I wrote this paper for Dr. Steve Rybin for a Film History class in 2015.

Animated Fuel for the Fire in Everyone: Sergei Eisenstein’s Fandom Views on Walt Disney’s Animated Works

As twenty-four individual frames move through a projector every second, films create the illusion of movement and life. In order to create this same effect, animators before the time of computers needed to create the same number of images by hand to make their characters appear to come to life. This idea of having multiple, different images create a single idea (in this case, movement) in an audience’s mind is similar to the idea of Soviet Montage, a film movement in the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. Sergei Eisenstein, one of the most famous directors of the Soviet Montage movement, was intrigued by animation, particularly of the work produced by Walt Disney. Neal Gabler discusses in his biography of Disney that Eisenstein’s writings state that the director was even “sometimes frightened by watching Disney’s films,” stating that the director wrote that he was “frightened because of some absolute perfection in what he does” and because Disney seemed to know “all the most secret strands of human thought, images, ideas, and feelings.”[1] Eisenstein wrote extensively about his admiration for Disney’s work and found that the works reached audiences on a primal, almost indefinable level that defies criticism. Citing several examples of the works produced by the Disney studio, Eisenstein found instances of totemism, animism, and “plasmaticity” in Disney’s productions. He compared Disney’s works with other forms of art and literature, and he praised Disney for giving his audiences a way to escape from their dreary, American lives.

Throughout the work produced by Walt Disney, Sergei Eisenstein found several instances of totemism, the idea of having an animal or some object become a symbol for a person or group of people. In his writings, he defines three stages of totemism and places Disney at the third stage, the “comparison of man and animal, the metaphorical order,” stating that Disney’s “animals are metaphorical to humans, i.e., a reversed comparison of man with animals.”[2] The comparison of humans to animals has occurred throughout history, storytelling, and mythology, and its presence in Disney’s work seems to have had an impact on Eisenstein. The Silly Symphonies cartoon short The Grasshopper and the Ants (1934) is a retelling of the Aesop fable in which a lazy grasshopper sings all summer while the ants work to prepare for the winter. This animated version of the fable is the perfect example of using animals to illustrate human characteristics so that humans can learn a moral lesson. The idea of totemism goes deeper for Eisenstein as it provides a catharsis for audiences and a way to stir audience members to take action against hypocritical social institutions. Donald Duck is famous for losing his temper, and the cartoon short Self Control (1938) shows him trying to learn to control his temper by listening to lessons on the radio. As he tries to listen to the lesson, he is bothered by a noisy woodpecker and an uncooperative hammock, causing him to lose his temper anyway and smash the radio into bits. Eisenstein sees Donald’s actions as symbolic of the reaction that citizens should have toward their oppressive social institutions. “And with what pleasure Donald Duck smashes the radio receiver, this machine of self-discipline and self-control, after suffering over the course of the picture a thousand and one misfortunes, for in it he inhibits his directness and by force of will tries to fetter it, to work it over according to the desire of the hypocritical, sanctimonious voice on the radio receiver, which calls the listener to straightforward Christian good works, and to the enslavement of personal individuality.”[3]

The idea of animism, or the instilling of life into nonliving things, was another trait of Disney’s animation that attracted Eisenstein. The ability to animate is “Disney par excellence – he animates, endows with soul, spirit, and passions something that is not even natural, but a reproduction, in outline. This is animism at its highest stage, the animated cartoon.”[4] A sequence in the Disney feature film Make Mine Music (Robert Cormack, 1946) illustrates the idea of drawn lines being given life. In the “After You’ve Gone” segment of the film, straight lines morph into musical notes as jazz music is played. The musical notes become instruments that then march to the music. Here, the idea of animism that fascinated Eisenstein is depicted onscreen as the animators inject life into simple line drawings and then bring musical instruments to life. Eisenstein furthers the idea of giving life to nonliving things when he states, “if it moves, then it is animated, i.e., it moves by means of an internal, independent, impulse of will.”[5] He goes on to say, “We know that these are drawings, and not living beings. We know that this is a projection onto a screen. We know that they are ‘miracles’ and tricks of technology and that such beings don’t actually exist in the world. And at the very same time, we sense them as living, we sense them as active, acting, we sense them as existing and we assume that they are even sentient!” [6] So fascinated with the idea of instilling life into nonliving things was Eisenstein that he overlooked the animation process itself. Even though he visited the Walt Disney Studio and saw the animation process first hand, he took no notice of ongoing labor disputes and the process involved in making an animated film. According to Michael North, Eisenstein saw the phenomenon of animation as a form of freedom from the mechanized world that creates it.[7]

