The author of this article argues that Disney's editing/reworking of canonical classical music pieces in Fantasia vignettes does not merely butcher these artistic compositions (as was the common outraged response from people in the field of music), but instead brings to them a new series of visual associations that make them accessible to "middlebrow" audiences.  He claims that it was the film's "technical virtuosity" that legitimized these decisions as art.  The article discusses the ideological rhetoric underlying the film, such as evolution and technological progress, and how the harmony between image and sound onscreen works to naturalize these ideological underpinnings.  The author also includes a discussion of the "Centaurettes" in one sequence that embody the racist trope of the "picaninny," characters that were self-censored out of the film in later releases, and how their presence signifies a certain racist ideology that reinforces the social hierarchy of the time.  Briefly tracing the appearance of Fantasia over time, the author also mentions Fantasia 2000 as a continuation of this musical democracy that highlights the "cutting edge" technology legacy of the film through its IMAX format.

This article provides a rare instance in which a cultural critic from the field of music actually praises Fantasia for its reworking of classical music.  However, it is significant that this positive reaction comes more than six decades after the film's initial release.  Looking back on the film as a moment in history, the modern critic is able to locate Fantasia within a particular socio-historic context.  This vantage point enables the author to comment on the sociological effects of the film, effects that comprise much of this article's redemption of the film's unorthodox usage of classical music.  The author marks Fantasia as art because of both its technical brilliance and the creativity it displays in the methods used to ideologically affect its audience.  This retrospective appreciation of the film relates to my thesis in that it provides an example of the notion that hindsight leads to Fantasia's validation as art rather than commodity.  It is also significant that this article appears after the release of the contemporary Fantasia 2000, which served to refocus attention on the film in contemporary times.  This re-emergence of the film, marketed as the resurrection of a classic, may have had a direct influence on the likelihood of a reviewer to see the original as art because of its connection to a particular moment in American history.

Clague, Mark. "Playing in 'Toon: Walt Disney's "Fantasia" (1940) and the Imagineering of Classical Music." American Music spring 22 (2004): 91-109. JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 24 Nov. 2008. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3592969?seq=9&Search=yes&term=fantasia&term=disney&term=2000&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dfantasia%2B2000%2Bdisney;gw%3Djtx;prq%3Dfantasia%2B2000;Search%3DSearch;hp%3D25;wc%3Don&item=1&ttl=68&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=doBasicResultsFromArticle

This is the original Three Little Pigs Silly Symphony; its duration is 8:23. It features the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, as well as the famous song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" According to a few sources, the heavily Jewish image and accent of the Wolf knocking on the brick house's door was removed for the DVD release, but it seems that this revised voice was applied to the YouTube video, even though the visual was not adjusted.

Having easy, unlimited access to the film which is the subject of my research is essential, not only for being able to form a thesis but for being able to interpret and synthesize the various resources I'll find on the subject. I can draw direct evidence as to the narrative structure, characterization, and use of color, music, and sound, and hear the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" whenever I please.

From 1929 to 1939, Walt Disney produced a series of 76 short animated films. "Three Little Pigs," which was released in 1933, marked the first example of the technical innovation and experimentation whose culmination would make possible Disney's future work, and the beginning of an era of feature films with recognizable characteristics for which Disney would become known. "Three Little Pigs" pioneered in the areas of narrative, character development, color, and music and sound integration; Disney set high goals for itself and achieved them in this short film.

This newspaper article commends Disney for not continuing in the direction of Steamboat Willie, but instead “fleshing out” individual characters., giving them “soul” and “color.” The author cites Three Little Pigs as a major turning point for Disney, especially in that it was the first Disney film to have a real plot. The relation of each pig to his house and its construction differentiates and enriches each character. The article includes a quote from Chuck Jones on the subject of Three Little Pigs which comments on character differentiation, saying that in the past, different characters looked different, but in this film, similar-looking characters were differentiated using elements other than visuals alone. The quote also clearly states Jones’ belief that Three Little Pigs was a turning point.

The article mentions music, color, and style as contributing to the success of the film, and states that these factors and the short’s popularity led Disney to another plane. His animated work was, as a direct result of this film, treated seriously, as art, and this can possibly be seen as the beginning of the “Disney empire.” The production of subsequent films, shorts and features, served to codify the Disney style, epitomized by the first Disney feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

This article provides a primary source: animator Chuck Jones states that Three Little Pigs was a turning point. Also helpful is the discussion of why the short was so important, with a focus on characterization and plot. An interesting view expressed here but not elsewhere is that not only did Three Little Pigs serve as an internal bridge from experimental to feature-length fairy tale, but it also launched Disney’s fame externally in the eyes of critics and film journals, and in this way contributed to Disney’s future dominance.

