(US and UK Links)
It's the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics by Douglas Brode (Editor) and Shea T. Brode (Editor) was released over the summer and I'm playing catch up this week.
I haven't read this one yet, but the brief skim of the intro leads me to believe it is more Disney apologist in tone than some might like, but I appreciated the arguments that were more pro-Disney--namely that Disney didn't create its fairy tale films out of a vacuum, but drew from other contemporary adaptations from stage and elsewhere, too. Examples and footnotes are provided, too, so this one intrigues me for the fairy tale adaptation discussions especially.
Book description:
In 1937, the first full-length animated film produced by Walt Disney was released. Based on a fairy tale written by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was an instant success and set the stage for more film adaptations over the next several decades. From animated features like and Bambi to live action films such as Mary Poppins, Disney repeatedly turned to literary sources for inspiration—a tradition the Disney studios continues well into the twenty-first century.
In It’s the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics, Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode have collected essays that consider the relationship between a Disney film and the source material from which it was drawn. Analytic yet accessible, these essays provide a wide-ranging study of the term “The Disney Version” and what it conveys to viewers. Among the works discussed in this volume are Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins, Pinocchio,Sleeping Beauty, Tarzan, and Winnie the Pooh.
In these intriguing essays, contributors to this volume offer close textual analyses of both the original work and of the Disney counterpart. Featuring articles that consider both positive and negative elements that can be found in the studio’s output, It’s the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics will be of interest to scholars and students of film, as well as the diehard Disney fan.
Interesting. The subject of Disney's (and all of Hollywood's) relationship with literature and with all of American culture is a very interesting, complex thing. I know in my life I went from being a huge Disney fan to one of Disney's detractors. However, now as I've started to learn some more history of the Disney company I've found I find the real, flawed company that was founded and run by real, flawed human beings more interesting than the happy, shiny, dream-come-true company that regularly churns out "masterpieces" that their marketing tries to sell us.
ReplyDelete