How Disney Fought Fascism with Propaganda Cartoons During World War II & Averted Financial Collapse

in Animation, History | July 25th, 2025

Today, the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny seems like one of those enti­ties that’s “too big to fail” — but dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, fail it near­ly did. Like the big-think­ing enter­tain­er-busi­ness­man he was, Walt Dis­ney him­self had been re-invest­ing the com­pa­ny’s prof­its into ever more ambi­tious ani­mat­ed films. This prac­tice took an unfor­tu­nate turn with Fan­ta­sia, which may now be regard­ed as a clas­sic even by those of us with­out inter­est in Dis­ney movies, but which did­n’t bring in the expect­ed box-office take when it was ini­tial­ly released in 1940. It fol­lowed the also-under­per­form­ing Pinoc­chio, which could­n’t reach audi­ences in war-torn Europe. The fol­low­ing year, Dis­ney found itself at the edge of bank­rupt­cy.

Then came the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor, which result­ed in the U.S. Army’s eight-month-long occu­pa­tion of Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios. The idea was to pro­tect a near­by Lock­heed plant, but Dis­ney, who’d already made inquiries about pro­duc­ing war films, used an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a deal that saved his com­pa­ny.

Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios was con­tract­ed to make not just a vari­ety of train­ing films for mil­i­tary use, but also a series of war-themed car­toons for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. This was “total war,” after all, which required the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home, and the mobi­liza­tion of the pub­lic at home required domes­tic pro­pa­gan­da. Who bet­ter to stoke Amer­i­can desire for vic­to­ry over the Axis than Dis­ney’s biggest ani­mat­ed star at the time, Don­ald Duck?

In the most acclaimed of these car­toons, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Der Fuehrer’s Face from 1943, Don­ald Duck is employed at a muni­tions fac­to­ry in Nutzi­land, some kind of Axis super­state ruled over by Hiro­hi­to, Mus­soli­ni, and espe­cial­ly Hitler. It’s some­thing else to hear the phrase “Heil Hitler!” in Don­ald Duck­’s voice, and through­out his day of humil­i­a­tions and pri­va­tions in Nutzi­land, he has to say it quite a lot. Just when all of this has put him in a tail­spin toward mad­ness, he wakes up in his bed­room back in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, stars-and-stripes cur­tains, minia­ture Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, and all. For Don­ald, the night­mare is over — but in real life, Allied vic­to­ry remained far from a sure thing.

You can watch Der Fuehrer’s Face and sev­en oth­er Dis­ney-pro­duced World War II pro­pa­gan­da car­toons (along with the Looney Tunes short The Duck­ta­tors, from Warn­er Bros.) in the playlist above. To be sure, some of them con­tain ele­ments con­sid­ered crude and even offen­sive here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. But like all pro­pa­gan­da, they’re all of great his­tor­i­cal val­ue, in the realm of both polit­i­cal his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. Con­sid­er how they found their way into Europe and Rus­sia, find­ing audi­ences there even as the war raged on; con­sid­er, too, how well-loved Don­ald Duck and his com­pa­tri­ots have been by gen­er­a­tions of Ger­man, Ital­ian, and Japan­ese chil­dren. After this total war, no one enjoyed more total a vic­to­ry than Dis­ney.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi – Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film Rea­son and Emo­tion

Before Cre­at­ing the Moomins, Tove Jans­son Drew Satir­i­cal Art Mock­ing Hitler & Stal­in

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Iconic Animator Chuck Jones Creates an Oscar-Winning Animation About the Virtues of Universal Health Care (1949)

in Animation, Health, Literature | July 1st, 2025

While our coun­try looks like it might be com­ing apart at the seams, it’s good to revis­it, every once in a while, moments when it did work. And that’s not so that we can feel nos­tal­gic about a lost time, but so that we can remind our­selves how, giv­en the right con­di­tions, things could work well once again.

One exam­ple from his­to­ry (and recent­ly redis­cov­ered by a num­ber of blogs dur­ing the AHCA deba­cle in Con­gress) is this gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da film from 1949—the Har­ry S. Tru­man era—that pro­motes the idea of cra­dle-to-grave health care, and all for three cents a week. This mon­ey went to school nurs­es, nutri­tion­ists, fam­i­ly doc­tors, and neigh­bor­hood health depart­ments.

