the whole thing were unfamiliar territory, that bit wouldn't be so unexpected.

[matrixschmatrix]

Anyway, moving on...

Peter Pan is an odd one- the Indian stuff is more or less exactly as bad as I remember it being, even given that contextually the Indians are obviously characters out of of boy's own adventure stuff and not meant to be particularly real (thank God we never get to 'Cannibal Cove'), and it's a bit tiring that all the women seem immediately jealous of any attention Peter pays to someone who isn't them. That said, I really enjoy the lambasting of the jackass father in the beginning, aided by the casting of the same voice as Hook, I liked the sense that Peter really is kind of dumb preteen forever showing off, and some of the business with Hook (particularly him off-handedly shooting a pirate) was quite fun. I also enjoy Kathryn Beaumont's vocal performance here as much as I do in Alice in Wonderland as she gives her otherwise rather undifferentiated character a charming prissiness and sense of slightly misplaced propriety. And overall, it's certainly lively enough, such that the elements that bother me seem somewhat less important than they might have otherwise. Overall, I guess it's a bit forgettable, really, though unfortunately the most memorable part is also the most unpleasant. It was interesting that it seemed to prefigure two of the 90s Disney features, with the shell-bra wearing mermaids of The Little Mermaid and the irritating portrayal of Native Americans of Pocahontas.

Alice in Wonderland fares better- oddly, it reminded me a bit of 8 1/2, with the world revolving around a protagonist who seems only vaguely interested in being there (and particularly the sequence of the entire cast reuniting for a ring-around-the-rosie at the end.) It certainly uses Beaumont's fussiness to good effect, and while the mixture of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass seemed a bit haphazard to me, it's one of those movies where it works because each individual part of it works (and mostly does a fair job of capturing the whimsy of Carroll's writing) even if the whole thing doesn't necessarily seem to hang together all that well or add up to more than its parts- though actually, I think one of the interesting things about it is the stream of consciousness way in which it would often segue from bit to bit, something that's certainly true of the book but not particularly native to the Disney house style.

Incidentally, it's strange how British Disney movies got for a while- 101 Dalmatians, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland all within a 10 year period, not to mention Mr. Toad and The Sword in the Stone (which is admittedly isn't played as particularly British, as I recall.) It's a company I always associate with being extremely American, but the actual features aren't bearing that out much.

[colinr0380]

Incidentally, it's strange how British Disney movies got for a while- 101 Dalmatians, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland all within a 10 year period, not to mention Mr. Toad and The Sword in the Stone (which is admittedly isn't played as particularly British, as I recall.) It's a company I always associate with being extremely American, but the actual features aren't bearing that out much.

And don't forget the amusing Americanised take on Robin Hood from the 70s! (Wolfgang Reitherman directed that one along with 101 Dalmatians and The Sword In The Stone).

It seems strange that Disney's idea of a magical kingdom sometimes becomes Dickens-era Victoriana, where even the chimney sweeps are deliriously happy, especially apparent I suppose in those (mostly) live action Robert Stevenson films Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Or Pete's Dragon. The 1980s Basil The Great Mouse Detective was another expression of that too.

It just makes it all the more surprising that they never did an animated version of Treasure Island, just a live action one!

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, there's Treasure Planet, too.

[colinr0380]

Ah! I'd forgotten about that one. I think I'd been sated for cell animated sci-fi with Don Bluth's Titan A.E. a couple of years before, so still have to check it out. Which reminds me to ask what the board's opinion of Bluth's films are?

[Feego]

Alice in Wonderland fares better- oddly, it reminded me a bit of 8 1/2, with the world revolving around a protagonist who seems only vaguely interested in being there (and particularly the sequence of the entire cast reuniting for a ring-around-the-rosie at the end.) It certainly uses Beaumont's fussiness to good effect, and while the mixture of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass seemed a bit haphazard to me, it's one of those movies where it works because each individual part of it works (and mostly does a fair job of capturing the whimsy of Carroll's writing) even if the whole thing doesn't necessarily seem to hang together all that well or add up to more than its parts- though actually, I think one of the interesting things about it is the stream of consciousness way in which it would often segue from bit to bit, something that's certainly true of the book but not particularly native to the Disney house style.

I do think that Alice in Wonderland is one of the more underrated Disney films, if only because it is so different from most of their other fairy tale adaptations. I'd never thought of it in relation to 8 1/2, but that's an interesting observation. One of the things that I really do like about it is that they did not attempt to tack on any sort of moral (as many other versions have over the years). In the end, Alice doesn't seem to learn a thing from her dream adventure; she just wakes up and goes off to tea with her sister. There is also a surprising lack of warmth for a Disney feature. All of the characters are, in one way or another, very hostile toward Alice. The one traditionally "Disney-esque" moment is the "Golden Afternoon" number in the flower garden, but even that turns takes a violent turn when the flowers reject Alice and shove her out. It's really not surprising that Disney himself all but disowned the film!

Also, I get why Carroll enthusiasts and literary purists generally hate this film, as it plays fast and loose with the original texts to create something altogether very different. But Alice seems to fulfill the promise made by the fits of insanity that showed in films like Dumbo and The Three Caballeros. Unlike those films, it never really tries to fit into a traditional narrative structure, and especially toward the end, when Alice ends up in the Tulgey Wood, things get flat out batshit crazy (the legged glasses and mirror-faced bird, the mome raths). Something I also noticed recently is the fact that during the Queen's croquet match, most of the backgrounds (hedges and sky) are black and white! If Alice in Wonderland never quite reaches the delirious heights of the Pink Elephants scene or Donald Duck's Brazilian beat orgasm, it's still a refreshing step outside the box among Disney's animated features.

