Disney and Fairytales

            He created Mickey Mouse and produced the first full-length animated movie. He invented the theme park and originated the modern multimedia corporation. For better or worse, Walt Disney's innovations have shaped our world of fairy tales and characters, and the way we experience them. Jack Zipes, who teaches courses and conducts research about the critical theory of folklore and fairy tales, wrote an essay entitled "Breaking the Disney Spell". Through out this essay, Jack Zipes stands strong in his opinion that although Disney's intentions were to capture audiences and leave them awestruck, Disney's films are also an attack on the literary tradition of the fairy tale (433). He uses significant and sufficient examples to prove that Disney took original literary art forms from some of the greats such as the Grimm brothers and Charles Perrault, and altered them to suit not only his tastes and beliefs, but to go over well with his audiences. He claims that to Disney, "it did not matter what story was projected so long as the images astounded the audience, captured its imagination for a short period of time, and left the people laughing or staring in wonderment" (431). It is difficult to strongly agree with Zipes opinion, as he notes on page 428 that one of the crucial functions that the literary fairy tale served was to encourage dreaming, miracles, and the use of imagination, and this is also what Disney and his animation sought out to do. .
             Zipes begins with a discussion of how oral fairy tales evolved in the nineteenth century into literary works. Most book bound tales came along with a series of illustrations and images that were "very much in conformity with the text" (429). Zipes details that the illustrations often enriched and deepened the tale because they were subservient and strictly based on the text itself. He then points out that in the next great revolution, the genre of film, animators created images but also imposed them on the text and formed their own text in violation of print (430).