Direct­ed by Chuck Jones, bet­ter known for ani­mat­ing Bugs Bun­ny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and the Road Run­ner, “So Much for So Lit­tle” fol­lows our main char­ac­ter from infancy—where doc­tors help immu­nize babies against whoop­ing cough, diph­the­ria, rheumat­ic fever, and smallpox—through school to dat­ing, mar­riage, becom­ing par­ents, and set­tling into a nice, healthy retire­ment. Along the way, the gov­ern­ment has made sure that health care is noth­ing to wor­ry about.

The film won an Acad­e­my Award in 1950 for Doc­u­men­tary Short Subject—not best sci-fi, despite how rad­i­cal this all sounds.

So what hap­pened? John Maher at the blog Dot and Line puts it this way:

Par­ti­san­ship and cap­i­tal­ism and racist zon­ing poli­cies shat­tered its ide­al­is­tic dream that Amer­i­cans might actu­al­ly pay com­mu­nal­ly for their health as well as that of their neigh­bors and fel­low cit­i­zens.

Three cents per Amer­i­can per week wouldn’t cut it now in terms of uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age. But accord­ing to Maher, quot­ing a 2009 Kingsepp study on the orig­i­nal Afford­able Care Act, tax­pay­ers would have to pay $3.61 a week.

So folks, don’t get despon­dent, get ide­al­is­tic. The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion came back from WWII with a grand ide­al­ism. Maybe this cur­rent gen­er­a­tion just needs to fight and defeat Nazis all over again…

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

How to Draw Bugs Bun­ny: A Primer by Leg­endary Ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules For Draw­ing Road Run­ner Car­toons, or How to Cre­ate a Min­i­mal­ist Mas­ter­piece

Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line Cel­e­brates Geom­e­try & Hard Work: An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion (1965)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch “The Birth of the Robot,” Len Lye’s Surreal 1935 Stop-Motion Animation

in Animation | March 10th, 2025

Robots seem to have been much on the pub­lic mind back in the nine­teen-thir­ties. Matt Novak at Pale­o­fu­ture gives the exam­ple of a moment in 1932 when “the world was awash in news­pa­per sto­ries about a robot that had done the unthink­able: a mechan­i­cal man had shot its inven­tor.” Despite being a typ­i­cal exam­ple of the exper­i­men­tal-fic­tive jour­nal­is­tic style of that era, it nev­er­the­less reflect­ed “a time when robots rep­re­sent­ed some­thing fear­ful,” and were indeed “a potent sym­bol of run­away automa­tion and job loss.” Novak cites the sta­tis­tic that “about 25% of job­less Amer­i­cans thought automa­tion was to blame for their unem­ploy­ment by the end of the Great Depres­sion.”

Not much more than a decade after the very term robot was coined, in Czech play­wright Karel Čapek’s R.U.R., robots were in need of some good PR. Enter Shell Oil, which had not only the resources to com­mis­sion an eye-catch­ing adver­tis­ing film, but also a robot-shaped emblem famil­iar to many con­sumers.

“The Birth of the Robot,” which made its the­atri­cal debut in 1935, tells that char­ac­ter’s ori­gin sto­ry in hyper-sat­u­rat­ed Gas­par­col­or, begin­ning with the very motor of existence–turned by the hand of Old Father Time–while Venus plays her music out toward the stars. We then descend to Earth to find a motorist hap­pi­ly careen­ing around the Egypt­ian desert, not just between but over the Pyra­mids. (Tourism must have been dif­fer­ent in those days.)

Then a storm hits, at which point even the least atten­tive view­er will notice the strik­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of “The Birth of the Robot“ ‘s visu­al style. It was ani­mat­ed in stop motion by a New Zealan­der named Len Lye, who was already known for shorts like “A Colour Box” and “Kalei­do­scope,” fund­ed, respec­tive­ly, by the Unit­ed King­dom’s Gen­er­al Post Office and Impe­r­i­al Tobac­co. Tak­ing a con­sid­er­able nar­ra­tive and aes­thet­ic step for­ward from those, Lye pro­duces a charm­ing, fan­ci­ful result from what was clear­ly a labo­ri­ous process. Despite hav­ing been reduced to bones in the sand, our pro­tag­o­nist is even­tu­al­ly brought back to life by a few drops of Shell oil, albeit not in human but in humanoid robot form — and ready to show off a few moves that, today, would belong in a Boston Dynam­ics com­mer­cial.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Word “Robot” Orig­i­nat­ed in a Czech Play in 1921: Dis­cov­er Karel Čapek’s Sci-Fi Play R.U.R. (a.k.a. Rossum’s Uni­ver­sal Robots)