Another avenue to freedom of spirit that Eisenstein saw in Disney’s work came in the form of transformation or, as Eisenstein called it, “plasmaticity.” He defines plasmaticity as “the rejection of the constraint of form…freedom from ossification, an ability to take on any form dynamically.” He finds many examples in Disney’s work. From the earliest days of the Disney studios, animated characters have been depicted as elastic and transformative. In Steamboat Willie (1928) Mickey Mouse’s body is stretched like a rubber band. In the 1938 short Merbabies, several undersea creatures take part in a parade that looks like a circus parade. In the scene, octopi walk in a line like elephants, and a fish with stripes looks and sounds like a tiger. Eisenstein discusses the illustrations in an Alice in Wonderland book and concentrates on the long neck that the picture portrays on Alice as she eats the food and becomes big. This same neck trick appears in the “Casey at the Bat” sequence in Make Mine Music. As the pitcher winds up to throw the baseball to the mighty Casey, he shows his anxiety with a gulp that stretches his neck to twice its length. In the “Peter and the Wolf” segment of the same film, Sasha the bird wakes up after a blow to the head to discover she is in the wolf’s mouth. Her moment of panic is illustrated by her shaking body and her head becoming two heads as she sees both rows of the wolf’s teeth. These cases of transformation provide not only comedy but also the hope that audience members can find the hope to transform their own lives. A case that Eisenstein discussed at length came from the Lonesome Ghosts short of 1937. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy are trying to chase ghosts away from an old house. They seem to be failing until the trio falls into some dough and becomes covered in it, making themselves appear ghostly. The ghosts are then frightened away by the new “ghosts” that have appeared. Eisenstein writes, “The charm of this twist is pure Disney, a unique morality about how, having just joined the fantastical, alogical and emotional order, it becomes possible to gain some control and mastery in a realm free from the fetters of logic, from fetters in general.”[8]

Eisenstein carried his idea of “plasmaticity” to a more primal, pre-evolutionary stage. Throughout his writings on Disney, he discussed the use of fire and water as agents of transformation. In the 1938 short Moth and the Flame, a candle flame comes alive, complete with face and arms as it tries to seduce a female moth. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell, 1937), the face in the magic mirror seems to materialize from flames. Eisenstein spends several pages discussing the allure of fire to audiences and to everyone dating back to the most primitive of men. He discusses the role of fire in religion from Moses and the Burning Bush to the images that people claim to see when peering into it. In fire, he sees the ability of Man to transform his environment and the find his identity. Eisenstein then mentions water in the context of the 1937 short Hawaiian Holiday. In the short, as Goofy tries to surf, the water takes the shape of a hand and grabs Goofy’s surfboard, causing him to wipe out. Water can also change physical states, becoming solid, liquid, or gas. In water, Eisenstein finds Man’s ability to transform himself to overcome his environment. Disney’s use of fire and water in his work suggests to Eisenstein that Disney is connecting to his audiences on a primal level about which they most likely are not aware. Anne Nesbet discusses Eisenstein’s linking of Disney’s films to the primal instincts of humans. “Disney’s animated characters allow the viewer to venture vicariously ‘back down the evolutionary ladder’ [Eisenstein] to those primordial times when existence is all possibility, identity a future potential rather than a present constraint.”[9]

A technique that most animators and Disney in particular use is the practice of placing extra lines and squiggles on the outside of a drawing in order to illustrate the movement or action of a character. Eisenstein was fascinated by these extra lines and saw them as both part of the character and having lives of their own. In his writings, he recalls a scene from The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940) in which Chaplin’s character, Hynkel, washes the word “Jew” off a vandalized wall. Eisenstein’s description of the scene states that the manner in which Hynkel washes off the word shows that, to him, the word is simply a series of white lines with no real meaning. The comedy of the scene comes from the dichotomy of Hynkel’s interpretation of the pointless lines and the audience’s response to the lines’ formation of the hateful word. “This comic mechanism is clear: the essence and form are disunited. The effect is achieved because we recognize them as inseparable, belonging to one another.”[10] Eisenstein applies this dichotomy to the lines and squiggles used in Disney’s animation. To Eisenstein, the stretching of a cartoon neck or the visible lines when a character shudders is especially comical because of this breaking apart of the action from the action indicator.

