Ashley-Aidali Abril9/3/15

JUS 494Reflection 2

This week’s reading started off with Chapter entitled Parnassus. It was everything after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and how the studio had to decide what they were going to do next. It was definatley a tough read with so many different titles thrown at me and different people mentioned throughout Walt’s journey. It was interesting that Walt couldn’t decide what film to do next. He had so many ideas and wanted to do so much with his ideas to make the films he wants that he could not focus on which film he had to do next. I can definitely relate to him. I like to paint, it has become a hobby of mine and I enjoy doing it and there are times that when I sit down to paint, it is a struggle simply because I have such a big imagination and one canvas. It is difficult to keep track of what you want to do and how you want to do it that you try to take on many projects at once just so you won’t lose what you are thinking and what inspired it. I think that is why Walt Disney had so many things going on that he couldn’t just focus on one.

Since his mind was so scattered and he was working on so many projects, I can see why the films following Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were not as successful or as satisfying as Snow White. I think it is because Walt Disney was so consumed with his imagination and trying to get a grip on one image and one project that he was not satisfied with his films. I think that was why Walt had that breakdown and he felt that everything was going out of control. Everything was happening at once and everyone was expecting him to be something and he wanted to be everything as well. That is difficult and definitely relatable. I sometimes have so many things going at once, I have all of these creative ideas brewing inside on my mind that want to come out and there are not enough hours in the day or week to complete them all. That is how Walt feels and it feels like everything is spiraling out of control. That is why, I feel, that Walt Disney needed to have that sense of control, over his films, over his parks, over his companies, over his family. He needed that to survive.

On a different note, I feel like when reading this book, I learned something else about Walt Disney. It was that he was a truly miserable man and he was just trying to find a sense of happiness. He needed to work in order to distract himself from what misery, I think that he was feeling. Walt is a kind of person that wanted to make everyone feel something so much more with his films and his merchandise. I think that Walt was thinking that if he could make films and make everyone happy then he would feel a sense of happiness. Sure, he had his daughters that he adored and a wife that he had a questionable relationship with but I think that was the sole purpose and the reasoning of why he wanted so desperately to make something much more. His work was his escape for him as were they the escape of everyone during their time of need.

Another discovery of Walt’s personal life was that I think was compelling is just how hard it is to be that man. Everything that he did he was criticized. Everywhere he went he was questioned and everything that he had done, it was questioned. Everyone thinks that the is a subliminal message into everything that he did but I do not think that there is. There might be some sort of messages in his films and there might be something that should be questioned but I think that he was just trying to deal with his life, especially the death of his mother and he took so hard since he bought her the house where she died due to carbon monoxide poisoning. He was trying to build this company, I feel at this point, so his family would not struggle like he had struggled. I think that he was in this whole “making magic” for profit in order for his family not to struggle. He had a dream and although the dream was based on his imagination he was definitely in the whole ordeal for some sort of profit just because he wanted his imagination and his work to grow.

Discussion Questions1. After everything that happened with Snow White and Walt Disney and Lillian decided to adopt a

child after a 3rd miscarriage. Do you think that Lillian had miscarriages because she was stressing out about her relationship with Walt or because that was how her body worked?

2. Do you think that Walt Disney couldn’t get a grip on his next projects because he was too stressed with everything that was going on or because he had a huge imagination that he couldn’t really embrace what the next project should be about?

3. Although he engrossed himself with work, how do you think that he would’ve dealt with the his mother’s passing if he didn’t have work?

4. What was the whole Pearl Harbor agreement with Disney? Is that some sort of propaganda?