Sunday, October 24, 2004
Classroom Truth vs. Corporate Truth
I spent all last Friday morning ripping down the idols of innocent children that have put their trust in me. Stated in other words, I was teaching the history of animation to college kids.
There is a certain sadistic pulling-the-wings-off-flies aspect to teaching the History of Animation. Muybridge, W.K.L. Dickson, William Friese-Greene, and Thomas Armat vs. Edison as inventor of the movie process. J. Stuart Blackton and Emile Cohl vs. Winsor McCay as the inventor of the animation process. J. R. Bray and Earl Hurd, Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan, Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney, Bugs Hardaway and Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker.
The Students love the old cartoons and the dirt and scandal but something is crushed in them when they find that their heroes took the credit from other people.
That is because there is TRUTH and then there is CORPORATE TRUTH and the latter is in the books and the former, hopeful, is in the classroom.
I remember how hurt I was when a teacher told me just how Stan Lee `wrote` all those Marvel Silver Age comics.
It still hurts. Stan the Man was one of my heroes and one of the reasons I went to the Kubert School in the first place.
The dirty little secret is that even the historians have to compromise with the CORPORATE TRUTH in order to get access to the corporate controlled assets that they need to complete their works.
Now the corporations are just doing their duty and protecting their assets. They don`t want to show their star being a raciest, its bad for business. And they sure don`t want to admit that the founder of the company took credit for someone else`s work. Bad will, turns into poor sales.
That means that the only place for truth is the classroom and sometimes it is hard to be the one that has to get them ready for the buzz saw that is the business but then it is my duty, my job. Sounds just like the Adolf Eichmann defense to me. Why not just admit that I enjoy breaking their little hearts.
When my daughter was nine years old she almost got kicked out of California Adventure for bringing up Ub Iwerks in the `One Man`s Dream` part of the adventure. My kids have known the truth as best I could tell it from day one. They have been proofed against evil collage teachers like their dad.
larry@agni-animation.com
¶ 8:16 AM
There is a certain sadistic pulling-the-wings-off-flies aspect to teaching the History of Animation. Muybridge, W.K.L. Dickson, William Friese-Greene, and Thomas Armat vs. Edison as inventor of the movie process. J. Stuart Blackton and Emile Cohl vs. Winsor McCay as the inventor of the animation process. J. R. Bray and Earl Hurd, Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan, Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney, Bugs Hardaway and Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker.
The Students love the old cartoons and the dirt and scandal but something is crushed in them when they find that their heroes took the credit from other people.
That is because there is TRUTH and then there is CORPORATE TRUTH and the latter is in the books and the former, hopeful, is in the classroom.
I remember how hurt I was when a teacher told me just how Stan Lee `wrote` all those Marvel Silver Age comics.
I would drop off my pages and Stan would say something like next
month I want the Puppet Master to fight the Thing and Torch. Then I
would go home and write the story, do the layouts, pencil it. Ink everything but
the words in the word balloons and bring it back in. Then Stan would stand over
a letterer and tell him how to re-word my dialog in the balloons. That was how
he wrote all those comics. That and the fact that his uncle owned the company at
the time.
It still hurts. Stan the Man was one of my heroes and one of the reasons I went to the Kubert School in the first place.
The dirty little secret is that even the historians have to compromise with the CORPORATE TRUTH in order to get access to the corporate controlled assets that they need to complete their works.
Now the corporations are just doing their duty and protecting their assets. They don`t want to show their star being a raciest, its bad for business. And they sure don`t want to admit that the founder of the company took credit for someone else`s work. Bad will, turns into poor sales.
That means that the only place for truth is the classroom and sometimes it is hard to be the one that has to get them ready for the buzz saw that is the business but then it is my duty, my job. Sounds just like the Adolf Eichmann defense to me. Why not just admit that I enjoy breaking their little hearts.
When my daughter was nine years old she almost got kicked out of California Adventure for bringing up Ub Iwerks in the `One Man`s Dream` part of the adventure. My kids have known the truth as best I could tell it from day one. They have been proofed against evil collage teachers like their dad.
larry@agni-animation.com
¶ 8:16 AM
