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Tolkien Expressed a “Heartfelt Loathing” for Walt Disney
- zebraflask 8y agoThis makes a lot of sense, when you think about the difference in their storytelling aesthetics. High fantasy =/= kids' cartoons.
- chrisseaton 8y agoNo it doesn’t make any sense that you’d loathe someone because they have a different artistic style to yourself!
- peterashford 8y agoYou can loathe another artist style though.
- skookumchuck 8y agoI like both, in different ways.
- i_am_nomad 8y agoYou possess an important key to happiness, then. The ability to appreciate both a perfectly prepared scallop risotto and a 7-11 steak taquito.
- voodootrucker 8y ago> a perfectly prepared scallop risotto and a 7-11 steak taquito +100 I've said this before, but I've not heard anyone else say it. That is an important life-skill.
- duncan_bayne 8y agoI have seen so many people made miserable by an inability to do this. Especially once they earn a bit of money, and experience the 'good life'. I really love fine craft beer. But can still sit down happily in a cheap pub and drink a jug of Victoria Bitter. It helps greatly to have entirely distinct mental categories in such cases.
- fratlas 8y ago+1 for bringing aus beer culture into this. I lived in China for 3 months and once I came back, VB tasted as good as any craft beer - a luxury. My friends thought I was crazy, but it taught me just how relative our experiences can be.
- m_mueller 8y agoI think living in a totally foreign culture is essential to recognizing the actual values (and fundamental issues) of your own society. It also gives you perspective on what‘s human, what‘s culture and how to relate with any other human regardless of th latter. Was quite the eye opener for me. I hope more people can and want to do it in the future.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoPeople seem to forget that if something isn't great, that doesn't mean it's bad. VB, Carlton, Budweiser, or any other mass market lager isn't bad beer. It's not good beer, there's nothing remarkable about the stuff, but it's not like it's vinegar or has massive technical flaws. The quality control and consistency of mass market lagers is something that many craft breweries and brewpubs could only dream of. There's plenty of craft beer that I've drunk that's distinctly different from batch to batch, their consistency is all over the show. But I know that if I get a stubby of VB, it's going to taste exactly like VB.
- da02 8y agoHow do they earn money? Working long hours? Do they dislike their bosses and co-workers and compensate with high-end purchases?
- archagon 8y agoTo compare Disney animation to a gas station taquito is borderline offensive! These people were true artists and pioneers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYEmL0d0lZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYEmL0d0lZE
- pphysch 8y agoIt seems that Tolkien may have liked the animation ("I recognize [Disney's] talent, but it has always seemed to me hopelessly corrupted."), just not the treatment of fairy tales in the story. It's perfectly reasonable to appreciate Disney & Co's contribution to animation and visual story-telling without respecting the underlying stories.
- neaden 8y agoTitle makes it sound like he didn't like the person, article says he loathed the media he produced, a pretty big difference.
- arkades 8y ago> But he also called Disney a “poor boob” and lamented “What might not have come of it if this man had been educated—or even brought up in a decent society?”
- Jtsummers 8y agoThe article’s writing isn’t clear but I think CS Lewis wrote that. Either way, that’s not the same as loathing. It’s more dismissive and pitying. Loathing suggests at least a strong dislike of the person.
- jedwhite 8y agoThe headline conflates 'Disney studios' with Walt Disney, which Tolkien himself might be accused of also doing. The quote from Tolkien's letter is “by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).”
- jedwhite 8y agoThe Atlas Obscura article linked at the end has some other interesting quotes, including another one from Tolkien Scholar, Trish Lambert, that “Here you have a brash, American entrepreneur who had the audacity to go in and make money off of fairy tales.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tolkien-cs-lewis-disney-snow-white-narnia-hobbit-dwarves https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tolkien-cs-lewis-disne...
- Semiapies 8y agoAnd yet, when the well-bred Englishman sells his books about dwarves and dragons to a publisher, it's totally different. Isn't that always the way?
- 6nf 8y agoTolkien wrote stories, Disney did not. At least that's how I interpret it.
