Speaker 1: Let's go by Forgotten. Hello everyone, and welcome to Forgotten Hollywood,
Speaker 1: your podcast and memories of yesterday year. My name is
Speaker 1: Doug Hesse and if you're tuning in Forgotten Hollywood for
Speaker 1: the first time, what I do in this podcast is
Speaker 1: take you on a journey back in time and share
Speaker 1: with you pieces of Hollywood that you may or may
Speaker 1: not know about. And today we have a very special
Speaker 1: guest with us today, Stephen Cranch Thomas, and he is
Speaker 1: here to talk about his book, Disney Animated Classics, A
Speaker 1: Comprehensive Guide. Stephen, Welcome to Forgot on Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Well, it's always a pleasure to have guests on authors,
Speaker 1: and you know, thank you for spending a few minutes
Speaker 1: out of your busy time to be with us today
Speaker 1: to talk about your book. You know, Thomas, one of
Speaker 1: the things that we always like to do right out
Speaker 1: of the gate is allow you, the author to kind
Speaker 1: of talk about what the books about in your own words.
Speaker 2: Of course, Yes, of Disney's Animated Classics is exactly what
Speaker 2: it says on the cover. It's run through each and
Speaker 2: every one of Disney's Animated Classics from snow White right
Speaker 2: up to Maana two, and each chapter uses the film
Speaker 2: in question to sort of launch off on exploration of
Speaker 2: Disney's films, of the production, sometimes of that film, but
Speaker 2: also on different themes. So you've got, for instance, the
Speaker 2: Dumbo chapter talks about the representation of alcohol and drinking
Speaker 2: in cinema and in particularly Disney's cartoons. Princess and the
Speaker 2: Frog talks about the representation of race. The Pokemontas chapter
Speaker 2: talks about the very questionable representation of the Native American
Speaker 2: sort of population and the engagements they had with the
Speaker 2: English in that film.
Speaker 1: What kind of inspired you write this book.
Speaker 2: I've been a huge fan of Disney all my life.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, we would get a lot
Speaker 2: of the videos on VHS, but we'd also record them
Speaker 2: off of the TV. And I went from, i suppose,
Speaker 2: being a child who loved Disney films to being a
Speaker 2: teenager who still really appreciated them, but was much more
Speaker 2: able to see the flaws and see the the interesting
Speaker 2: different things that make them not always perfect. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of talk about Disney in the sense
Speaker 2: of how great it is, how wonderful isn't not so
Speaker 2: much where people are willing to appreciate it at the
Speaker 2: same time as looking at it from an outside perspective
Speaker 2: and saying what makes this interesting within the world of cinema,
Speaker 2: but also what makes this flawed and great at the
Speaker 2: same time. When I was a student, I spent far
Speaker 2: too much of my student loan money on buying Disney
Speaker 2: DVDs until I had more or less all of them.
Speaker 2: I think I still have all of the Disney films
Speaker 2: on DVD up until Disney Plus became a thing, at
Speaker 2: which point I figured I'd save myself some money.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You know what's really fascinating to me is, you know,
Speaker 1: you talked about several different things, race, drinking, Native Americans,
Speaker 1: and I sometimes I don't think Disney gets the credit
Speaker 1: of kind of tackling some of those issues kind of
Speaker 1: in the forefront of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, there's there's a lot of really interesting
Speaker 2: approaches across the films towards societal norms and what was
Speaker 2: expected at the time. I mean, one of the most
Speaker 2: common things we think about in terms of Disney's flaws
Speaker 2: is the racism representation and the like sort of different
Speaker 2: poor representations of race throughout their films. A lot of
Speaker 2: people talk back to Dumbo, and and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of flaws in that. I mean, they've got the circus
Speaker 2: workers are these faceless, almost anonymous, dark figures who sing
Speaker 2: about being i mean very responsible their money and leaning
Speaker 2: into a lot of cliches at the time. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, the crows which are frequently called out
Speaker 2: the leader of the crows and Dumbo is literally called
Speaker 2: Jim Crow, but he's also one of the most likable
Speaker 2: and kind characters in the entire film. I think very
Speaker 2: often Disney tries to push the boundaries a little bit
Speaker 2: without actually going so far as to cause trouble necessarily.
Speaker 2: Let's go by Garden Harleywood