Defending Richard Williams, Frank & Ollie, and Dark Age Disney: A 21-Year-Late Response to Michael Barrier

Michael Barrier has not been well lately, insofar as I know, and his website has not updated since COVID-19 and he does not respond to emails (I tried). Since I don't see an email being posted on his Feedback page ever again, I will respond to an article I found particularly wrong in blog form.

When Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit and John Canemaker's Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation came out around the same time in 2003 (a year after my birth), Barrier reviewed them both...negatively, as usual. As much as I like Barrier, he is exceptionally downbeat on everything, and hard to please--especially if it doesn't resemble Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Coal Black and De Sebbin Dwarfs (there's a connection here).

Most of Barrier's complaints are nostalgia-based. He grew up in the Forties and Fifties, and so for him anything alien to that time is instantaneously inferior. The Golden Age of Animation is the high point of the art form--absolutely no debate!--but that does not cancel out the work after. Also his person friendship with Bob Clampett clouds his views, since he is a massive partisan of that director, and constantly compares others to him (although Clampett's cartoons are funny, they are not as deliberate or controlled as Avery, Jones and Freleng, let alone the rest of the industry--and the results show onscreen).

I have so nostalgia for the late Disney films he despises so much. Growing up in the 2000s and the 2010s, I watched VHSes of Robin Hood, The AristoCats and The Rescuers religiously. However, unlike Barrier, I get over my nostalgia and acknowledge that the Golden Age films are superior.

I have no choice to respect Barrier because he is the only major animation historian that is respectable. The man and his book Hollywood Cartoons, negative and overly-critical as they are--are the only serious studies of animation out there, published by university presses and error-free.

On the positive side I agree with his analysis of the Canemaker book. As nice as it is, the Nine Old Men are not the standard most animators look up to, or who founded the important. "The Fierce Five" were much more influential: Babbitt, Bill Tytla, Fred Moore, Ham Luske and Norm Ferguson. Of course, the Nine Old Men were all each enormous talents (Thomas and Ward Kimball the most), but otherwise they were not the "founders" as Canemaker portrays them.

My beef here is his attack on Richard Williams, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (specifically Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life), and the Disney films from the Dark Age, otherwise known as the Reitherman Era. I think his criticisms are unfair and, when under pressure, they combust. Anyway, here goes:

I'm going to start with my own analysis of two of the books discussed. The Illusion of Life is an absolutely stunning book. It is beautiful from cover to cover, literally. The text is regimental and somewhat cold, and I've found out others than myself have not read it fully despite owning it, and understandably. 

On the Williams book, I've only skimmed over it, and unlike the other two I do not own it...yet. It has good advice, but its not a big deal compared to the Frank-Ollie stuff. Barrier may have a point, though, in how little acting there is discussed in it as opposed to technical stuff. I daresay its a bit overrated. If I had to second a book to TIOL, I would without hesitation or blinking say Chuck Amuck  (Barrier accuses that book of being "self-serving", despite Jones praising other directors numerous times in it. Also note Barrier has no qualms with the man who claims to have invented Bugs, Daffy and Porky in one interview.)

When he starts his review, he suddenly criticizes TIOL and then the Williams book. He states:

Why? Because those films have "a dry and studied look". Furthermore he describes the Reitherman films as being "dull and unimaginative". 

This is all untrue. If the Reitherman films have one great quality, its that the animation is far more alive than in the Silver Age films like Cinderella, Peter Pan or Sleeping Beauty (The Lady and the Tramp excluded; its the best from that period). 

Compare a dialogue heavy scene from Sleeping Beauty with one from Robin Hood and there is a noticeable difference, even though it is by roughly the same animators (Milt Kahl and Ollie Johnston being two of them). The movements in Robin Hood are much more alive and revealing, rather than the shallowness and dullness in the other.

The Reitherman films are great if you separate them from comparisons with the Golden Age features, a too-high standard. They tell stories with sympathetic characters (Bernard is probably the best mouse in all of Disneydom behind Mickey) and are chock-full of masterful animation from both old guard and youngsters. Are they perfect? No; particularly Reitherman's fetish for recycling animation is a flaw. But they certainly hold up fantastically--especially now, compared to the heavy-handed CGI films post-Tangled (I like a few, though, like Zootopia).

(I should probably note that Snow White is literally animated from start to finish, and yet no complaints about that. Nostalgia bias again.)

Onto Williams, Barrier predictably tries to use Clampett as a measuring stick, saying "You'll not find Bob Clampett or Rod Scribner mentioned anywhere in Williams' book." (Williams said he was not keen on "rubber duck" animation, most likely a jab at Clampett.) This is because Barrier has an incredibly high opinion of Scribner, whom he claims in his book as "caring about the character's emotions". To compare Rod Scribner to animators such as Bill Tytla is not only laughable but insane. Scribner is along the lines of Jim Tyer: they are strictly "comedy" animators. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn't acting. Scribner's characters are not actors, and by default Clampett's aren't really, either.

The Warner animator most at home with character animation on that level was Virgil Ross, but Barrier in his book downplays the Freleng unit as being "too cautious" and full of stock poses. He apparently has never watched a Freleng cartoon, or looked at scenes such as the brilliant "draw a gun" gag by Ross in Hare Trigger:

The point he was making was that Williams "recoils" from pure comedy animation, which is simply not true. Ignoring Roger Rabbit, he produced some hysterical and cartoony commercials, particularly for Long Life Beer (it apparently is what got him the Roger Rabbit job.) It has his characteristic slow and deliberate animation, but with Avery-style exaggeration. Sure, it's not as exaggerated, but its still impossible. And just because an animator prefers "sincere" animation to "caricature" animation is not bad, just different. One must just respect the other, and Williams respects the latter. (Droopy is his favorite cartoon character.)

(Again, note that Snow White is completely devoid of squash and stretch, especially compared to Pinocchio, which he believes is "weak".)

Williams' films have high and low points. I've seen all the features he did and they have equal amounts of great and subpar. But anybody watching them would all agree the characters are characters, and the animation is always top-notch. Again, compare them to your average "animated" (so-called) "sitcom" on FOX. And frankly, they are way more about characters and character animation than the much-more publicized Fleischer cartoons.

I thought the oddest thing Barrier said was that Williams' animation direction on Roger Rabbit was "disastrous". What? Of everything in the film, it is the only part that is indisputably a roaring success (I have problems with parts of the plot, but that doesn't deflect off of what is great about the movie).

At the end of the day, Williams and Thomas-Johnston were masters, and Barrier needs to calm down and realize his personal taste is not a determining factor.