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.

Steven Watts argues a positive view of Disney’s importance in American history, although acknowledges the difficulty of understanding his impact on modern American culture. Many critics believe that Disney’s commercial success and popularity mean that his films cannot have cultural significance. In addition, the strong contradictory opinions of Disney make it difficult to simply look at his impact in order to gain understanding rather than to criticize or admire his work. Watts looks at Walt Disney as an artist of sentimental modernist films and as a promoter of American ideals, qualities that are evident in Disney’s rendering of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

America’s original perception of Disney was of a serious artist, inspired by both modernist art and sentimental realism. These two often contradictory influences show in his work. He blurred the line of reality and imagination by creating worlds where animals could talk, plants were animated, and household objects felt emotion. In Snow White, the forest through which the banished girl flees has trees which try to grab and trip her, but nearby, kind animals prepare to comfort her. In addition, he incorporated dreams often in his work. Walt Disney encouraged naturalism to a degree unheard of in animation and cartoons. He insisted that his animators take evening art classes and he invented the multiplane camera, which created the illusion of depth in Snow White and his other animated feature films.

Disney also used his films to imbue hope and to promote certain virtues to his audience during the depression. His films in the 1930’s remind Americans that they will overcome the hard times through vigor and virtue. Two Disney films in the ‘30s stand out in particular for encouraging the persistence and courage of underdogs. Three Little Pigs (1933) features the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” while the dwarves in Snow White (1937) merrily sing “Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go.” Snow White, too, exhibits a hard-working demeanor both in her house and the dwarves’. Disney claims that “wisdom and courage is enough to defeat big, bad wolves of every description, and send them slinking away.” Through his films, he encouraged self-reliance, a quality that he had exhibited since his youth.

 Nesbet analyzes Disney’s impact on Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, especially the similarities between style of Snow White and Eisenstein’s film. Like Disney, Eisenstein valued full understanding of the characters and stories he portrayed on film. He studied Ivan’s story from multiple angles, from folklore to histories, to do just that. Eisenstein admired Disney for the comfort he brought to America and the world through his films. He believed that Americans were trapped in a world of torment and injustice, and Disney offered a temporary escape from that. Even though Disney films seem to support a form of obliviousness to the misfortunes throughout the country, he gives the nation something else that they need: laughter. One critic cited the American proverb: “A laugh a day keeps the doctor away,” which certainly brings to mind the similar proverb about an apple, and how it connects to the stepmother in Snow White and her deceptively beautiful poisonous apple that leads to “sleeping death.” Nesbet wonders if Disney has played the role of the apple for Eisenstein, irresistible to the Russian director.

            Eisenstein valued animation as a medium, due to its versatility of form. It allows for metamorphoses and transformations otherwise unachievable on film. The fire behind the mirror’s mask in Snow White, for example, also exhibits “flowing diversity of forms.” Shadow, too, has this quality. In Snow White, the dwarfs’ shadows occasionally move independently. At one point, Doc’s shadow turns and motions for quiet from Dopey’s shadow. Soldiers’ shadows in Ivan also seem to occasionally move independently across the wall. Disney uses the versatility of form to create comedy. However, occasionally malleable forms seem more grotesque than comedic, so certain characters had to be drawn more realistic than others. It was acceptable for the dwarfs to have unusual and exaggerated features, but Snow White could neither be comedic nor grotesque, so Disney based her motions off those of a real actress.