Neal Gabler

[Super Aurora]

Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about Walt personal life. It's none of my business and it shouldn't be. All that matters to me is that I respected Walt as a man who challenge and think up new ideas and took risks to make them happen.

It's the same deal with MJ. I don't give a crap about his personal life or that pedophile scandal. I like MJ for his music and the way he revolutionize it.

This is kinda why I dislike paparazzi and all those nosy people needing to get personal info on famous people.

Granted this isn't a paparazzi, but it still going into analysis in-depth on someone personal life. Sure it may be interesting to know more about him, but should people really care about such things?

[Goliath]

Rudy Matt: yeah, you got me, I'm a communist! I secretly work for Kim Jong-Il and I'm infiltrating on this message board to all convert you to communism, by promoting illegal downloading. You see right through me.

I also don't see why you would do something really offensive to a race while you had people of that race working for you.

I bet if they really found it racist, they would leave. Who would want to be around something so offensive, if it was so? The could make money somewhere else, really.

Well, what about Stephen Fetchit and Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and so many, many other black (or Assian or Native-American) actors who had to play degrading and insulting stereotypes, because those were the only parts they got offered? They had to make money, so they did it. It says nothing about whether or not it is (perceived ot be) racism.

[Disney Duster]

Well yes, but doing art is slightly different. You can sell your own art, and there were other animation studios like UPA, and some people left Disney to start their own studios that they could have joined. But to set up your own movie-making studio and be a big Hollywood star doing parts you wanted as minority, that's much harder. I admit you have a point, but it's not quite the same.

[BelleGirl]

Some pondering on my part:

Once a (famous) person is labelled by certain people as 'racist' or 'anti semite' and such like, even thoug it's not quite justified, it's very hard to take off this lable.

"I know that he was a racist, just prove that he was not!" And no proof will be enough.

For instance: some poeple have labelled Charles Dickens as an anti-semite because they know one thing of him: he created a Jewish character named Fagin for Oliver Twist who was a downright scoundrel. If they would bother to read a biography about Charles Dickens like Edgar Johnsons' Charles Dickens: his tragedy and triumph they would find out that CD actually had a friendly attitude towards Jews and that he never intended Fagin to be some kind of stereotype of The Bad Jew. (Fagin also is a bit to complex to be just a stereotype). Also recommended: Our Mutual Friend, a later novel in which CD sticks up for Jewish people.

Sorry for going so off-topic, but CD is my other obsession besides WD...

[Goliath]

Well yes, but doing art is slightly different. You can sell your own art, and there were other animation studios like UPA, and some people left Disney to start their own studios that they could have joined. But to set up your own movie-making studio and be a big Hollywood star doing parts you wanted as minority, that's much harder. I admit you have a point, but it's not quite the same.

Well, first of all, like some other people pointed out in Disney's defense: all studio's would, from time to time, fall back on racial stereotypes to make fun of. So it wouldn't really matter if the artists would go to work for a different studio. And setting up your own studio, being a minority (black, asian, native american) in the 1930s, '40s, '50s or even '60s? No way, man!

[Disney Duster]

I didn't mean they would set up their own studio, but they would join the good amount set up by others who left the studio, or do their won work as artists often do. Actors need to be seen and especially if you want to be stage actor. But artists can just sell their art.

No one answered what Walt Disney did to edit out Sunflower yet in here. Did he even know about it during production when so, so many characters and scenes were in that long film of Fantasia, which is not just one story with one defined cast, and has many more characters to keep track of?

Anyway, it was interesting there were non-negative looking "black" centaurs and then a negative one both shown in the same segmeny...almost like a laugh and then "no seriously, this is what they're really like, beautiful..."

[Elladorine]

I'm unfamiliar with Neal Gabler's work, but I did read Marc Eliot's "Dark Prince" book way back when I was in college. It was so full of factual errors (release dates and the like) that I couldn't find anything credible in the book.

Anyway, above all else Walt was only human. He may have had some demons, but don't we all?

[Rudy Matt]

Rudy Matt: yeah, you got me, I'm a communist! I secretly work for Kim Jong-Il and I'm infiltrating on this message board to all convert you to communism, by promoting illegal downloading. You see right through me.