Throughout his writings, Eisenstein praised Disney’s works by comparing them to other works of art and literature. The “Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met” segment of Make Mine Music captured his imagination, and he compared it to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum. The segment tells the story of a whale who can sing opera and longs to sing in front of an audience. A human, when hearing the tones emanating from the creature, mistakenly assumes that the whale has swallowed an actual singer and repeatedly tries to harpoon Willie, even though the harpoon boat’s crew loves the singing and tries to stop the human. Eisenstein furthers his discussion of the primal elements to which Disney connects by comparing Willie the Whale’s entrance onstage at the Metropolitan Opera House to a “kick” that humans experience when babies are in the womb. He also compares Willie’s entrance to The Pit and the Pendulum. “Willie ‘bursts in’ from the stage into the audience like the pendulum ‘bursts in’ to the cell of the prisoner of the inquisition in the novella.”[11] To Eisenstein, this “bursting in” recalls the act of the father’s flesh fertilizing the mother’s womb.

Even as critics and authors began to lose faith in Walt Disney’s artistic abilities during the 1940’s, Sergei Eisenstein continued to defend the importance of Disney’s work. World War II had caused the closure of foreign film markets, so Disney resorted to making “package films,” feature-length films that were composed of shorter stories and segments. The package films, which included such films as Make Mine Music, The Three Caballeros (Norman Ferguson, 1944), and Fun and Fancy Free (Homer Brightman, 1947), were cheaper to produce and could later be broken apart and distributed as short films. The critical reception for these films was cold compared Disney’s earlier releases, but Eisenstein continued to praise the studio. In 1946, he wrote, “Yet another perfectly brilliant new Disney: Make Mine Music.”[12] Aside from the analysis of Disney’s ability to reach his audiences creatively, Eisenstein’s appreciation of Disney’s works stemmed from the films’ ability to help audiences temporarily escape from their lives, especially for Americans. “But everyone will remember him (Disney) with warm gratitude for those moments of respite from the flow of intense struggle for life and existence that he brought to the viewers during the tough years of ‘social paradise’ of democratic America.”[13] “Disney is a marvelous lullaby for the suffering and unfortunate, the oppressed and dispossessed. For those bound by work hours and the regulated minutes of break-time, the mathematical exactitude of the clock, for those whose life is ruled by dollars and cents.”[14] The 1933 short The Three Little Pigs provided not a lullaby but an anthem for the American public during the Great Depression. With the wolf from the short serving as a symbol of the Depression and its oppressive hold on American society, the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” became one of the most popular songs of that year, spending eight weeks in the top ten songs on the Billboard chart. Eisenstein, a member of the First Moscow International Film Festival jury, insisted that The Three Little Pigs win first prize in the festival that year. He lost the vote, but the short was awarded a special prize by the jury. He later wrote of the song, “Frightening, frightening is the big bad wolf of unemployment…but ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’ comes flying from the screen…This cry of optimism could only occur in a drawing…thank goodness there is Disney’s talent and the ‘great comforter,’ the cinema.”[15]

Surprisingly, many similarities exist between Sergei Eisenstein and Walt Disney. Both are film producers and directors, and both, according to Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto in his essay called “Images of Empire,” were keenly aware of the fundamental connections between the cinema and amusement park entertainment. Both filmmakers even used the music of Sergei Prokofiev in their productions, Disney in his “Peter and the Wolf” short and Eisenstein in his Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1945) films. Sergei Eisenstein admired the work of Walt Disney and wrote extensively of his connection to the charms of animation. He saw the same things that all of Disney’s audiences could see, but he was able to verbalize the ways and the reasons that Disney was able to reach audiences of all ages all over the world. “The work of this master is the greatest contribution of the American people to art – the greatest contribution of the Americans to world culture.”

[1] Gabler,Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. Page 204.

[2] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 46.

[3] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 16.

[4] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 32.

[5] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 51.

[6] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 52.

[7] North, Michael. Machine-Age Comedy. Page 60.

[8] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 16.

[9] Nesbet, Anne. Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking. Page 188.

[10] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 55.

[11] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 77.

[12] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 73.

[13] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 10.

[14] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 38.

[15] Eisenstein, Sergei. Disney. Page 39.

Works Cited

Eisenstein, Sergei, Oksana Bulgakowa, Dietmar Hochmuth, and Dustin Condren. Disney.  N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print.

Leslie, Esther. Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde. London: Verso, 2004. Print.

Nesbet, Anne. Savage Junctures: Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Print.

North, Michael. Machine-Age Comedy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney: An American Original. New York, NY: Hyperion, 1994. Print.

Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. “Images of Empire: Tokyo Disneyland and Japanese Cultural Imperialism.” Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. Ed. Eric Smoodin. New York: Routledge, 1994. 181-99. Print.