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

Watch a Visu­al Sym­pho­ny of Every­day Objects in the French Stop Motion Film Grands Canons

Watch Gum­ba­sia, the Jazzy Stop Motion Film That Gave Birth to Gum­by (1955)

The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912): The Tru­ly Weird Ori­gin of Mod­ern Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Oil’d, by Chris Har­mon

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Where The Simpsons Began: Discover the Original Shorts That Appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–1989)

in Animation, Comedy, Television | March 3rd, 2025

When it first went on air in the late nine­teen-eight­ies, Fox had to prove itself capa­ble of play­ing in a tele­vi­su­al league with the likes of NBC, CBS, and ABC. To that end, it began build­ing its prime-time line­up with two orig­i­nal pro­grams more the­mat­i­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly dar­ing than any­thing on those staid net­works: the sit­com Mar­ried… with Chil­dren and the sketch com­e­dy series The Tracey Ull­man Show. Before and after com­mer­cial breaks, the lat­ter treat­ed its ear­ly view­ers to a series of irrev­er­ent ani­mat­ed shorts cre­at­ed by an acclaimed car­toon­ist and fea­tur­ing the vocal tal­ents of Dan Castel­lan­e­ta, Julie Kavn­er, and Nan­cy Cartwright. I speak, of course, of Dr. N!Godatu.

On an alter­nate time­line, per­haps the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al adven­tures of that near-unflap­pable psy­chother­a­pist were spun off into their own hit series that broke every record for prime-time ani­ma­tion and is now in its 36th sea­son.

Here in our real­i­ty, how­ev­er, that’s been the des­tiny of The Simp­sons, which also began as The Tracey Ull­man Show’s bumper enter­tain­ment. Dr. N!Godatu van­ished after a few weeks, nev­er to be seen again, but the Simp­son fam­i­ly remained for two full years, mak­ing their final short-from appear­ance in May of 1989. Sev­en months lat­er, The Simp­sons made its Christ­mas-spe­cial debut — an event that, if you don’t remem­ber watch­ing, I can’t count you as a mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion.

Not that, giv­en my young age, I’d ever actu­al­ly seen The Tracey Ull­man Show at the time. But the hard pro­mo­tion­al push lead­ing up to that first real Simp­sons offered glimpses into an ani­mat­ed world that looked and felt com­plete­ly nov­el. (Hav­ing grown accus­tomed over gen­er­a­tions to the show’s aes­thet­ic, we eas­i­ly for­get how bizarre its yel­low-skinned, uni­ver­sal­ly over­bite-afflict­ed char­ac­ters once looked.) Many who tuned in would­n’t have been aware that that look and feel had­n’t been cre­at­ed out of whole cloth, but rather had emerged through the evo­lu­tion­ary process you can wit­ness in the 48 orig­i­nal Simp­sons shorts col­lect­ed in the Youtube playlist at the top of the post (and the hour-long con­sol­i­dat­ed video here).

To even a casu­al Simp­sons view­er, every­thing in these shorts will seem at once famil­iar and “off” in myr­i­ad ways. The design of the char­ac­ters looks both harsh­er and loos­er than it would lat­er become, and cer­tain of their voic­es, espe­cial­ly Castel­lan­e­ta’s Wal­ter Matthau-esque Homer, have yet to reflect the per­son­al­i­ties they would lat­er devel­op. The con­ven­tion­al­ly “car­toony” ani­ma­tion also dis­torts bod­ies and faces in ways that have long since been pro­hib­it­ed by the show’s offi­cial style guide­lines. Even so, there are occa­sion­al jokes and even haunt­ing moments of the kind we know from the first cou­ple of sea­sons, if noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar to fore­shad­ow The Simp­sons’ nine­teen-nineties gold­en age — or the three decades’ worth of episodes that have fol­lowed it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of The Simp­sons: An In-Depth Video Essay Explores What Made the Show Great, and When It All Came to an End

