Thread by @politicalmath, This is silly, but on the eve of Disney+, let's talk a [...]

This is silly, but on the eve of Disney+, let's talk a little about the insane role Walt Disney has played in our culture /1

Walt Disney was a high school dropout. He became almost accidentally obsessed with drawing and almost accidentally found himself in the field of animation.
His entire life is a miracle of hard work, brilliance, artistic integrity, and goddamn coincidence. /2

Disney was born too late to fight in WW1
He tried to join, but they basically laughed him off since he was WAY too young to fight and it was obvious from his slight frame that he was clearly not fighting material
So he forged his own birth certificate and joined the Red Cross /3

Disney went to France just as the war ended and drew cartoons for the army newspaper.
He was only there for a year before he went back home (Kansas City) and picked up work as an artist at a studio where he met Ub Iwerks, an insanely talented but very introverted artist. /4

Walt was *obsessed* with the idea of moving drawings, even though animation was extremely expensive (since at the beginning you had to have artists draw every part of every frame of a cartoon).
/5

Even after he adopted cell based animation (drawing 1 static background and then drawing the active elements on transparent cells), Disney was always makings cartoons that barely broke a profit. His quality standards were too high. /6

Disney's Kansas City studio struggled for a few years before bankruptcy.
And here is where the insanity begins: Disney moved to Hollywood not to make his big break but because his brother Roy was recovering from TB out in California.
The coincidence is unreal!
/7

So Disney started an animation studio in Hollywood. He made the Alice comedies which were combination live-action / animated films featuring a little girl and her imaginary friends.
They're great (and Virginia Davis, the girl who played Alice, lived until 2009!) /8

Disney was a trusting lad (he's 27 years old at this point) and he makes a bad deal with a crooked distributor and his most promising characters are taken from him, leading him to, in desperation, develop a brand new character.
Enter Mickey Mouse /9

And here is where coincidence takes over.
1) Sound is just starting to come into motion pictures
2) Disney needs a new character
3) He's in the right place, right time, with the right team
4) He bets everything on synchronized sound
5) Holy shit does it pay off

Steamboat Willie is a huge hit (reminder, Walt is 27 years old with a large staff, a nationally known product, & multiple failures and bankruptcies behind him).
And Walt says "Holy shit, what if Mickey doesn't last?!? I need a backup"
So he creates Silly Symphonies. /11

The Silly Symphony series kicks off with The Skeleton Dance.
It is born out Ub Iwerk's quirky imagination and Disney's desire to bring a little more class to the world of animation (which is mostly the 1920's equivalent of fart jokes)

/12

ok, ok, ok, gotta back up a bit.
Remember Roy? Disney's brother who brought him out to Hollywood b/c he was sick?
Yeah, so he got better and he's Walt's business manager now.
This is really important b/c Walt Disney SUCKS at money.
/13

I think it's safe to say that if Roy Disney was not Walt Disney's brother, the Disney corporation would not exist.
Walt was the artist and Roy was constantly trying to pull him back from burning all his money in an attempt to make amazing things /14

So Walt is constantly straining against Roy, trying to make new (very expensive) films that push the boundaries of animation.
Walt experiments with sound, color, perspective.
Walt is a brilliant crazy person with a God complex and Roy is trying to keep the boat from sinking /15

Walt is making these astounding, amazing, breathtaking short cartoons... but there is only so much money in shorts.
Walt decides the time is right to make a feature length animated film.
He decides to make Snow White /16

Snow White was The Titanic of the 1920's
Absurdly expensive
Enormously risky
Roy Disney was fighting off creditors like crazy
Walt went nuts
He memorized the script, playing it out for animators in 3 hours sessions
Shot live action footage of actors playing the rolls /17

But when they finished Snow White, it was like an entirely new form of art was created
No one had every seen anything like it. The music, the drama, every beat was perfect, every moment sang to the audience.
It was the biggest success that the film world had ever seen /18

Disney had created a new art form.
This high school drop-out had invented sound-synchronized animation and instead of raking in the cash on the successes he had, he bet everything that the medium he loved would change the world.
/19

Disney would have failed if he had been any older or any younger.
He would have failed if he didn't have a very kind, very good, very loving older brother trying to help him succeed.
He would have been a mediocre figure if he didn't believe animation could be art. /20

Disney pushed animation to be something wonderful.
He wanted everyone to see the possibilities he saw.
He appreciated low art (watch the early Mickey Mouse cartoons where animal abuse if a near-constant theme) but he aspired to high art (like Fantasia) /21

But Disney was a conservative rebel.
He loved "the common man" (so so so many short with the word "barnyard" in them) but wanted everyone to appreciate the best of art and culture.
He loved earthy gags but also wanted everyone to hear classical symphonies /22

Walt Disney was a strange man. A quirky, driven, crazy, energetic visionary.
I think we're way better off having stumbled into a world where this weirdo ended up driving our entire media culture to be something bigger than raw, ugly "capitalism" would have taken us. /23

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