I'm an occasional viewer of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (does anyone make a point of watching every episode anymore?). Last week's episode featured a Disney-lampooning cartoon by Robert Smigel that's getting lots of attention.
Smigel is funny. Some of his best cartoons are so effective because they dare to speak the truth in the guise of retro-animation - - the "Fun with Real Audio" segments are best, in my opinion.
So this week he sets loose a couple cute cartoon kids - - along with Mickey Mouse - - in "The Disney Vault," where they learn all sorts of disturbing things about the Disney corporate culture and lovable old Walt. You know the stuff - - might have informed on animators to HUAC; could have been anti-semetic; is perhaps cryogenically frozen; etc.
While Walt certainly may have had his faults, a lot of this stuff is simply urban legend. So, what are we to think when a social satirist lays them out as flat statements of "fact" in his work, which has on occasion professed to shine a light on hard truths? I imagine quite a few fans of "Fun with Real Audio" - - which uses real sound bytes to skewer public figures - - swallowed this as just another instance of Smigel uncovering the hard truth.
But Smigel has this to say about the material:
"I know that some of these things that I talk about in that cartoon aren't true. I don't really know that anything in there is true."
That seems a bit... ambiguous. Or irresponsible?
Link: Orlando Sentinel - Inside that Disney vault by Hal Boedeker.