Disney Interpretations

I finally watched a talk Gabler gave in 2006, about the biography he wrote of Walt Disney.  Inasmuch as the writer gives much information on Walt, it is sad he has to use the material he learned from to fit his interpretations (or Mis-interpretations) which are in greatly part borrowed from Shickel anyway. Guess everybody knows the "control" explanation regarding the appeal of the parks and to also satisfy Walt's need for "escape". If there was anyone who looked at reality face to face in order to create everything he did, as well as to harmonize all the diversity he had under his lead, it was Walt Disney. To see, know, and handle reality was no easy feat, but no obstacle to him. I simply can't understand the impunity of attributing a mere need to escape to such person. Having control results from escaping reality, for Gabler.  Invert the equation and perhaps one corrects the misinterpretation: Having control is facing reality so as to take the step beyond: artistic freedom, letting go or, the abandonment of fantasy.

Disney Example

Walt Disney's curiosity was his being disarmed; his nakedness before life,

Walt Disney's courage was his dignity to fully own up to himself and go ahead with all of his being,

Walt Disney's confidence was his being true to himself, his being whole,

Walt Disney's constancy was his coherence; his capacity for committing,
Walt Disney's four Cs were his very purity!

A Disney New Year

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         Gabler says his book is an attempt to decipher the mystery of Walt Disney. But genius is mystery itself, and if one doesn't resort to the mystical dimension (another mystery) one will not even brush its meaning. Lets start the year by paying homage to genius, and bow our head to mystery. And to continue the year, lets remember that the spirit of adventure and that of creativity, both in the Disney essence, have a common seed to be paid homage to. In creativity and adventure one lets go of fear and, in the nakedness of childhood, becomes able to respond to something beyond one's ego. 

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Disney Analysis

     

     The letter Walt Disney wrote Don Graham shows something very important in Disney's guidance. The analysis of many different elements is fundamental to the reaching of integrity in the acting character, that is,  unity of shae, movement, expression and action. Walt Disney seemed to know that, like in real life, maybe like with Disney's own personality, only the awareness of division can bring unity: Integrity is a conquest of reconciliation.

The Seriousness of Playing

When you look at a miniature, be it a toy or a model, you immediately imagine a world happening in or through it. In creating such world you act like a god, and in living it in your imagination, you also become a character of it: a creature. In his love of toys and miniatures and in his creation therefrom, Walt Disney brought out the spirit of childhood as the common ground between  ritualistic activity and playing: the right to invent characters; to become a character and to follow scripts. 

   Disney gave shape to the right of giving matter a meaning beyond its appearance: to turn the world into one big story.

Disney Devotion

 Devotion is part of charisma, and it is also a mystery of the heart. It is a link with some sort of transcendent certainty. According to Ward Kimball, Walt believed "devoutly" in his cartoons and could, therefore, convince the bankers to invest in them. Faithfulness to oneself is, paradoxically,  faithfulness to what is beyond oneself. In being so much himself, Walt Disney was also the universal heart of his public.

Disney Reverence

     

 

     Like Walt Disney, who had ecology concerns much ahead of his time, the natives preserve nature because they revere it, and not just because of self-interest, like the "civilized" men, who finally realized that, by exhausting it, they will be victims themselves.

Disney Light

  It is reported that Walt Disney was an intense person. And he was a workaholic and he was always in the grip of passion.
  
   Intensity is living on edge: facing the abyss for the cause of depth;
   Intensity is creating: discovering ascension in vertiginous fall
   Intensity is burning: forgetting oneself for the sparkle of inspiration;

   Intensity is  breaking limits: infringing the expected, for the killing repetition;
   Intensity is overcoming rules:  Disobedience for the search of true self;
   Intensity is love: receiving infinitely and giving yet more;
   Intensity is flying: dispensing solidity to establish one's ground;
   Intensity is courage:  finding assertion in surrender itself;
     Intensity is fire: self-consumption for the sake of light.
  
  

Disney Light

      Like the sea, Walt Disney was constant change in sameness.
Like the sun, he
had the light of ebullience and that of growth, 
Like the air, that feels freer from the chains of gravity,
he could purify and uplift all of us in flight.