Me and Walt Disney by Juan Filloy

 

 

 

Here is the first half of a chapter from Juan Filloy's novel, Yo, Yo y Yo.  Since no English translation exists, the following is my own translation.

YO Y WALT DISNEY (ME AND WALT DISNEY)

-Good afternoon doctor. I have heard in "La Prensa Medica" that you have carried out various drug tests and I wish to use your professional services. In order to record my case I have brought this device - an electromagnetic recorder "Revere de Luxe”. As soon as you give me an intravenous injection of sodium pentothal and operate on my ego at your discretion, you'll eliminate all my inhibitions.

-Slowly, sir, slowly. First of all I would like...

-The one whose desires are important here is me. I need you exclusively for the technical aspects but I've come to you because I know that you absolutely require a patient to undergo treatment for your own purposes. However, I have not come to serve as a guinea pig or for you to swagger at my expense and then make announcements to the Society of Experimental Neurologists or to the next International Congress of Psychiatry. No, doctor. In this lay confession, de luxe, you will be less than a priest, you will be a simple amanuensis of science, an expert in narcosis. And that's final.

-That's final, you say! I will not tolerate such insolence. If you believe, because you have paid the ten thousand pesos for the visit, that I will authenticate any of your eccentricities, know...

-I know what I'm looking for. Enough! Save your scruples for others. They are always needed. This guy you're looking at just got back from America. In Washington, through one of those brilliant games of chance, I met a member of the Upper Echelon: a fugitive Russian doctor currently protected by the State Department, a man who belonged to nothing less than the "group of Specialists in Confessions" back in the Soviet Union. You know that the investigators, both in Russia and surrounding countries, are trained by members of the Russian police who are part of that scientific organization. You know that, from Cardinal Josef Mindszentry to Laurenti Beria, a long series of personalities have beautifully tasted palinody, having been subjected to procedures that break the human willpower. You know that the communist line of action has remained unscathed, due to those subtle coercions that force people to confess crimes, sabotage, conspiracies, etc. The referring doctor educated me about it. I'm not here to ask you for any frills. I am not a criminal who longs for balms to appease his sin. My purpose is eminently aesthetic. It is linked to the art of Walt Disney...During these last few months I have had persistent dreams, those dreams that reveal how our repressed states struggle with the explosive energy of a psychic geyser ready to erupt with tremendous force. Walt Disney always figures in my dreams, with obsessive stubbornness... I tend to decipher each of my dreams for the hidden message. And since every psychiatrist is nothing more than a transit agent, without further ado, I have come to you to direct and interpret the images and concepts from my dream state. An artificially provoked dream state, by the way. Then...

-One moment. Let's go step by step. I'm starting to like this. So, you want me to act as a dream critic, that is, as a rational interpreter, isn't that it?

-Never! Neither as a dream critic nor as a dream man. I want you to assume the role of nothing more than a transit agent. Let's get rid of all those nonsensical interpretations that have amused the world from Artemidorus to Freud, from the gossips of Athens to bookies of Buenos Aires. I'm not fooled by such tricks. I'm the one who tells it like it is because, if "the madman is a subject who speaks and acts as if awake" as Kant affirmed, I can assure you that my sanity is as solid as a rock.

-I understand now. What you want is for me to simply act as a record-keeper, a kind of transfer agent, as your thoughts move through the various phases of sleep. And for me to set them on that device of yours, that electromagnetic recorder, that, what you call, your "Revere de Luxe”. Isn't that it?

-Exactly. I see that you are more intelligent than I imagined. No interpretations! All this will be at my expense. I will separate the chaff from the wheat in due time. I know there are those valuable dreams, those premonitory dreams that foretell a future event, that serve as a warning or revelation. These dreams can take on the role of an oracle, as if providing answers from the gods to our secret questions or requests: krematismas. And I dream that the gods also like to deceive us with mirages: ghosts. For today, they remain in the margin of credulity. They are outside my purpose. My wife has dealt quite a lot with these things. As I am a somniloquist and often speak out loud in my sleep, she, pencil in hand, has written down phrases and fragments, either to discover lovers or bastard children, or to win at roulette and lotteries... I forgot to mention that she almost went crazy as a consequence of writing out my dreams. How well the thinking of Schopenhauer fits here: "Sleep is a short dementia and dementia is a long dream", well...