- ChristianBundy 8y agoDisney as a company was also completely built upon old stories in the public domain, but as soon as they became successful they started tightening the screws on intellectual property laws to make sure that others couldn't do the same.
- Semiapies 8y agoAnd yet, weirdly enough, you can find a slew of second- and third-rate animated movies about the very same fairy tales Disney based their movies on...
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoNot only Disney did not, they butchered stories that existed.
- ardent_uno 8y agoWhy should he not make money off fairy tales? By making money he built a company which has brought joy to millions of people over a near century, employed thousands and created value all without doing any real damage to the fairy tales which inspired him. It's a classic win-win.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zeofig 8y agoBased Tolkien.
- 1337h4xatl 8y agoTOUCHDOWN TOUCHDOWN I THINK IM JERRY RICE SWAG
- danvayn 8y agoupdoot x)
- chevas 8y agoThe worldview of Tolkien and Lewis was deeply inspired by their academic understanding of medieval cosmology. Dwarves and other fantasy creatures were not strictly "made up", but were types meant to reveal the reality of invisible spiritual and celestial creatures within the model of the universe. Disney's treatment of said creatures was barbaric in their minds as it completely missed the theological and philosophical significance they were supposed to communicate.
- Trill-I-Am 8y agoWhat was the theological and philosophical significance they were supposed to communicate?
- sampo 8y ago> What was the theological and philosophical significance they were supposed to communicate? I don't know, but I can think of an analogy: If angels were commonly depicted as cheerful and a bit silly characters in cartoons, perhaps religious people would have the same complaint.
- gaius 8y agoOr how geeks perceive of the way movies depict computers and the people associated with them. By the way movies do get angels wrong, they are described in the Bible as having 6 wings for example. No Christians that I know are angry about that.
- JorgeGT 8y ago> they are described in the Bible as having 6 wings for example. No, a particular high order of angels (Seraphims) have six wings. Your run-of-the-mill, proletarian angels have two wings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelology?oldformat=true https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelology?oldformat...
- wsgeorge 8y ago
- _bxg1 8y ago"...he also called Disney a 'poor boob'" [chef's kiss]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jonnycomputer 8y agoI think that this really sums up Tolkien's attitude best: Tolkien did not think fairy tales were children's stories, and Disney treated them as if they were.
- bo1024 8y agoI have been trying to put my finger on the source of Tolkien's complaints, and I think I agree with you here. Tolkien has a section about this in the essay linked from the article. http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien...
- drblast 8y agoI know the feeling. As a very young boy I saw an anime adaptation of The Little Mermaid that was a faithful adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's version and thought it was incredibly moving. A few years later the Disney version came out, and the production value was incredible while the story and all meaning was just lost. And the messages Disney sends to young girls, in particular, are horrible.
- jjeaff 8y agoThe messages that old Disney movies send to girls were a product of their time. I think the more modern Disney movies send excellent messages to girls.
- cm2012 8y agoCertainly better for girls than almost anything anime.
- Treegarden 8y agoWhats the message in all three of them? I watch neiter disney princess movies nor animes.
- cm2012 8y agoIt's not exactly one message - this is across hundreds of film and tv shows. But basically: 1) Old Disney - The best thing that can happen to girls is finding prince charming. 2) New Disney - Girls are just regular protagonists, sometimes purposefully going against the tropes. 3) Anime - Incredibly variety, top 5% is amazing re: girls or boys as protagonists, but a lot of it written for teenage boys and has women as side characters for sex appeal.
- olavk 8y agoRe old disney: I suppose you are thinking about Snow White and Cinderella. Note that the prince play a very small role, everything is about the journey of the girl. If it was gender–swapped you would say princess charming was purely objectified as a prize to be obtained. And some classics like Alice in Wonderland does not fit the template at all.
- robotkdick 8y agoTolkein may also have talked with trees, so a bit of a quirky fellow, for which we can all be grateful.
