Page 93 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

company did not make large sums from its cartoons, because Walt’s incessant quest
for improvements in the quality of animation cut deeply into the studio’s profits.
84 To a very large extent, he was able to finance expensive technical innovation and
his unyielding insistence on quality by using profits from merchandise. About half
of the studio’s profits were attributable to merchandise. 11 Indeed, some writers
have suggested that in later years, the design of cartoon characters, in particular
their ‘cuteness’, was at least in part motivated by a consideration of their capacity
to be turned into merchandise. 12 Certainly, it seems that cuteness increasingly
became a yardstick against which the design of characters was measured. Fogacs
points out that during the 1930s, cuteness was frequently mentioned. For exam-
ple, notes from the story conference for Snow White include the following: ‘Walt
points out that the animators must always try to feel the cuteness of these charac-
ters. … Dopey could become very grotesque, unless he is kept in a cute little manner’. 13
14
Above every animator’s desk at the studio was the instruction ‘keep it cute’. This
emphasis on cuteness may also account for the changes in Mickey’s increasingly
less rodent-like and child-like appearance over the years. 15 The stress on cuteness
may at least in part have been motivated by the greater merchandising potential
of cute characters. Similarly, Walt had to persevere for many years to secure the
rights for Jungle Book. His story editor said around the time of the film’s release that
one of the reasons for Walt’s persistence was that ‘it has a little boy in it, Mowgli,
and a lot of animals and both are great for merchandising’. 16

The Diffusion of Merchandising

In this section, a variety of ways and contexts in which merchandising occurs
nowadays will be outlined.

Merchandising at Disney

Since the early years, merchandising has been a major activity for Disney. At the
time of the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Disney had signed
17
at least 70 licensing deals. In 1958, an article in The Wall Street Journal noted the
importance of merchandising for Disney and observed:
Disney figures it’s created approximately 2,000 imaginary personalities over the years and, at last
count, over 140 US firms and more than 700 abroad were helping Disney to cash in on the popu-
larity of some 50 of these characters. About $2 million in royalties came in from these merchandis-
ing activities last year. 18

While these figures show a substantial increase in merchandising activity over
those that prevailed at the time of Snow White, they pale into insignificance when