I’m breaking my long hiatus just to express some outrage. The following garbage is a scan from John Vivian’s The Media of Mass Communication (pg. 155, Tenth Edition), a textbook costing $100+, used at Ithaca College (the school I attend) and elsewhere.
The whole book has that condescending tone, but the misinformation in this passage here is so abominable and inexcusable that the accuracy of anything else Vivian has written is suspect. IC’s faculty should think twice before including any of Vivian’s textbooks as part of their courses in the future.
My new favorite word: sub-species.
What a douche.
Journalists and mainstream film/media writers think when it comes to animation they don’t have to do their homework.
I forget the exact quote , but I think it was Joe Adamson who had a great line in his Tex Avery book about know-nothing critics who may as well have made a reference to “Albert Hitchcock’s Myrna Loy westerns” in describing how woefully ill-informed most critics are about animation history or animation directors.
Vivian’s “the character of ‘Willie’ eventually morphed into Mickey Mouse” is a great example of that sort of ‘make-it-up-as-you-go-along because who will know the difference?’ sub-species of animation history writing . (just dumb cartoons for kids after all … )
How can any “professional” author boil animation history down to only two paragraphs?
Scrounge up a copy of Ralph Stephenson’s “The Animated Film” from 1973 if you really want to get your blood pressure going. Blood will come out of your ears after you finish reading his sections on non-UPA Hollywood animation.
Yes, that’s pretty disgusting. I’m afraid that many sorts of history text-books (or historical sections within text-books that are not principally historical) like-wise confuse uninformed, inferential leaps with plain fact.
It’s amazing the things you learn about yourself. I own a time machine and don’t even know it because in 1977 I jumped in it, went to the 1990s, watched the newly-released ‘Star Wars’ and came back.
I wondered why popcorn was so much more expensive.
I didn’t realise Disney was solely responsible for “defining genres” when it came to animation.
Isn’t Stephenson the guy who referred to Ub Iwerks as having made a series of cartoons starring a character called “Little Negro”?
Yeah, that’s Ralph. I’m still waiting to see Robert McKimson’s 1956 cartoon “Mixed Bastard”.
This sort of falls to the same category.
http://www.amazon.com/Oswald-Lucky-Rabbit-Lambert-Surhone/dp/6131086923
Yes I remember when Toy Story was the first movie to be completely animated by computers, the computers were completely sentient beings and required no pay,only electricity,and thus all the animators with their old fashioned labour intensive animating techniques were fired and this heralded the new age of cg animation.
Imagine what is taught as fact in other fields.
Joel, you don’t even need to go to other fields for this stuff. Frankly, it’s amazing what some incredibly careful, meticulous Warner-centric animation scholars think they know about Disney. And vice versa.
Good grief!! That is simply inexcusable!! This sounds like something my old film professor would say. he knew next to nothing about animation, and yet he taught a class on it. I use the term “teach” very loosely. This guy thought Steamboat Willie was released in 1919 and that all of the old Hollywood cartoons were for kids. What a schmuck.
I love all the Willie Mouse cartoons! It was such a shame that he was replaced by Mickey!
“the character of ‘Willie’ eventually morphed into Mickey Mouse”
Why, that’s just ‘plane crazy’!!
What was wrong with Ralph Stephenson’s “The Animated Film” from 1973? It clearly stated that “Mickey’s Circus” was the first Mickey cartoon in color and that the Tex Avery Tom and Jerry cartoons were terribly violent! Thank goodness UPA saved the day! Who could possibly argue with any of this?
And this is from an “educated scholar”. Your average Joe on the street knows even less about animation. It’s hard not to feel like an elitist when you’re surrounded by mostly idiots.
:confused: Was that John Vivian, written version of 5 seconds movies that you can find on http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/ i.e whole history of animation in 2 paragraphs.
Got that was excruciating horrible. I would be banning this book if I had the authority!
Holy livin christ.
Whut an idjit!
Ub Iwerks’ obituary was reprinted in his biography, The Man Behind the Mouse, and it included the lines “Iwerks was the chief animator on the first Steamboat Willie cartoon exhibited in 1928. Steamboat Willie later evolved into Mickey Mouse.” I wonder how many other people have this misconception.