- chevas 8y agoThere was a fascinating podcast on RadioLab about the intelligence of trees and one of our writers wrote about it (this is a Christian publication about weird stuff): https://gospel.vision/discovering-the-mystical-intelligence-of-the-trees/ https://gospel.vision/discovering-the-mystical-intelligence-... I've started talking to trees since discovering this.
- robotkdick 8y agoI hope I can one day work up the courage to talk with trees. I am talking to birds to work up to it ;)
- Antimachides 8y agoOn the one hand I see where they are coming from. On the other I sure do enjoy the genius of production of those old animations, particularly Fantasia. On the one hand I understand the criticism that Spielberg torpedoed indie cinema, on the other hand Empire of the Sun was a masterpiece. Two things can exist, in their own right, meriting praise, yet opposed and unresolved.
- ekianjo 8y agoToo bad The Lord of the Rings movie got a Disney make over with the happy ending where the Shire was never destroyed. This is so Non-Tolkienish that he must have turned in his grave.
- xg15 8y agoTo be fair the Shire was on the brink of destruction in the books, but in the end got saved and restored to its old glory (with some additional elven magic to boot). If you wanted to, you could read it as a fantasy of a pre-industrialized country getting threatened by industrialization but rejecting it and continuing in their old ways (allegory, ha!). So personally, I'd say the Shire plot has a happy ending in the book. I'd see Frodo's fate and the general decline of the world as a bittersweet ending, but those elements have been kept in the movies relatively unchanged.
- olavk 8y agoWell the Shire is saved in the end, isn't it? I think it is more that is a smaller scale conflict playing out after the resolution of the larger conflict which simply does not work very well on film. Maybe in a tv series, it would work. Even then the movie is weighed down by several drawn-out "endings" after the resolution of the main conflict, which was one of the major criticisms. I do think the movie captures the bitter-sweetnes of the end of the book with the elves leaving middle-earth and so on. I don't think Tolkien would have liked the movies, but then again, he is dead.
- DrScump 8y agoI highly recommend the three-part John Batchelor interview[0] of the Zaleskis on their book about the Inklings (including Tolkien and Lewis): [0] https://audioboom.com/posts/4420047-the-fellowship-the-literary-lives-of-the-inklings-j-r-r-tolkien-c-s-lewis-philip-carol_zaleski-1-of-3 https://audioboom.com/posts/4420047-the-fellowship-the-liter...
- hashfyre 8y agoWhat Tolkien was really inspired by was Norse, Gaelic and Germanic mythos. Not to forget Middle and Old English Poems. Norse: - The Poetic Edda - Prose Edda - Beowulf - Volsung Saga Middle English: - Pearle, (The concept of The Ring being "My Precious") Welsh: - Culhwch and Olwen, inspired Beren and Luthien (Silmarillion) - Red Book of Herghest (Welsh Vellum) directly inspired Red Book of Westmarch Finnish: - Kalevala (Story of Kullervo) inspired Children of Hurin (Silmarillion) German: - Nibelungen and later work Der Ring Des Nibelung, inspired The One Ring and the myth of Broken Sword reforged. Norse: - The names of Gandalf and the 12 dwarves are directly taken from Prose and Poetic Edda - High Elves / Gray Elves are inspired by Norse Calaquendi / Moriquendi - Balrog and the Bridge of Khazad-Dum are direct allegory to norse fire giant Surtur and the Birfrost (recently depicted in Thor: Ragnarok) Celtic: - The Elves of Middle Earth (exiles) are based on Celtic fae gods, the Tuatha-de-Danan References: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien%27s_influences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien%27s_influence...
- INTPenis 8y agoTolkien and Lewis should have taken a chill pill. I enjoy Tolkien over Disney any day because I don't even view them in the same league. Disney took ancient mythology and did with it what could be compared to the simplified version of Hawkings book "A Briefer History of Time". In the case of dwarves I feel that it doesn't change anything if you bastardize something that is already based on mythology. If anything this to me new revelation about Tolkien is a negative rather than a positive. Not that I care enough to make it that but I just don't think they should have had such strong opinions on Disney's work when they were themselves fully capable of creating amazing works of fiction. This truly does seem like Oxford dons thumbing their noses at an American.