The Works of Disney: Too Lowbrow?

Steven Watts devotes a whole chapter in his book to “Disney and American Culture,” and I found this reading to be informative but not definitive. It seems like Watts cannot put on a finger on the true impact of Disney, waffling between whimsical and fun entertainment and having a serious impression on American culture.

Watts first points to an interview with Disney In the late 1930’s when Disney says, “we are not artists but only moving picture producers trying to offer entertainment… if the public likes what we turn out we just hold up our thumbs and consider ourselves lucky” (Watts 140). From this quote, it would seem like Disney is like any other businessman; he decides what his audience wants to see and then produces movies with the intent of making bigger profits. But business expansion also makes good sense for Disney because he can reach bigger audiences with his movies, and perhaps then have a greater impact on culture. Watts notes that some authors said Disney “valued profit only insofar as it made more creativity possible” (Watts 146). So in this way, seeking profit is the means to the end of producing culturally significant works. Today, there is still much debate on whether Disney films should be treated as art or simply just fairy tales that parents show their children to keep them occupied on rainy days.

On page 145, Watts presents the idea that Disney was a “purveyor of moral values” that is interested in educating the soul through his works. Snow White can be seen as a movie that is Biblical in nature, with love triumphing over evil and selfishness. In my previous blog post I mentioned that the perversion of Grimm’s fairy tales could have a negative impact on childhood development, but Watts writes that, “Experts on child-raising and psychology publicly lauded his films for their healthy impact on young viewers” (Watts 145).  While Grimm’s fairy tales are foreboding and sometimes frightening in nature, Disney rejected “scarier, more powerful elements” and chose to instead pursue funny, inspirational films (156).

Disney seemed to respect the common man and produced many films to reach a broad populist audience, but many themes were directed at children or the inner-child in all of us. Disney said his films were wrote for “parts of people… that deathless, precious, ageless, absolutely primitive remnant of something in every world-wracked human being which makes us play with children’s toys and laugh without self-consciousness at silly things… You know, the Mickey in us” (159). So in many ways, Disney was just trying to get us to laugh instead of aspiring to have his name etched into the history books as one of the great artists And who is to say that such musings are to lowbrow to be explored on a higher level? Watts writes that Disney bridged the gap between lowbrow and highbrow culture and acted as a spokesman for the American way of life (163). It seems to me like Watts wants to say that Disney should be considered highbrow, but he settles to say that he had a huge impact on American culture, whether that be a good thing or a bad thing.