I will
follow the common trend in my blog post about what I believe to have been the
most influential event in Walt’s life. Since I do not know much about him I
used Wikipedia to get a general overview and what I surmised is somewhat of a
cop-out response. In my opinion, the most influential event was his rejection
from the army during World War I. After this rejection Walt went on to join the
Red Cross and become an ambulance driver. In the face of rejection the common
response is often to give up but Walt portrays the archetype of the “American
dream”, the notion that by working hard anyone can move forward and attain
success for themselves in America. By never giving up he overcame the obstacles
of poor finances and outside influences that were working against him.
This
determination and resolve that Walt demonstrated could easily be confused with
foolishness but he attained that success which he sought and so we now study
him as someone worthy of our attention. He faced failures when he got rejected
from the army, he couldn’t find work, his studio failed, the rights to Oswald
the Lucky Rabbit were taken, and losing all of his animators to Universal
Studios in addition to many other problems throughout his career. Nevertheless,
Walt persevered and demonstrated that he could face a setback and rise above
it. The whole concept is something that we as a society marvel at: a
protagonist faces difficulty and struggles to overcome it; he/she experiences a
period of growth and manages to overcome the aforementioned obstacle. We see this
in The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan, and so on. Even though these movies came
about after Walt, they are popular movies in part to this theme of a
protagonist overcoming difficulty and so Walt is in some ways a real life
example of this.
interesting parallels between WD's character and career and the messages he conveys in his creations; the next question (as with most successful people) is: how much of his success is from him individually, and how much from other forces, including timing, contexts, support, luck, and even force (as in the success that comes later to the already successful: they can then bring their money and power to facilitate more success)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dr. Croce. After skimming the book, it might be interesting for you to read the segments about "The Nine Old Men" and about the workers that Walt kept with him from his earliest ventures such as Ub Iwerks. These guys definitely had an influence on Walt, but now it's up to you to tell us what it was!
ReplyDeletegood points; was his "cabinet" a "team of rivals" or were they more in step with each other. Yes, Deryck, please do track down this thread of influence
ReplyDeleteAn excellent choice of topic. This is a great theme we can pursue as we look at all sorts of things-I would love to look at its potential impact on some of the innovations he implemented, as I've already noticed myself a trend of Walt trying to improve himself and his artistic capabilities beyond expectation, to meet his own personal standards.
ReplyDeleteI don't see his rejection from the army and other failures as something that really impacted his creativity. I think it is pretty naive to think that people are immune to failure. All of us experience rejection at some point or another and I think most people shrug it off as normal instead of taking it to heart. Instead of placing his rejection as a main influence, I would think that it would be secondary instead of primary.
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