-Cut it short, sir.

-How abbreviate? It is you who must abbreviate by proceeding immediately. Or do you want me to tell you the exact procedure to follow? I suppose you would have the typical room for these experiments: large, gray, dim, with hidden doors and a comfortable divan. I suppose the room will be kept at an unnerving temperature and you can control the lights so as to maintain a permanent twilight. I guess you know how to, without too much fuss, cause a patient to have a mental meltdown ... I am not a spy or a political prisoner who must be subjected to several days of intimidating interrogation. Nor am I a doctor. Therefore, please no graduated injections of insulin to provoke a state of coma, in which, by means of a brain stimulant - sympanine, for example - without fully recovering consciousness, I confess as much as is necessary for my downfall. When the intuitions that besiege me in the labyrinth of sleep are observed and analyzed, it will be your responsibility to unlock all the doors to all my inner chambers. In short, I want my profound personality to speak without brakes or concealments of any kind.

-Walt Disney, you say, is the leitmotif of those tenacious, disturbing dreams of yours. Do you know of any ostensible or recondite cause that is connected to the Yankee cartoonist?

-None. He has been and is the object of my devotion. I have always admired him. But...

-But what?

-Nothing I don't know; I can't explain myself. I feel that the wisdom of the eyes reproaches the ignorance of the heart. 

-Oh yeah! Very well. I catch the allegory in your words. The puzzle is now solved! Obviously your case is simple. One can discreetly softens the will to extract a confession from them. Your will facilitates everything. These are simple intellectual traumas that will disappear by purging you through narcotics. The purification, the catharsis of your spirit will be scientifically perfect. Come on. Come with me. I believe that in a single session without electro-shocks or other discomforts, the psychotherapy will be completed. It will happen. Get comfortable on that divan. Isn't this camera better than the one you described a while ago? Look at those nebulizers. The dynamics of color and light are suggestively regulated. There are the loudspeakers that will pulse with a soft, univocal tone, the texts of the confessions. Rest assured: there will be no "recital" for you. You are a fatigued type without an escape valve, infatuated with your normality. From the first moment I noticed your purely apparent boasting, which is typical of one who is timid, the coefficients of your anxiety. It presumes too much psychosomatic correctness.

-...

-Why are you pale? Do not be afraid. Does it surprise you that I talk so much? Are you ready?

--Aaaah!

-It's over. It's over... Don't move. That abdominal pain is temporary. Relax. Re-lax. Re-lax ab-so-lute-ly. How do you feel now?

-I do not feel. I look like I'm completely made of air. My flesh and bones have disappeared. My pulse, which I barely perceive, must be the pulse of the stars. It is wonderfully blissful. I would like to live like this forever.

-Give it up.

-Now everything is changing. Because...why? I am in a complete state of stagnation. I'm in a swamp of thick vapors. I'm suffocating. I'm suffocating, doctor! It is very distressing. I'm going to vomit.

-Vomit! Throw up everything you have. You are stuffed with Walt Disney. Throw up!

-Sorry: I can't resist the nausea. I never imagined that the mouth was the anus of the spirit. Of a viscous, cloudy spirit. What a terrible torpor! Everything convulses. I feel a cold fire. I feel the ideas, the impressions, the memories, fermenting in my throat. I can't anymore.

-Send then all off. Trust me. Your critical ability is numb. Your analytic mind is reduced to zero...Loosen your tongue. Say all... all... all.

 .....................................................................................
 

In Walt Disney's films the comic doesn't triumph -what could be taken as flour... flour. The pranks, the mischief - the bran - triumphs. There are almost always lumps...

The comic is the contradictory result between what is expected and what is produced. This never happens in his films. We always known in advance what will happen. It amounts to the overflow of the grotesque; it's the apotheosis of the absurd. And the morals imposed by the Yankee national committee, the Yankee mindset which controls the ethics of public entertainment.

Stupidity is but one step away in each of his films. But the stupidity never dominates – Walt Disney regulates it wisely. This imminent stupidity is kept that way due to numerous reasons of mercantile convenience. Because it is necessary to keep the clientele. If idiotic movies are served up directly to an idiotic public, self-vaccination would achieve the miracle of being cured. With Walt Disney, nobody teaches a lesson. His greatest ability is to assess the level of his own ineptitude through the extraordinary receptivity of his audience's cretinism.
................................................

It is clear that his films provoke hilarity, but we can only hope not with the firepower of his arsenal of heavily armed gunners! However, it is laughter hidden in the shadows, the whole adult world suddenly recomposes their faces, erasing any trace of the slightest complacency. In reality, everyone is ashamed of having unbuttoned themselves spiritually in the face of so much nonsense!

.......................................................................................

I feel compelled to clarify. A taboo has been constructed around Walt Disney. This unanimous praise is catastrophic. The few of us who disagree - two or three for every million - must suffer the earthquake of a vehemence that is very similar to the cheers of a crowd of rock music fans. What a stupendous phenomenon is the hubbub of enthusiasm!

And there's that taboo. Walt Disney is surrounded by the roar of the crowd which is in stark contrast to the modesty of the connoisseurs. He's supported by fiery arguments that fatten without nourishing. Few can discriminate and win when going up against the superior power of other, more ingenious and subtle competitors. Nobody will legitimize other cartoons that have aesthetic quality and an undeniable grace. It's hard to persuade Coca-Cola fans that there are superior concoctions. They aggressively reject logical and reasoned arguments. They are a rabble of mediocres who rally in the defense of everything mediocre. 

.............................................................................................

Walt Disney does not embody any artistic genius, but rather a marvelous industrial excellence. His films contain an undeniable cinematographic charm, but not any of those miraculous qualities heaped on it by his army of publicity agents.

Knowing how the glory of cinema is structured, his merit must be measured through the millions of dollars he mobilizes. His fame, then, is in relation to the primacy of the movie industry relative to other art forms. In the same way, neither more nor less, writers in the United States are judged by books that sell...bestsellers are everything!

......................................................................................... 

If Emile Reynaud was the true inventor of the cartoon, Benjamin Rabier has the glory of being the first animator of the disjointed fable. That honor still belongs to him and those who followed Rabier did nothing but simply create a variation on his original creation.

Walt Disney's mastery is in divorcing himself from those who came before him. He transgresses zoological reality. His skill lies merely in the graphic movement, not in the very life of the subjects. There's nothing more false, ethically speaking, than stuffing the worst entelechies of man into the skin of various animals. Disney has invaded the jurisdiction of the fable without scruples of any kind, forging archetypes with the grossest human imperfections.

The unthinking mass of humanity sympathizes with those dazzling schemes of animals involved in human adventures. Disney's audience does not meditate on the fable. They laugh. Oh, yes, they all break out laughing. Disney rejoices precisely in that: his transgressions are flattered. The hypocrisy of each of his creations are close to the iniquity of altering the hierarchy of the world. The sacred order of things is violated and this violation serves him well. 

............................................................................................

Walt Disney's drawings do not thus embody any symbol. Nor do they constitute any advance in the genre that comes in single file from Aesop to Trilussa. Disney is a parasite of the fable, with a symbiosis so absorbing that it is about to uproot the literary trees to which it clings. His carelessness does not give mind to quality or tradition. Authors, both famous and unknown, serve his greed without themselves benefiting in any way. The bitter thing is that Disney, lowlife that he is, has built his fame and glory entirely in this wretched, stinking bog. 

..............................................................................................

Mere bands of technical tricks embodied in equipment, his films lack the essential qualities of their own underlying elan. Supervision does not involve any other quality than coordinating the work of others. In this way, the imagination displayed in excesses suffers from a lack of unifying inspiration.

The lack of style is supreme in his movies. The usual ruse of hiding the name and number of his collaborators is not acceptable for those who notice in them the multiplicity of expression. Thus, within the cloud of colossal financial mystification, the genius of real creators is mixed in with the dexterity of vulgar cartoonists. Sharpness is mixed with silliness. The decent with sordidness. Bravery and diffidence. All of which results in a spurious melange in the graphics which dilutes the meaning and the resonance of the films. Because if "the style is the man", the style is not the result of a heterogeneous group of people at the service of those who take advantage of their talent. 

.........................................................................................  

The genuine humorist is one who has the ability to make people laugh with beings or topics that are not funny in themselves. Laughing at an extravagantly dressed eccentric or a grotesquely caricatured animal "is not funny." The laughter that comes from joy, like the smile that emanates from children, is natural and has no need for anything artificial.

The hard part, what Walt Disney does not achieve, is to overcome the inner resistance bright people put up at their laughing at nonsense. That is why the hilarity that emerges from his films is nothing more than funny stuff for fools. It's a slap in the face for an individual possessing any degree of intelligence. It mocks without moralizing and wounds without moving the soul in ways that mark genuine humor, wit or irony.

Stalin hated off-color humor. It's possible The Decameron made him nauseous. Resistance is more or less hardened according to the idiosyncrasies of each person. The range of homo stultus is very wide!

.........................................................................................

Walt Disney's insolence in attributing man's concerns to the animal innocence of his subjects is outrageous. Perhaps the opposite would have been plausible: grafting the innate purity of animals onto humans.

I furiously protest against his presumed mastery that imputes the beast with the problems and resentments of man. What right does Walt Disney have to violate zoology with the attribution of soul, conscience and understanding to animals whose very nature is the lack of these human dimensions?

Fools who amuse themselves with writing critiques of movies forget that purity is congenital to the beast and an attribute that only evolution can alter. Why can't we admit that a cartoonist stains the laws of nature by lowering the animals to the point of turning them into human characters?

I am a man of exuberant imagination. I don't need anyone to imagine for me. Sure, I accept some creations of fantasy, some aspects of illusion as ways to fire my imagination; however, my imagination refuses to adapt to the many aspects of commercialism or to that directed by religious or political image-makers.

........................................................................................

What is worthy in Disney resides in the aesthetic impulse that animates that which we can't express in words or when it plays with the essential rhythm in nature's musical score. 

We can ask, what is original? That which surpasses everything already created. In one sense, Disney is the great advancer of a new world of images. It must be admitted, some of his Silly Symphonies and fragments of Fantasia may compensate for so much stupidity in the service of mediocrity.

......................................................................................... 

Walt Disney sacrifices man for the benefit of the animal. This involves an invasion of their habitat with generous helpings of what is superior to what is scarcely evolved. But never confuse "civilization" with the happy balance in nature.

Human agency is a flaw in Donald Duck, Pluto, Mickey Mouse and Cleo the Fish. This is a defect that involves extreme aberrations and depravities of character, intelligence, cunning and sensuality and the pristine idiosyncrasy of instinct.

And what to add, if not diatribes, when Disney throws in the parrot, the llama, the donkey and the old horse. In addition to these general ignominities, is this suppose to be the symbolic representation of some peoples?

..........................................................................................

In this upside-down atavism, we can say Walt Disney has become synonymous with every type of nonsense in the animal species.

The truthful art works through the genealogy tree to the highest end. It does not creep down nor dig into ridicule in pursuit of a laugh that lacks any philosophical coefficient, a laugh that creates something like a barracuda shroud in tragedy that each spectator will carry within himself.

......................................................................................... 

Walt Disney's impertinence is a serious case. This is not a mere disregard for some figures in art. It is a morbid abuse that eats away at our tolerance.
 

Disney's lack of awareness is shocking.  He seizes works of Beethoven, Dukas, Ponchelli, Prokoviev, Stravinsky in order to gloss them in ridiculous grimoires. The audacity which he manipulates the glory of others appalling. If there were a moral police in the world, it is obvious that such audacity would have the be punished. But the opposite happens. His systematic insults results in the crowd's laughter. And the anguish that afflicts refined sensibilities must give way to the cheesiness of the rabble.