Sergei Eisenstein: Disney Fan | Brows Held High 

Thought you were talking about Walt for a second there.

Biggest complement I have ever seen. Glad somebody was able to give you that push.

I saw that one too as a kid. It was powerful indeed as I remember it

It's a beautiful film. If you can find it, I'd recommend it (along with a slightly longer fairy tale called The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship). Sadly, since they went under, nearly everything they've done apart from Danger Mouse has been deleted and vanished from the marketplace.

TheValeyard92 What about Count Duckula? I think that’s still in print. Sure, two legendary animated shows does not a legacy make necessarily, but it’s still better than nothing.

@@benburke3015 True. I forgot about Duckula. But almost their entire stop motion catalogue is gone. Definitely can't get Pied Piper, Fool of the World or Noddy's Adventures in Toyland anymore. Not sure about Wind in the Willows.

TheValeyard92 Just checked. I think the film (Wind in the Willows) is still in circulation. Not sure about the series though. Found a dvd on amazon with three episodes on it, and a VHS which I think has the exact same episodes.

Yeah. I didn't read those comments as praise by Eisenstein for Disney being anti-capitalist (which feels like a *really* bizarre misreading in an otherwise thoughtful essay), so much as a straightforward description for how and why Disney's films were so successful. If anything, those words feel damning, rather than praising. "Walt greases the wheel of the capitalist grinder by churning out escapist slop that is very effective at distracting people from their political reality" doesn't read as high praise to me, nor as incompatible with critiquing Walt for being a rapacious, capitalist, anti-worker, anti-democratic asshole.

Disney "content" kind of takes the place of religion. Religion overtly demands obedience and puts many demands on its followers. Disney movies seem to offer pure escapism. It's a trap. They offer myths and legends that actually demand much of their viewers. You *will* accept monarchy. You *must* not question how things are. You *won't* have a thought that diverges from this set pattern. You will *always* be happy and you'll do it *all the time* or their is something wrong with you.

This is, more generally, Marx's basic concept of alienation of labor. Suffering the loss of the benefit of their labor, people seek to recoup their losses through commodities. So not only is the idea of an escape from capitalism being compatible with the machinery of capitalism possible, it's an idea that shows Eisenstein's grounding in Marxist theory.

You should read his book "On Disney". He ABSOLUTELY praises Disney very highly and considers their animations some of the highest of art. OP here is right and touches on what Eisenstein actually thought - that only the capitalist machine of America (or any social order of chains) could have produced such boundless forms in its art. He contrasts the "escapism" of form with the escapism of "content", i.e. lying to the masses that they can live a perfect happy life, rather than expressing pure ecstasy in animation like watching a flame flicker on and on.

Exactly!

Lew Archer 1949 17:30-17:48 Lovely __ ..’Nerdwriter1’ ‘Florida project’ video..’companion video’ ;|

It's weird because I'm no fan of Walt's politics, and the 1941 strike was a big turning point. But I still respect him as an artist and the innovations he and his studio brought to animation, though we can't ignore the contributions of the artists who worked for him(ranging from story people, animators, ink and paint, designers, etc.).

You don't have to reconcile anything. Everything Walt did was done through hard work and imagination, it's the people in charge now that are the real monsters

@@sonofjafarreturns Oh yeah, all that hard work Walt did in exploiting his friend Ub.

no he gave a lot of weight to Disney himself... as an artist

Kind of late but for anyone hunting for the Cosgrove adaptation, this should do the trick ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2sriHX3PbXw.html&ab_channel=lvlagnetoIV

YOU FOOL, THAT WILL NEVER WORK.

You could make the argument that this phenomenon applies to Disney much more than most auteurs, given the scope of his empire.

Walt Disney and Bob Kane are cut of the same cloth, in that regard.

Well, yeah. If he didnt make that evil dollar, he would have no money to make said cartoons

Disney - it's art, and art haven't politics. I'm russian but social-democrate it is just left politics who got governance

Your imagination is misled. Eisenstein liked Disneys animation because of it being respite ("ecstasy") from the capitalist machine. The plasticity and ever-changing forms of the characters is what provides it rather than the escapist content that lies about what is possible in a society of chains. He compares Disneys animation with the movement of fire, and that boundless forms in art normally arise because of the limits placed on the population by the social order. Don't get it twisted - Eisensteins admiration for Disney did not exist as a conflict with the system that produced the animations. He felt only that system could have produced those animations.

I get it because he compares Disney animation to the movement of fire.... right?

Criterion Collection, actually, but yes, same sentiment either way, and easy to miss.

