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Fantasia: A Sometimes Troubled Marriage. In creating the film Fantasia
in 1938, Walt Disney took a risk in marrying two seemingly ...
Submitted by mrbojangles6788 on November 9, 2005
Category: Music and Movies
Words: 3600 | Pages: 15
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In creating the film Fantasia in 1938, Walt Disney took a risk in marrying two seemingly incompatible media—classical music and animation—in a feature-length production. In many ways, his approach was successful, but in some cases, it failed. Disney came up with the concept back in the 1920’s (The Big Cartoon Database) and began using classical music backgrounds in cartoon shorts called Silly Symphonies (Aldred). Disney enjoyed the approach, so he used it in 1935 in his first cartoon made completely in color. It was called “The Band Concert”and starred Mickey Mouse as a band director (see Fig. 1) trying to conduct a concert featuring The William Tell Overture by Rossini, while being thwarted by Donald Duck and a tornado (Malone).
Disney was not just experimenting with a new kind of background music for his cartoons. He had a serious goal: making classical music more accessible to the general public—people who were unfamiliar with it—and to introduce it to children. Stephen Holden, film critic for the New York Times, put it in sarcastic terms. “‘Fantasia’ was conceived as a glorified music-appreciation course designed to bring high-brow music to everyone” (Holden). The film did introduce millions of people to Bach, Dukas, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and other classical composers, but whether it turned them into life-long classical music lovers has never been proven. Regarding Fantasia 2000, Terry Teachout of TIME was cynical about that outcome. His review stated, “…some of the kids who see it will be hearing classical music for the first time. But it’s hard to imagine their falling in love with Beethoven as a result” (Teachout). Some classical music buffs even felt the approach might be degrading. One wrote, “Danger lurks among such noble intentions—by trying to popularize an elitist art, the result can co-opt its splendor and disserve its lofty purpose” (Gutmann). Obviously, the classical music stars involved in developing the first Fantasia...
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