I want you always beside me

[austin_dern]

I'll get to talking about the camera when I'm ready. A bit of pop culture has got me distracted today. Specifically, ABC and ESPN's corporate overlords at Disney have released sports commentator Al Michaels from his contract so he could be hired by NBC Universal, which in exchange gave Disney greater usage of Olympics highlights, some days covering golf's Ryder Cup, and complete ownership of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was a silent-era cartoon star created by Walt Disney, back in the dot-com era of animation, when cartoon studios consisted of maybe six guys with a contract to produce 50 eight-minute shorts a year for a reward of nearly ten bright shiny quarters per cartoon, but expectations of becoming rich and famous through this somehow, resulting in cartoons shakily organized around a vague theme, no hint of a plot, and random and occasionally disturbing jokes you get when people don't have time to think out what they're doing. (You see some of this in 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which got weird as there wasn't time to make sense.) After Disney was fired he lopped off Oswald's ears and drew in a tail and created Mickey Mouse; Oswald meanwhile got made in a bunch of cartoons, up to 1938, that I've never heard of anyone caring about. (A comic book staggered on to 1962.)

Now, I love old-time cartoons, particularly black and white and silent ones. But it's a perverse kind of love because I know most of them are honestly shoddy creations, delightful because they capture the spirit of young and desperately underpaid and overworked people doing something they love, which is delightful in itself. I do love the playfulness with which lines and shapes rearranged themselves, which cartoons lost around the time they got sound, certainly when they got color, with only a few vibrant exceptions.

But the whole transaction must be counted as a weird act of sentiment from the Disney corporation, a company which last showed a sentiment around about 1967. The commercial value of Oswald has to nearly rival that of Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley. Yeah, the cartoons have Disney and Ub Iwerks and Friz Freleng and such before they became Greats, and they'll sell DVDs to collectors and stuffed toys to people who thought they were buying off-model Mickey Mouse dolls but ... really, it seems the person who comes out of this best is Al Michaels, who's now guaranteed to become a trivia answer (``Which TV sports personality was traded to another company in exchange for a rabbit?''), something so many of us hope for in life but never achieve.

Trivia: Walt Disney lost the Oswald series when producer Charles Mintz not only refused to increase Disney's $2,250 production fee per cartoon, but demanded Disney cut it to $1,800. When Disney refused Mintz took the character and most of Disney's animation staff. Source: Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin.

Currently Reading: The Other Foot, Damon Knight.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I'll have to admit, I've contemplated the possibility of exchanging the three year old in the house for a rabbit. It'd be a highly economically advantageous move, conducive to additional sleep, and frankly, I'd say, the rabbit would be far cuter.

Come to that, I was nearly exchanged for a variety of Moroccan pottery.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Everybody around children seems to come to consider such a deal, sooner or later. My parents never mentioned it around me, although my little brothers and sister were enough trouble that I came to be regarded as the happily well-behaved one who can just watch over himself. Just leave me with some Land of the Lost and space models to play with and I'm fine. I still am.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I wish to hear more about said Moroccan Pottery, please.

I think Dinsey will crank up, indeed, a modest revival and merchandise line, which will fade as soon as the market is sated, which will be about 6 months. That said, there's chance to have Oswald as a sort of B&W symbol for the studio, except they love to play on the Steamboat Willie nostalgia, so that's out.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'll certainly be glad to get the DVD set when it comes out, whenever that is. Past that, maybe Oswald would be useful as another in the black-and-white stable of figures (he did make it into color, but redesigned and with considerably less charm). He'd be sort of the lost partner or origin of Mickey.

I have to imagine the House of Mouse writers and animators would have fun, though. They had a rather good sense of love for the classic Disney characters.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Exactly what I was thinking, House of Mouse sort of creative re-use. Though they stopped making new episodes in 2004 (mainly because they rand low on Mouseworks to recycle, I'd gather).

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

True, but they'll come up with another show like that in the future. We can only hope it's after they've got the Creepy CGI bug out of their systems.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

indeed.. it is freaky. :|

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Or peculiar, at least.