Not saying you work for a communist government. But anyone who feels they have a right to other people's property because that other person (or corporation) "makes too much money" is, by definition, communist. If you think you should be able to copy and or download copied material because "information and content should be free", you're a communist. Anyone who wants to re-allocate the resources of property owners and distribute those resources to promote some sort of economic fairness or equality...that's communism. If you think it's okay that a digital copy of a Harry Potter book is available for free on the internet because J.K. Rowling has "made too much money already", you're a communist. If you think it's ok to distribute the intellectual properties of the Walt Disney Company via the internet because "they make too much money" and "it won't hurt them" and "they should have done it themselves" - you're a communist.

[Super Aurora]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI

[Goliath]

If you think you should be able to copy and or download copied material because "information and content should be free", you're a communist.

Ah, I've seen you've read the chapter on internet downloading in Marx' Das Kapital...

I know I'm going to regret the fact that I have even bothered to dignify your clueless post with an answer, but I couldn't resist telling you what an unbelievable idiot you are if you really believe what you have written here. If you do, PLEASE, I beg you: do some reading on the political system that is called 'communism', okay? Promise me. The mere thought of people out there who have such a distorted view of politics is hurting my brains, and my belief in mankind.

And next time, please make sure you accuse the right person. I've never downloaded a single film in my life. That was another poster you are referring to. I only said I didn't mind it. You got that difference, you corporate shill?

[Goliath]

I want to apologize to Rumpelstiltskin for my part in bringing his thread completely off-topic. I should have ignored the personal insults that were thrown at me, instead of replying to them. I'm sorry. If a moderator could take care of it (deleting the off-topic posts by both me and R.M.), I would appreciate it.

Back on topic. Which biography do you think is the most evenhanded, that means: which one is the most fair and balanced? (Not portraying Walt Disney as either a sinner or a saint.)

[ajmrowland]

I haven't read either of these biographies, and my spending habits are usually conservative. Are these worth buying?

Also, I break the DRM on some of my Digital Copies so I can watch them on my PSP. Does that make me a communist?

[Rudy Matt]

If you paid for your content, I don't personally believe moving content to another media device is property theft. You piad for it, you'e only moving it. Believe it or not, property theft itself doesn't make you a Communist, it's how you justify it, i.e. "those corporations make too much money, so it's not wrong that I'm stealing from them -- Im spreading the wealth". That's a communist.

Sorrell was funded by Communists, Sorrell bragged about it when trying to force a labor contract at the Disney studios, and Sorrell bragged about his associations later. Walt Disney did nothing wrong -- in fact, he followed the law and answered the questions truthfully and honestly. The crime is that a Congressional body was ever formed in the first place asking people to inform on each other as to their political beliefs.

[ajmrowland]

If you paid for your content, I don't personally believe moving content to another media device is property theft. You piad for it, you'e only moving it. Believe it or not, property theft itself doesn't make you a Communist, it's how you justify it, i.e. "those corporations make too much money, so it's not wrong that I'm stealing from them -- Im spreading the wealth". That's a communist.

I was just being sarcastic.

[Kossage]

I've read Gabler's book, and I think it balances the good, the bad and the ugly bits well. Focusing on Walt's "escapism" is what creates a theme which ties all the stuff together; it's a common strategy for writers, after all.

I liked how detailed it was in many sections although at times I was hoping to get more information. Still, it's worth reading as a fascinating study of Walt's life.

[Rudy Matt]

Yeah, but it doesn't connect the dots...why was Walt "escaping" in the first place...

[Kossage]

Walt was escaping because of the pressures that the "real world" placed on him. Gabler gave plenty of explanations what those pressures were: e.g. Walt's strained relationship with his father, eagerness to "run away" and try his wings (which many Disneys seemed to have done to an extent as explained in the early parts of the book when Gabler chronicles the deeds of Walt's father, grandfather etc.), sheltering himself from people when he felt he had been betrayed (e.g. Mintz, the strike). Walt thus used animation (and later projects like Disneyland) as a means to escape and to create a perfect utopia where he would be in control. I thought Gabler explained this well in the book.

[ajmrowland]

I think I can relate, to an extent.