Before The Simp­sons: Homer Groen­ing Directs a 1969 Short Film, The Sto­ry, Star­ring His Kids Mag­gie, Lisa & Matt

27 Movies Ref­er­ences in The Simp­sons Put Side-by-Side with the Movie Scenes They Paid Trib­ute To

Before The Simp­sons, Matt Groen­ing Illus­trat­ed a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Com­put­ers (1989)

The Simp­sons Reimag­ined as a Russ­ian Art Film

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Story Of Menstruation: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

in Animation, Education | March 3rd, 2025

From 1945 to 1951, Dis­ney pro­duced a series of edu­ca­tion­al films to be shown in Amer­i­can schools. How to bathe an infant. How not to catch a cold. Why you shouldn’t dri­ve fast. Dis­ney cov­ered these sub­jects in its edu­ca­tion­al shorts, and then even­tu­al­ly got to the touchy sub­ject of biol­o­gy and sex­u­al­i­ty. If there was ever a com­pa­ny suit­ed to talk about “vagi­nas” in the 1940s in a fam­i­ly-friend­ly way, it was Dis­ney. Hence The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion.

The film runs 10 min­utes, com­bin­ing sci­en­tif­ic facts with hygiene tips, and it was actu­al­ly com­mis­sioned by the Inter­na­tion­al Cel­lo-Cot­ton Com­pa­ny, the fore­run­ner of Kim­ber­ly-Clark, the mak­er of Kotex prod­ucts. An esti­mat­ed 105 mil­lion stu­dents watched the film in sex-ed class­es across the US. And, accord­ing to Tin­ker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny from the Inside Out, the film remained a main­stay in schools until the 1960s. It’s now in the pub­lic domain. When you’re done, you’ll also want to watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence: A Naked­ly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

Watch Dat­ing Dos and Don’ts: An Old-School Instruc­tion­al Guide to Teenage Romance (1949)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Optical Poems by Oskar Fischinger: Discover the Avant-Garde Animator Despised by Hitler & Dissed by Disney

in Animation, Art, History | February 19th, 2025

At a time when much of ani­ma­tion was con­sumed with lit­tle anthro­po­mor­phized ani­mals sport­ing white gloves, Oskar Fischinger went in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. His work is all about danc­ing geo­met­ric shapes and abstract forms spin­ning around a flat fea­ture­less back­ground. Think of a Mon­dri­an or Male­vich paint­ing that moves, often in time to the music. Fischinger’s movies have a mes­mer­iz­ing ele­gance to them. Check out his 1938 short An Opti­cal Poem above. Cir­cles pop, sway and dart across the screen, all in time to Franz Liszt’s 2nd Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody. This is, of course, well before the days of dig­i­tal. While it might be rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to manip­u­late a shape in a com­put­er, Fischinger’s tech­nique was decid­ed­ly more low tech. Using bits of paper and fish­ing line, he indi­vid­u­al­ly pho­tographed each frame, some­how doing it all in sync with Liszt’s com­po­si­tion. Think of the hours of mind-numb­ing work that must have entailed.

(Note: The copy of the film above has become fad­ed, dis­tort­ing some of the orig­i­nal vibrant col­ors used in Fischinger’s films. Nonethe­less it gives you a taste of his cre­ative work–of how he mix­es ani­ma­tion with music. The clips below give you a more accu­rate sense of Fischinger’s orig­i­nal col­ors.)

Born in 1900 near Frank­furt, Fischinger trained as a musi­cian and an archi­tect before dis­cov­er­ing film. In the 1930s, he moved to Berlin and start­ed pro­duc­ing more and more abstract ani­ma­tions that ran before fea­ture films. They proved to be pop­u­lar too, at least until the Nation­al Social­ists came to pow­er. The Nazis were some of the most fanat­i­cal art crit­ics of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, and they hat­ed any­thing non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al. The likes of Paul Klee, Oskar Kokosch­ka and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky among oth­ers were writ­ten off as “degen­er­ate.” (By stark con­trast, the CIA report­ed­ly loved Abstract Expres­sion­ism, but that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.) Fischinger fled Ger­many in 1936 for the sun and glam­our of Hol­ly­wood.