The goal of my research is to take a close look at Disney's history of successful feature animated and live-action musicals to demonstrate that these movies are the source of Disney's success and should be their current focus as well. I am specifically interested in the recent movie High School Musical, and I plan to use it as a case study about how musicals in general are a better source of entertainment for children. Disney's marketing of High School Musical made use of many new forms of media and took advantage of the cross-platform media available to such an all-encompassing conglomerate. I also will look at research studies concerning children's attentiveness to different forms of media to show that they are more likely to show repeated interest in and remember songs than standard dialogue. How many of your favorite childhood songs were from Disney movies?

Throughout Smith and Clark’s catalog of one hundred years of Disney endeavors, one particular element of their success is consistent: feature animation musicals. At practically every turning point in the company’s history, the great success that brought the studio back out of the red was always a successful feature animation, and not just that, but a musical too. Disney’s initial success in the business of cartoons was with Steamboat Willie (1928), which was the first “synchronized sound cartoon” and put Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse on the map (p. 24). Soon after, Walt and Roy Disney formed their own recording company to make back the money they spent on sound equipment. The world’s first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was also the first film whose movie soundtrack was created using the original movie soundtracks, and it was the first film to have a merchandising campaign established to coincide with the release of the film into theaters. Everyone left the theater singing one of Snow White’s songs.
    The nineteen forties left Disney headed toward failure with the loss of their international markets because of the war. They invested everything they could in a new feature animation: Cinderella (1950), and they ended up with a huge success. The fate of the company rode on the success of the movie because of all of the labor and money put into creating it, and with both its score and the song “Bibbidi-Bobbidi Bo” nominated for Oscars, Disney realized that their salvation was in the creation of more feature animated musicals.
    Of course not every feature was as profitable. Disney invested over six million dollars in creating Sleeping Beauty (1959), its “most lavish and costly” film up to that point, but its initial release did not do as well as they’d hoped (p. 85). Luckily, Mary Poppins (1964) flew in with her umbrella and created a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious film that received thirteen Oscar nominations and five awards.
    The authors mark 1984 as the lowest point financially for Disney theatrical releases in thirty years. Under the new leadership of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, though, the company started turning around. By 1989, The Little Mermaid put Disney back at the top. It was the first of five Disney feature animations in a row to win the Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Song, and it caused for “renewed excitement in the animation and musical genres” that set Disney straight for the next decade (p. 151). Beauty and the Beast, which was also nominated for Best Picture in 1991, Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), and Pocahontas (1995), followed equally strongly, and reinvigorated Disney’s animation department. Again, the cause for success was feature animated musicals that brought back both audiences and awards.
    Following the entry for the final year, 1999, the authors take a look into the future at what Disney has planned for the upcoming century. They spelled out every bit of advance information they could get their hands on, and looking back, they were pretty dead on. Two of the major disappointments that they could not have anticipated were the movies Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and Treasure Planet (2002). Their predicted success was based on the fact that they would have the same directorial and production staff that made the movies of the early nineties so incredibly successful. The missing piece? Music.

JSTOR: Music Educators Journal: Vol. 32, No. 5, p. 18-19. April 1946

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4321%28194604%2932%3A5%3C18%3AMOTAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

    This article analyzes the use of music in animated cartoon movies, contrasting its use with that of live action films. Since animated movies are more exaggerated and are filled with constant motion, a composer needs to make his music do the same. Rodriguez begins by examining the role of music in movies more generally. He defines the difference between a screenplay with music and a musical by stating that screen plays use music to enhance the emotion of a scene or clarify a point to the viewer, but they keep the plot is still the central focus of the movie. In musicals, however, the plot can be completely swept to the side to make room for a musical number that has little to do with the actual story of the movie but is there for pure entertainment.
    Because cartoons are by their nature based in fantasy rather than reality, Rodriguez states that a composer working on a score for an animated movie has a much greater task ahead of him than if he were working on a live action film. The actions of the animated characters are timed down to the frame, which is 1/24th of a second. In order to fit the action perfectly, then, a composer must change his frame of reference from the usual beats per measure approach to beats per frame. This argument seems to work for live action as well, since in the end everything is broken down into frames to be projected, but Rodriguez claims that synchronization of action with music in live action films is coincidental and unlikely while it is “almost a rule of life with animation composers.” (p. 19) The music must be constantly active and moving, simply because the characters are. A good composer must know how to make his music as humorous and exaggerated as Donald Duck of Goofy but also be able to convey the tenderness and emotion found in many animated films. Rodriguez specifically mentions Dumbo, Bambi, and Pinocchio in the latter category.
    Although the subtitle of the article reads, “Will ‘Cartoon’ films have a place in music education?” the author only mentions music education in passing in his last paragraph. He laments that not enough researchers or critics are writing about how well cartoons can teach music to children. His idea of music instruction is creating an animation that is didactic in nature, instructing children about notes, musical structures, harmonies, and other complicated elements of music that are not easily explained otherwise. The fact that music can be added to animation would only serve to illustrate the different sounds that would be taught in the animation. In my opinion, his focus on education is quite limited to high level music theory and could be extended much further. Rodriguez mentions Fantasia in a reference to animation set to pre-composed music, but he failed to note how the animation visually conveyed the different elements and tones in the music, making the music’s qualities apparent both to the ear and to the eye.