Why did Tolkien dislike Disney?

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I spend a lot of time in second hand bookshops browsing children's books and I have never encountered any Disney books older than the 50s/60s. Yes, they existed, but the facts borne out by my own hours spent looking through kids' books do not bear out that they were that common. Yet you can still find a lot of old Rupert annuals etc from the period.

The period would end in May 1937 and begin approximately in 1935 or even earlier. There was only one Rupert the Bear annual during that period, the first, issued for Christmas 1936. There were some earlier Rupert the Bear books, but no annuals. Your so-called facts appear to be as imaginary as your previous mention of The Dandy, and The Beano, which only began publication in late 1937 and 1938 respectively.

The extent of Disney fandom is one explanation why perhaps Disney books don’t make it down to second-hand bookshops or stay there very long if they do.

I have never suggested that any particular Disney book was “that common”, whatever that means exactly. I have only presented information gathered by others that indicates that the number of Disney books from the period indicates that publishers in Britain were making money from Disney books during the period, or they would have stopped publishing them.

Argue all you want that Disney books weren’t, taken one at a time, common during that period. I never claimed that any individual book was common. It is futile to attempt to refute arguments I have never made.

What I did note is that Tolkien thought that there was a real danger that illustrations in the American edition of The Hobbit might be influenced by work issued from the Disney studios. I have pointed out that, so far as I can tell, there was no influence on children’s book illustrators from the Disney studios other than that books had begun appearing that were directly based or taken from animated cartoons, predominately from Disney cartoons, including British books.

I have suggested that Tolkien might have gotten the idea that American illustrators were being influenced by Disney from seeing some of the Disney books published in Britain at the time or at least knowing about them. That is all. I don’t know whether Tolkien ever saw any Disney book. The evidence suggests to me that he at least knew about them.

Refute me by pointing out American children’s book illustration that to some degree resembled Disney but was not in books directly derived from or related to cartoons, if you can. Or refute me by showing that Tolkien definitely did not know about any of the Disney books that had been published in Britain, if you can.

But the more I look, the more British Disney I find. That some British newspapers published the American Mickey Mouse strip is further evidence of the presence of Disney in British publications. That The Mickey Mouse Weekly began publication in February 1936 with over 500,000 copies sold indicates the extent of the British appetite for Disney material. Currently The Dandy’s circulation is only about 8,000 and it is to be cancelled. The Beano is supposedly still safe with a circulation of only 38,000, less than ¹∕₁₀ of the initial circulation of The Mickey Mouse Weekly which had soon achieved a circulation of 750,000. I am aware that a weekly publication is not the same as a book. But seeing The Mickey Mouse Weekly in many places and at least knowing that Disney books were available completely explains Tolkien’s fear of influence by Disney on children’s book illustrators, even though it was unfounded in itself.

Relax. It's my opinion.

Your opinion that Disney books were never rabid best-sellers has never been disputed by me. They were not best-sellers in the U.S. either. If it is your opinion that it is unlikely that Tolkien did not know that Disney book items (and postcards and other Disney items) were being sold in Britain, I deem that opinion unlikely to be true.

Cinema was cheap fun and a primary source of news broadcasts, and everyone went there.

Everyone? That is an obvious exaggeration. What you should have said is almost everyone. But Tolkien, in 1965, was so poorly informed on the film world that he did not know who Ava Gardner was, although she had long been one of the most prominent film stars in the world. Of course, that does not mean that earlier in his life Tolkien might not have often gone to the cinema, indeed might have gone quite often.

Arguing from generalities to individual preferences is a bad practice.

Sorry, but I will persist that Tolkien's most likely exposure to Disney was from cinema.

I have never denied that. Never. But I do deny that arguing that most people in Britain were inveterate film-goers does not mean that Tolkien was. Most people in Britain, to judge from most comments in the press and the general inclusion of Disney on film programs loved Disney. Tolkien loathed his work. By your methods of arguing Tolkien must have also loved Disney.

Note that I do not claim to know how Tolkien first encountered Disney. The most likely way need not be the way it actually happened.

However, cinema going was something everyone did - going to see a mixed bag programme that would maybe have a film, some news, a couple of cartoons etc.

Again with the everyone. Tolkien, at least at one period later in life, went very seldom to the films. Still, I do not deny that Tolkien most likely encountered Disney in the films and have never denied it. So who are you arguing with? Still, most likely is not proof. For all I and you know Tolkien first knowingly encountered Disney when someone gave one of his children a Mickey Mouse book as a Christmas present. Note that I do not believe this happened. I simply don’t know what happened. And I am more aware than you appear to be about the dangers of arguing from likelihood.

There's also the 1930s British book shopping experience to take into account. Bookshops weren't shops conducive to casual browsing, in common with most shops in the UK until the 1950s stock was mostly kept out of reach of 'casual browsers' and you would normally need to ask to view items.

Books were expensive and most borrowed them from the public library. Browsing in the modern sense would only have happened in more casual shopping environments like markets or Woolworths (in fact Penguin paperbacks were first sold here).

Untrue. From Sauron Defeated (HoME 9), p. 303, written by Tolkien about 1946:

It wasn’t a library. It was a folder containing a manuscript, on a high shelf in Whitburn’s second-hand room, that funny dark place where all sorts of unsaleable things drift. No wonder my dreams were full of dust and anxiety! It must have been fifteen years since I found the thing there: Quenta Eldalien, being the History of the Elves, by John Arthurson – in a manuscript, much as I’ve described it. I took an eager but hasty glance. But I had no time to spare that day, and I could find no one in the shop to answer my enquiries, so I hurried off.

This is a reference to the second-hand room in an Oxford bookstore in which Jeremy is browsing without supervision. Some more expensive books would doubtless be in glass cases or behind the counter in the main shop. I doubt that it would be any different in the 30s or before. If your business is selling books which are very unlike one another, you simply must let your customers browse.

… an Oxford bookshop would have been extremely unlikely to have ever lowered itself to stock comics, kids' books and paperbacks and the like.

Certainly partly true of a high-class Oxford bookshop. But is your claim now that The Mickey Mouse weekly was not sold anywhere in Oxford in the 30s? Or that it would be extremely unlikely that any Oxford bookshop in the 30s would have lowered itself to stock The Hobbit or Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit or Howard Pyle’s books?

You first mentioned Disney books. I disagree with you that they were of much importance in shaping Tolkien's opinion of Disney.

I never claimed specifically that “they were of much importance in shaping Tolkien’s opinion of Disney”. Again you are disagreeing with something I never claimed. Your practice seems to me that if you can’t cogently disagree with what I do say, then make up something that I didn’t say and disagree with that.

Hey Ho. It's not going to go anywhere from hereonin so I'd suggest leaving it there.

If you want to stop disagreeing with opinions that aren’t mine, I think you should. And be aware that what is the most likely thing to have occurred may not have been what actually happened.