The prob­lem was that Hol­ly­wood was real­ly not ready for Fischinger. Pro­duc­ers saw the obvi­ous tal­ent in his work, and they feared that it was too ahead of its time for broad audi­ences. “[Fischinger] was going in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion than any oth­er ani­ma­tor at the time,” said famed graph­ic design­er Chip Kidd in an inter­view with NPR. “He was real­ly explor­ing abstract pat­terns, but with a pur­pose to them — pio­neer­ing what tech­ni­cal­ly is the music video.”

Fischinger’s most wide­ly seen Amer­i­can work was his short con­tri­bu­tion to Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. Fischinger cre­at­ed con­cept draw­ings for Fan­ta­sia, but most were not used, and only one short scene fea­tures his actu­al draw­ings. “The film is not real­ly my work,” he lat­er recalled. “Rather, it is the most inartis­tic prod­uct of a fac­to­ry. …One thing I def­i­nite­ly found out: that no true work of art can be made with that pro­ce­dure used in the Dis­ney stu­dio.” Fischinger didn’t work with Dis­ney again and instead retreat­ed into the art world.

There he found admir­ers who were recep­tive to his vision. John Cage, for one, con­sid­ered the Ger­man animator’s exper­i­ments to be a major influ­ence on his own work. Cage recalled his first meet­ing with Fischinger in an inter­view with Daniel Charles in 1968.

One day I was intro­duced to Oscar Fischinger who made abstract films quite pre­cise­ly artic­u­lat­ed on pieces of tra­di­tion­al music. When I was intro­duced to him, he began to talk with me about the spir­it, which is inside each of the objects of this world. So, he told me, all we need to do to lib­er­ate that spir­it is to brush past the object, and to draw forth its sound. That’s the idea which led me to per­cus­sion.

You can find excerpts of oth­er Fischinger films over at Vimeo.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Sep­tem­ber, 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Avant-Garde Ani­mat­ed Films of Wal­ter Ruttmann, Still Strik­ing­ly Fresh a Cen­tu­ry Lat­er (1921–1925)

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece (1933)

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

See Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Visualized in Colorfully Animated Scores

in Animation, Music | February 6th, 2025

Music is often described as the most abstract of all the arts, and arguably the least visu­al as well. But these qual­i­ties, which seem so basic to the nature of the form, have been chal­lenged for at least three cen­turies, not least by com­posers them­selves. Take Anto­nio Vival­di, whose Le quat­tro sta­gioni, or The Four Sea­sons, of 1718–1720 evoke not just broad impres­sions of the epony­mous parts of the year, but a vari­ety of nat­ur­al and human ele­ments char­ac­ter­is­tic to them. In the course of less than an hour, its lis­ten­ers — whether of the ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry or the ear­ly twen­ty-first — “see” spring, sum­mer, autumn, and win­ter unfold vivid­ly before their mind’s eye.

Now, com­pos­er Stephen Mali­nows­ki has visu­al­ized The Four Sea­sons in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. As pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, he uses his Music Ani­ma­tion Machine to cre­ate what we might call graph­i­cal scores, which abstract­ly rep­re­sent the instru­men­tal parts that make up wide­ly loved clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions in time with the music itself.

On this page, you can watch four videos, with each one visu­al­iz­ing one of the piece’s con­cer­ti. Fans of the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine will notice that its for­mer­ly sim­ple visu­als have tak­en a big step for­ward, though what can look at first like a psy­che­del­ic light show also has a clear and leg­i­ble order.

?si=xEQ3Twamh82m3Yhr

For “Spring” and “Autumn,” Mali­nows­ki ani­mates per­for­mances by vio­lin­ist Shunske Sato and musi­cians of the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety; for “Sum­mer” and “Win­ter,” per­for­mances by Cyn­thia Miller Freivo­gel and ear­ly-music ensem­ble Voic­es of Music (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here for their ren­di­tions of Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos and “Air on the G String,” Pachel­bel’s Canon, and indeed The Four Sea­sons). Gen­er­al­ly under­stand­able at a glance — and in many ways, more illu­mi­nat­ing than actu­al­ly see­ing the musi­cians play their instru­ments — these scores also use a sys­tem called “har­mon­ic col­or­ing,” which Malinkows­ki explains here. This may add up to a com­plete audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence, but if you’d also like a lit­er­ary ele­ment, why not pull up The Four Sea­sons’ accom­pa­ny­ing son­nets while you’re at it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why We Love Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Per­formed on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Brought to Life in Sand Ani­ma­tions by the Hun­gar­i­an Artist Fer­enc Cakó

