The Difference from Disney

In his autobiography, Chuck Jones contends that the Golden Age of Hollywood Animation often referred to by critics was actually two golden ages (Jones, 1989, p. 60). The first was the golden age of Disney cartoons, during the nineteen thirties. The second was the golden age of Warners and MGM, starting in 1940 with the release of Tex Avery's A Wild Hare, the first Bugs Bunny cartoon. His suggestion is a little misleading, as the Disney product of the forties was certainly the match for the thirties product: the only change was some extra competition. Yet the comment is a valuable nevertheless, because it draws out the fact that there was a massive difference in the work of Disney and the post 1940 work at Warners and MGM.

It would be wrong to suggest that there was a "Warner Brothers style" in quite the same way as there was a "Disney style." At Disney, there was a consistent house style imposed by the producer (Disney himself) that remained unchanged by the whims of directors or the passage of time. Yet there is a wide range of styles evident in the work at Warners: the studio's cartoons bear an "auteurist" approach very well. Tex Avery's work is very different to Chuck Jones's. The work during the forties at Warners (led by Avery and Robert Clampett) is very different to the work during the fifties (led by Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson). Nevertheless, there remain some common traits that contrast with Disney.

A fascinating contrast can be drawn between Disney's Fantasia and Warner Brother's shorts that used classical music, such as Robert Clampett's A Corny Concerto (1944) or Chuck Jones's What's Opera Doc? (1957). These shorts bracket the spectrum of Warner's films in a number of ways. Clampett was the most extreme of all Warner directors, while Jones was probably the most subtle. The Clampett film was released relatively early in Warner's "golden period," while Jones' film was released in the studio's declining days.

The first notable contrasts between the Disney work and the Warners work is in technological sophistication. Disney cartoons (particularly Fantasia) enjoyed huge budgets. Schneider (1988) quotes a mid 1930s Disney Budget at $60000 a short: in 1937 Warners paid $9000 a short, some of which went to producer Leon Schlesinger. The artists working on Fantasia had access to sophisticated equipment such as multi-plane cameras, used to create the perspective effects in the final "Ave Maria" segment (Maltin, 1987, p.62). They also had enough money to redraw any failed animation. The Warner directors could make up some of this ground with clever improvised effects such as the "spotlight" effect used in What's Opera Doc? (Adamson, 1990). Yet they always had a noticeably rougher look, particularly in the early forties. Tex Avery's early Warner cartoons, for example, are shamefully badly drawn and, as Joe Adamson (1975, p.42) notes, are ponderously paced to stretch the screen time to the required six minutes.

Partly as a result of these budgetary differences, and partly as an attempt by Warners to carve out a market niche, there were different preoccupations in the two studio's work. At Disney, the emphasis was always on reality. Not for nothing was one book on animation called Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life. After the early thirties, recreation of real phenomena was always the prevailing concern. At Warners, where such sophisticated animation was unfeasible, the emphasis was on violation of reality. In A Corny Concerto, Robert Clampett has Bugs Bunny deflate when killed, for example. While Disney did use sight gags that were not strictly possible, it is almost impossible to imagine Mickey Mouse suffering such a fate. Even less likely is that Mickey would ever explicitly comment on his status as a cartoon character, in the kind of manner seen so often in Warner cartoons. Tex Avery, in particular, loved this kind of joke: hence in A Feud There Was, his early character Egghead claims: "In these here cartoon pictures, a fellow can do about anything." (Quoted in Adamson, 1975, p. 211 and Schneider, 1988, p. 48).

Robert Sklar (in Peary & Peary, 1980, p.64) attributes this to Disney's desire to create a more realistic (and hence more effective) framework for his morality plays to take place in. Disney was very much a conservative: his "bland and inoffensive" approach to cartoons was probably best summed up when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Commission: "We watch so that nothing gets into the cartoons that would be harmful to any group or any country. We have large audiences of children and different groups, and we try to keep them as free from anything that would offend anybody as possible" (in Peary & Peary, 1980, p.94). While it would be wrong to describe the Disney features and shorts as humourless, the humour was always subtle and subdued, and took place against a background that was strictly orthodox. Serious moral stories are usually played out amongst the gags, especially in features, and there is often an air of sombre respect for "high art," reaching a height in Fantasia.

Warner cartoons, however, are openly satirical and subversive. A Corny Concerto and What's Opera, Doc? both send up Fantasia, for example. The former does so explicitly, with its whole structure based on Disney's film, including Elmer Fudd as a foppish substitute for Deems Taylor. What's Opera, Doc? is more subtle, but even it plays on portions of the "Night on Bald Mountain," "Pastoral Symphony," "Dance of the Hours" and "Toccata and Fugue" segments of Fantasia. Notably, Disney did not change the music, being hesitant even about changing the order of pieces in "The Nutcracker Suite," yet Jones and musical director Carl Stalling did not hesitate before condensing fourteen hours of Wagner to six minutes for What's Opera Doc? (Maltin, 1987). These films characterise both the disrespect for authority and culture in Warners cartoons and their tendency to parody. It was not until Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, and released under the "adult" Touchstone label) or Aladdin (1992) that Disney films started toying with the kind of pop-culture references that Warners had been using as far back as the thirties.

In terms of cinematic devices used by the different studios, the differences are somewhat more subtle. Disney's films, after the early years, were always intensely cinematic, getting away from the static, "theatrical" staging that is often used in cartoons by using a wide variety of different shots and varied editing techniques. The same was true in many (but not all) of the Warners cartoons: Maltin (1987) credits the introduction to the studio of such techniques to Frank Tashlin. The difference was that the Warner directors were more willing to carry such stylistic tricks to extremes. An example of a technique used very rarely in Disney work is the use of backgrounds to reflect emotional states. In Fantasia this technique appears very briefly as Mickey attacks the broomstick with an axe and the screen turns a bright scarlet. Yet this is an isolated example: Warners directors (especially Tashlin, Clampett and Jones) would constantly use even more extreme techniques. Hence the use of odd colour schemes in What's Opera, Doc? or even weirder examples such as the "wallpaper" backgrounds of Wackiki Wabbit (1943).

Disney, in the thirties, took almost complete hold of the American cartoon industry. The only way to compete with him was to diversify, and Warner cartoons did so with a vengeance. The cartoon industry before 1940 was almost completely dominated by Disney: post 1940, there was a dual sensibility. At one end of the spectrum there was the pure, friendly, family cartoons of Disney. At the other was what Ralph Stevenson (1973, p.46) called "the Tex Avery School of Violence." Both styles have their own virtues and proponents, and despite the fact that most Warner Brothers and MGM staff were Disney trained, they are extremely different in style and subject matter.

References

Adamson, J., 1975, Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, Da Capo, New York.

Adamson, J. 1990, Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Maltin, L., 1987, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Revised Edition, New American Library, New York and Scarborough.

Peary, D. & Peary, G. (eds), 1980, The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York.

Schneider, S., 1988, That's All Folks: The Art of Warner Brothers Animation, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Stephenson, R., 1973, The Animated Film, Tantivy Press, London.

Bibliography

Beck, J. & Friedwald, W., 1989, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Brothers Cartoons, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Filmography

Fantasia, 1940, Supervised by Ben Sharpsteen, Produced by Walt Disney.

A Corny Concerto, 1943, Directed by Robert Clampett.

What's Opera, Doc?, 1957, Directed by Chuck Jones.

Wackiki Wabbit, 1943, Directed by Chuck Jones.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988, Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Animation Directed by Richard Williams.

Aladdin, 1992, Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements.