Film Chronicle
The Artlessness of Walt Disney
BARBARA DEMING
"W
HAT HATH
Walt wrought?" Mr. Wolcott Gibbs queries in dismay
after seeing
The Three Caballeros.
And others join the cry, and cast
their eyes back to those days when "a couple of mice in simple arrange–
ments of black and white" contented Disney. Walt has indeed wrought
something monstrous. And the art critic may well tum away in dismay.
But the psychoanalyst, or the social analyst-the inquirer into the mythos,
the ethos of the times-may, on the contrary, well look twice. For
The
Three Caballeros
is not Disney's private monster, his personal nightmare.
It is ro nightmare of these times.
Mr. Disney does not, in the first place, work alone. He heads what
Mr. Robert Feild, in
The Art of Walt Disney,
describes as virtually a
modern industrial plant, in which scores of people submit ideas toward
the making of one film. But even in the early days, before he headed
any such film factory, Disney was to a very special degree receptive to
conditions of mind prevailing with the public generally. It has always
been his gift to be able to accept wholeheartedly the outlook of the hour,
and to improvise with it, whatever it might be. It is Disney's "atrocious
taste," his lack of perspective on what he is doing, that most appalls
Mr. Gibbs in
The Three Caballeros.
But it is just Disney's distinguishing
characteristic that he
is
uncritical of what he reflects. He is quite artless.
If
the values by which the society lives are still serving,
if
the prevailing
outlook is relatively bright-faced and aggressive, he will improvise from
that-and give us Mickey Mouse.
If
the time is one of crisis, and these
values will no longer serve but are in conflict and in question, if the pre–
vailing state of mind is a deep bewilderment, he will improvise with
equal lack of inhibition. His particular talent is that he does not em–
barrass himself. This makes his dreams sometimes monstrous. But it
gives them a wide reference.
In
The Three Caballeros
Donald Duck opens three packages from
his Latin American friends. These packages contain assorted vehicles by
means of which he is, ostensibly, allowed a brief odyssey of Latin Amer–
ica. What we can learn of Latin America from
The Three Caballeros
is less than little. But what we can learn of where
we
live is a great deal.
For it is through
this
world that, quite unknown to Mr. Disney, Donald
makes his voyage.