Yes’ Rick Wake­man Explores Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, and Why It Was the First Con­cept Album

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur, and Witness the Birth of Modern Animation (1911–1914)

in Animation, Film, History | January 14th, 2025

“Con­sid­er­ing that, in a car­toon, any­thing can hap­pen that the mind can imag­ine, the comics have gen­er­al­ly depict­ed pret­ty mun­dane worlds,” writes Calvin and Hobbes cre­ator Bill Wat­ter­son. “Sure, there have been talk­ing ani­mals, a few space­ships and what­not, but the comics have rarely shown us any­thing tru­ly bizarre. Lit­tle Nemo’s dream imagery, how­ev­er, is as mind-bend­ing today as ever, and Win­sor McCay remains one of the great­est inno­va­tors and manip­u­la­tors of the com­ic strip medi­um.” And Lit­tle Nemo, which sprawled across entire news­pa­per pages in the ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pushed artis­tic bound­aries not just as a com­ic, but also as a film.

When first seen in 1911, the twelve-minute short Lit­tle Nemo was titled Win­sor McCay, the Famous Car­toon­ist of the N.Y. Her­ald and His Mov­ing Comics. A mix­ture of live action and ani­ma­tion, it dra­ma­tizes McCay mak­ing a gen­tle­man’s wager with his col­leagues that he can draw fig­ures that move — an idea that might have come with a cer­tain plau­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en that speed-draw­ing was already a suc­cess­ful part of his vaude­ville act. Meet­ing this chal­lenge entails draw­ing 4,000 pic­tures, a task as demand­ing for McCay the char­ac­ter as it was for McCay the real artist. This labor adds up to the four min­utes that end the film, which con­tains moments of still-impres­sive flu­id­i­ty, tech­nique, and humor.

Clear­ly pos­sessed of a sense of ani­ma­tion’s poten­tial as an art form, McCay went on to make nine more films, and ulti­mate­ly con­sid­ered them his proud­est work. Like the Lit­tle Nemo movie, he used his sec­ond such effort, Ger­tie the Dinosaur, in his vaude­ville act, per­form­ing along­side the pro­jec­tion to cre­ate the effect of his giv­ing the tit­u­lar pre­his­toric crea­ture com­mands. “In some ways, McCay was the fore­run­ner of Walt Dis­ney in terms of Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion,” writes Lucas O. Seastrom at The Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Muse­um. “In order to cre­ate a lov­able dinosaur and accom­plish these seem­ing­ly mag­i­cal feats, McCay used math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion and ground­break­ing tech­niques, such as the process of inbe­tween­ing, which lat­er became a Dis­ney stan­dard.”

More than once, McCay the ani­ma­tor drew inspi­ra­tion from the work of McCay the news­pa­per artist: in 1921, he made a cou­ple of motion pic­tures out of his pre-Lit­tle Nemo sleep-themed com­ic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. But for his most ambi­tious ani­mat­ed work, he turned toward his­to­ry — and, at the time, rather recent his­to­ry — to re-cre­ate the sink­ing of the RMS Lusi­ta­nia, an event that his employ­er, the news­pa­per mag­nate William Ran­dolph Hearst, had insist­ed on down­play­ing at the time due to his stance against the U.S.’ join­ing the Great War. Decades there­after, Looney Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones said that “the two most impor­tant peo­ple in ani­ma­tion are Win­sor McCay and Walt Dis­ney, and I’m not sure which should go first.” Watch these and McCay’s oth­er sur­viv­ing films on this Youtube playlist, and you can decide for your­self.

H/T Izzy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Ani­ma­tion, 1833–2017: From the Phenakistis­cope to Pixar

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions

Watch Fan­tas­magorie, the World’s First Ani­mat­ed Car­toon (1908)

Win­sor McCay Ani­mates the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film (1918)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions (1917 to 1931)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast