Barrier’s take on Walt.
Picking up on Jake Friedman’s post from yesterday on our national cultural treasure Michael Barrier, I just received my Amazon shipment of the second Walt Disney biography in the past year.
Michael Barrier’s The Animated Man might prove to be a more interesting book for readers of this blog since it hyper focuses on the animation of Disney rather than the enterprises of Disney. Smart idea since many reading the last sentence will at first scratch their heads and wonder, “What’s the diff?”
Barrier himself wrote a fairly detailed commentary on the contrasts in his bio and Neil Gabler’s Walt. If the book’s half as interesting as the commentary I, for one, will be glued.
My two cents on Michael: as I implied up above, Michael’s constant research and dedication to cartoons makes him one of America’s great cultural historians. My natural bias makes me want to pop him one whenever he decries television animation because, like many other buff/historians/researchers, he just cannot get a handle on the changes in the world, the culture, and the filmmakers which shape contemporary art of any kind (it’s like writers who just refuse to admit that the minimalism of rock’n'roll can be seriously considered in the same ear space as jazz) But, the plain truth is, he approaches it with as objectively as I’ve ever seen anyone do it. He’s smart and thoughtful, and he’s willing to crack open every once in a while and kinda like something from TV. Anyone with any interest in cartoons (that includes you, filmmakers!) would do a lot worse than reading Michael’s history Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in its Golden Age.
–Fred
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On April 8th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Interesting commentary on the contrasts between his and Gabler’s book. I love Barrier’s opinionated lets-put-the-cards-on-the-table quality. Gabler’s book is, as Barrier says, pretty lacking in the enthusiasm department. When I went to hear Gabler present it at the Barnes and Noble on 63rd st, he seemed more interested in giving himself props for the top-secret access to the archives than he was proud of the history he was able to share. As Barrier says, “Most reviews of Gabler’s book, like almost all reviews of books dealing with animated films, have been written by people who know little or nothing about the subject.”