WI No Disney?

jmberry

Regardless of how you feel about him, no one can deny Walt Disney greatly influenced culture around the world. My question is, what if he never went into animation, or was never born? How do you think culture and animation would have developed without Mickey Mouse and friends?
 

Cythia

First , you could put off the animal rights activists a generation or so.

His anthropomorphic depiction of animal life as it never was has influence beyond it's entertainment value. People actually believe it was not edited to remove any scenes that would upset the little kiddies. And almost all nature films since have had to follow this guide or be drummed off the screen.
 

fraa Jad

We might have saner copyright length with all kinds of butterflies with regards to culture and digital rights. Less generic pop culture, more real culture and self-expression, more liberal societies overall.
 

David S Poepoe

Banned
fraa Jad said:
We might have saner copyright length with all kinds of butterflies with regards to culture and digital rights. Less generic pop culture, more real culture and self-expression, more liberal societies overall.
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Questionable to a great degree. A much more saner copyright length should be about two centuries. And what is 'real culture'? A friend of mine always stated that there was 'no culture' west of the Mississippi.
 

Mark E.

fraa Jad said:
We might have saner copyright length with all kinds of butterflies with regards to culture and digital rights. Less generic pop culture, more real culture and self-expression, more liberal societies overall.
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While Disney was often cited over the changes in copyright law in 1978 and 1998, the entertainment industry overall would have pushed the changes with or without Disney.

From 1909 to 1978, copyrights had a maximum term of 56 years. That means any work copyrighted in 1920 would become public domain after 1976. The entertainment industry as a whole fought to keep early cinema and recorded music under copyright and the result was a sweeping change in 1978 that changed the term to 75 years for collaborative work (life plus 55 years for individual work). In 1998, Congressman Sonny Bono pushed a law that added another 20 years to the term, so a 1930 film is protected until 2025.

Now, the Disney characters have yet another form of protection, even if the copyrights run out: they are trademarks. Unlike copyrights and patents, trademarks can be renewed indefinitely.

I do agree the 1978 law imposes sweeping restrictions that stifles creativity. Prior to that year, works had to be published with a notice, usually the circled letter (c) and the year; and the copyright had to be filed (with fee) that year. Quotes of non-copyrighted work could be more open.

Today, a copyright is created the moment a sound, picture or sentence is written, recorded, typed in e-mail or otherwise "fixed in tangible form." I am not sure why the entertainment industry would find such restrictions to their advantage, but here we are.
 

Mark E.

mojojojo said:
How would animation have changed in this TL?
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Disney was not alone with animation. In the twenties, Walter Lanz had great success with Andy Panda and other silent characters. In fact, Lanz and Universal Studios would end up taking the rights to Disney's (silent) Oswald Rabbit.

En route to California by train, Disney came up with the idea of Mickey Mouse, a character with a squeaky voice to star in talking cartoons for talking movies. Walter Lanz, on the other hand, would have less success with newly-acquired Oswald Rabbit than with his own noisy, animated creation, Woody Woodpecker.

Even without Disney, the thirties and forties would have seen the emergence of animated cartoons. By the fifties, Warner Bros. had a big foothold in cartoons and the sixties, Hanna/Barbera dominated the television market. Disney came up with theme parks, like Disneyland and Disney World. The next generation of animation (computer based) would have gone on without Disney.
 

Hendryk

Banned
mojojojo said:
How would animation have changed in this TL?
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My guess is that Hollywood wouldn't have got into its head that animation is for children, and by the 1950s we'd have seen animated features movies aimed at teenage and adult audiences.
 

Scott_B

Hendryk said:
My guess is that Hollywood wouldn't have got into its head that animation is for children, and by the 1950s we'd have seen animated features movies aimed at teenage and adult audiences.
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Hmmm I think you'd still have to wait for a Simpsons esque series to do that
 

David S Poepoe

Banned
Hendryk said:
My guess is that Hollywood wouldn't have got into its head that animation is for children, and by the 1950s we'd have seen animated features movies aimed at teenage and adult audiences.
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I'm not sure about that, tho you may have something. I think the overall problem is how labor intensive animation is and not every studio was set on exploiting that medium.
 

Nicole

Hm, looking into it, Harman-Isling, which made the early Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies was founded by people who got their start at Disney and went on to found MGM's cartoon studio (responsible for, among others, Tom and Jerry). So if you take Disney out of the equation, their careers are going to be quite different... the whole early animation industry in the United States is going to be unrecognizable.
 

Mark E.

Imajin said:
Hm, looking into it, Harman-Isling, which made the early Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies was founded by people who got their start at Disney and went on to found MGM's cartoon studio (responsible for, among others, Tom and Jerry). So if you take Disney out of the equation, their careers are going to be quite different... the whole early animation industry in the United States is going to be unrecognizable.
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Different, yes. But if you take out Disney, you are creating gaps for other animators/cartoonists to fill. At the time, slapstick comedy was a common genre for other cinema, so many of the whimsical themes would have still dominated the cartoons.
 

jmberry

Hendryk said:
My guess is that Hollywood wouldn't have got into its head that animation is for children, and by the 1950s we'd have seen animated features movies aimed at teenage and adult audiences.
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Actually, we had that OTL. It was called "Looney Tunes."
 

Mark E.

TheRageMachine said:
Flordia might have economic troubles, if I'm correct, since haveing Disney World here boosted it for a while.
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Orlando would not be as much of a tourist Mecca, but the coastal/beach environment would still support increased tourism. We should not forget that the settlement of the Sun Belt is more closely related with technical developments (insecticides, air conditioning) than cultural factors.
 

Mark E.

Hendryk said:
My guess is that Hollywood wouldn't have got into its head that animation is for children, and by the 1950s we'd have seen animated features movies aimed at teenage and adult audiences.
Click to expand...

Can you still get copies of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons from the early sixties? The themes are dated and the animation was not up to Disney quality. Their political (and environmental) themes, while entertaining to kids, still took an adolescent or adult understanding to appreciate. And few will dispute that The Flintstones were an animated adaptation of the theme of the Honeymooners.
 

Orville_third

Banned
Well, while Florida would still be tourist-centric, Orlando would be more of a military town until BRAC began. (I'm not sure where- or if- Universal or Sea World would be...)
And, perhaps Jay Ward (Creator of Bullwinkle) could be more influential- which could result in the live-action comedy "The Nut House" becoming more popular (It anticipated a number of other shows.)
 
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