@@Foxpawed totally unnecessary to make that correction

@@cthulhupthagn5771 It's much harder to see in the final version than the patron cut, sorry? I'm trying to figure out why you're calling me out(?) for clarifying what literally was shown in the video, behind the end credit slate effects.

yup that sums it up

True, but the Disney Corporation is so *brazen* about it. Compare Walt Disney's statement about making movies for "the child in all of us," to Michael Eisner's open letter about how the primary concern was to make money, with art and greatness being happy accidents that sometimes occured along the way.

Eisenstein contrasts escapism in content with "escapism" in form. The former is the corporate machine lying to you that maybe you could have a perfect happy life and romance, etc. The point being you are in chains but the social order is giving you false hope you can trancend it. The latter however is more momentary ecstasy from those chains, in the case of Disney as if watching the ever changing forms of flames flicker on and on. Essentially mindfulness and being aware of the possibilities. And Eisenstein saw that only in a society of chains could such boundless form in the arts come through.

When people want to change their lives one of the most common paths is through meditation, but meditation is not actively really doing anything. But it works! You cannot expect to change the social order if you don't have that momentary respite from the social order, orherwise you will always be limited by that social order.

James K. Gunn ... I wasn’t.

What does actually matter? Who decides what does? The cultural commissar or the Bourgeois art world elite. Indeed, an ordinary factory worker might sneer at Adorno's dismissal of his favourite TV show, while the critical theorist enjoyed classical music which saw the same hallmarks of the very culture industry he fought against. The immense irony of such critics of capitalism, is that capitalism is actually very good at creating the very meaningful media said critics demand, it's just that its found in niche markets and made for a bourgeois audience, often by the very same critics. They struggle to give it to the proles and berate them as uneducated, stupid, brainwashed, and class traitors. No different from the New Left of the 1960s, who had little time for the proles, distracted by mass affluence, to appreciate more complex ideological thought that the growing student population would be interested in. No wonder so many of the so-called "respectable working class" embraced the rising New Right, who did not sneer at their culture, who offered them the concrete bourgeois staples of self-employment, homeownership, and shares ownership, through tax cuts and privatisation.

@@williamfrancis5367 I think there may be a misunderstanding here. Art and its meaning should be commented on, looked at, analyzed, written about, etc - and that should be available to EVERYONE to do. Classifications of "high" and "low" art are not only limiting, but are used by the upper classes to categorize what art THEY think is worth commentary, and what art is disposable. As I work in comics, I've seen the shift in my field of comics being regarded as disposable to, suddenly, more well-to-do and scholarly folks start talking about the artistic merits of comics. But even THIS causes a split in the field: comics like Maus are considered Art while superhero comics are still considered disposable (even with superhero films being as popular as they are. Because superheroes are intended for the populace at large, not for the "elite" to look at). For a lot of folks in comics now, though they wouldn't admit it, superhero comics are thought of as beneath them. And Capitalism just exacerbates the problem. By declaring some art as "good" and other art as "disposable," suddenly the people with money are declaring what art should be preserved and what art should be left to waste. Honestly, this is why I think the infamous banana duct-taped to a wall was a GREAT commentary on the art world and how it's been corrupted by capitalism. But the Art Assignment already did a video about that. It's worth a watch.

There are hints that it could also mirror the (forced) colonisation of the eastern region of Germany (Brandenburg), where local Kings ordered children or young adults to go, settle and found new cities.

@@astrocohorsclub Fascinating! Not least because even these days, people are apparently leaving Brandenburg for greener pastures and some regions of it are so sparesely populated that they count as "uninhabited" by UN standards...

I don't think it bothered Eisenstein too much. He put so much emphasis on it because he viewed Disney animations as some of the highest of art. Literally his final film Ivan the Terrible was greatly inspired by Disney. Look at his drawings too. The reason I say he wasn't conflicted about his love for Disney was simply because he saw that only a society of chains could produce such limitless artistic form - viewed this way it's not only not really ironic, but also not contradictory in the slightest - it's a prerequisite.

Unfortunately, the comments were too toxic.

@@gamestation2690 Anyone who complained deserved offending imo.

His last sentence seem to suggest that, claiming no proletariat would "build a statue" of him. I suspect him referring to "Disney" was more simplicity than necessarily referring to Disney the man or the brand.

Wait, there was a studio called "Harman-Ising"? Pity they didn't go into music production instead.

@@stevethepocket Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising had been with Disney in the silent era, then broke our on their own. They were the first to produce cartoons for Warner Brothers, and later for MGM.