The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney
Author: Richard Schickel
List Price: $14.95
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ISBN: 1566631580
Publisher: Ivan R Dee, Inc. (May, 1997)
Sales Rank: 100,814
Average Customer Rating: 3.23 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 3 out of 5
A TRULY BIZARRE ATTEMPT AT BIOGRAPHY.
Richard Shickel is a very confused man. His book "The Disney Version" is his attempt to totally slam Walt Disney and his audience while he tries to praise his artistic work. This book's primary purpose is basically to show that Walt Disney was this really confused, cynical genius who while bravely delivering artistic masterpieces in the late 1930's he eventually sold his soul to the "devil" (the mainstream American middle class - read "religious, conservative, etc.") and became a cheap purveyor of pop culture junk. The author has failed miserably in his attempt. In truth, Walt Disney was an genius who managed that most unique of marriages: cherishing traditions of yesteryear and upholding the good things in the past while simultaneously blazing a trail into the future with new innovations and technologies and demonstrating that they CAN GO TOGETHER. Walt Disney was not perfect, but his life is far more worthy of celebration than condemnation.
It should be pointed out that much of the author's shortcomings in this work stem from his obvious "snobbishness" directed at the American small town and middle class cultures. This reviewers recommendation is that the author take his profits from the book and spend one full year immersing himself in movies like "Polyanna", "Follow Me Boys", "Mary Poppins", and "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and visiting Disneyland. Maybe he can be cured of this problem.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Excellent read, but how credible is the information?
Schickel does a good research and puts facts down as they are, but he analyzes those facts from his own point of view. He thinks Disney works have manipulated masses who were of an inferior intellect and the company made fortune out of it.
While this may be true, the book could have been more balanced, with an unbiased view, mentioning many favorable things the Company created.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Good, but not great
The book is definitly an in depth coverage of what happened in the early years of the Disney company, but it's definitly more of a history of the company than a biography of Walt. Similar Products
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