[Michael Kerpan]

Too bad that most of the music in Alice is mediocre at best.

[matrixschmatrix]

As far as the actual songs go- I'm having a hard time thinking of anything past Pinocchio and pre-Jungle Book that stands out, particularly (though it's a shame they cut Never Smile at a Crocodile, as it's better than anything they left in)- it's pretty much par for the course that there's going to be a cloying, choral opening credits song that doesn't reflect the tone of the movie, some talk-sung character songs that are fine but not great, and a maybe big sincere number that takes care of a plot point without writing.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

As far as the actual songs go- I'm having a hard time thinking of anything past Pinocchio and pre-Jungle Book that stands out...

Pink Elephants on Parade (particularly as done by Sun Ra).

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, that's right, I knew there was a great one in Dumbo but I couldn't put my finger on it. Though it's hard to think of it as a song and not in the context of the animation.

[knives]

Ah! I'd forgotten about that one. I think I'd been sated for cell animated sci-fi with Don Bluth's Titan A.E. a couple of years before, so still have to check it out. Which reminds me to ask what the board's opinion of Bluth's films are?

The one's I've rewatched have been surprisingly bad, though the animation is tops. Really only The Land Before Time has held up for me.

[dustybooks]

I really like the crows' song in Dumbo, caricatured or not. But there's very little about Dumbo I don't adore.

[Michael Kerpan]

One of my surprises on revisiting Dumbo was that so many of the songs were actually quite good. Musicaly, one of Disney's best efforts (IMHO).

The Sun Ra Elephants on Panrade, Los Lobos's King of the Jungle and Tom Wait's horrifying Heigh Ho were top highlights of that wonderful Disney song collection from ages ago (20 years at least).

[matrixschmatrix]

You could make a whole Disney themed Tom Waits mix- Starving in the Belly of a Whale, I Don't Want to Grow Up, Heigh Ho, obviously Alice, and that's just the more or less explicit ones

[Gregory]

Anyone who enjoyed Sun Ra's arrangement of "Pink Elephants" should check out the Arkestra's album of Disney songs, Second Star to the Right. He got so into Dumbo while working on that track for the compilation that he kept on going, creating a whole set of fun charts and a whole stage show absorbing Walt Disney's showmanship in those old songs as an influence. In a way, this was a little surprising, but at the same time made complete sense. The program begins with a fun take on "The Forest of No Return" from Babes in Toyland.
"Someday My Prince Will Come," by the way, has a really strange history as a jazz standard: Long before Dave Brubeck and then Miles did their thing with it, it was performed by the Ghetto Swingers, who in 1944 were the house jazz ensemble at Theresienstadt concentration camp (musicians forced to serve a propaganda role before ultimately being sent to Auschwitz).

[zedz]

As far as the actual songs go- I'm having a hard time thinking of anything past Pinocchio and pre-Jungle Book that stands out...

Pink Elephants on Parade (particularly as done by Sun Ra).

As far as standard-rich scores go, in the sixties Disney put all their eggs in the Mary Poppins basket (with spectacular commercial results). If you want jazz credentials for that, Coltrane eagerly tackled 'Chim Chim Cheree' and Duke Ellington recorded an entire album dedicated to the movie.

[matrixschmatrix]

Interesting article written by a friend of my girlfriend's, touching on Disney but mostly about Fleischer

[matrixschmatrix]

Saludos Amigos

I think I'm pretty much with Knives on this one- the airplane bit and the documentary sections drag, the first Donald segment is pretty funny but a bit inconsequential, the Goofy part is pretty great, and the Donald and José part at the end is absolutely fabulous.

The whole thing is pretty much the height of racial enlightenment, as far as Disney in the 40s goes; it's whatever the South American equivalent of Orientalist is, and we mysteriously don't see any black people in Brazil, but compared to the Indians in Peter Pan this is basically Do the Right Thing. Obviously, they wanted to make South American countries look good, but nonetheless I think the degree of respect is fairly laudable. I particularly liked that, in the gaucho segment, they neatly managed to combine a tone of admiration for the whole system with jokes about it not working out well, simply by slotting Goofy in as an American transplant. Then, too, a lot of the jokes in both Donald segments turn far more on his position as an ignorant tourist than on any kind of nastiness to the people who live there- I particularly liked the gag where the baby whips out a camera and takes a picture of Donald- and while 'it's great, everyone dances all the time and they all have natural rhythm!' is itself not necessarily that great a portrayal of a land or a people, the way in which its executed in that last segment is so goddamn appealing that I have a hard time arguing with it.

I think that, as a whole, this is a bit too lumpy to get on to my list- I feel like I have strong enough candidates that I can cut anything involving aspects I had to sit through to get to the good parts- but absolutely it's a worthwhile watch, and as Knives mentioned, it gets much looser than one might expect from a Disney product. There's a full on Fleischer level fourth wall breaking joke in the Goofy segment, where the characters are fighting against a scene change as it wipes in- that's something I think I've only seen in a Disney feature in something consciously extreme, such as the Pink Elephants number.