{"id":2269,"date":"2016-08-04T14:13:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T18:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bandsiusetalike.com\/biul\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2018-05-07T10:46:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T14:46:52","slug":"elton-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bandsiusetalike.com\/biul\/elton-john\/","title":{"rendered":"Elton John"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BIUL_EltonJohn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, look. This is what’s called an\u00a0in medias res<\/em> strip. The action was in progress before you started reading.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of my biggest grievances towards the Disney Corporation is that creatively, they came to a crossroads in the late 1980s, and they chose the wrong exit. Instead of concentrating on their solid contributions, like\u00a0Who Framed Roger Rabbit?\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Dick Tracy<\/em>, they put absolutely everything into princesses, mermaids, and straight-to-VHS sequels. As they did in 2015, they forsook true movie magic for moolah and mommy issues.\u00a0Roger Rabbit\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Dick Tracy<\/em> never got sequels because they were made by men and women who stuck to their guns. Disney abhors guns, even metaphorical ones.<\/p>\n

In high school, I got the opportunity to tour CalArts as a prospective student. This included Disney’s wing, where a guy from my hometown worked. He showed me all the gigantic matte paintings for their upcoming blockbuster,\u00a0Dick Tracy<\/em>. Those sprawling, engrossing cityscapes crammed with buildings?<\/p>\n

Hand-painted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"dicktracy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Every window, every detail. In person, they looked like you could fall into them. The painters hid lots of inside jokes, like names of beloved pets, and the silhouette of Disney icon Mickey Mouse’s head is suffused\u00a0into several backdrops. To create a sense of geography, the painters repeated landmarks, like the mythical “Hotel Grand” neon sign. Notoriously prickly director and star Warren Beatty ordered it changed to “Grand Hotel”, then back to “Hotel Grand” again, and the painters aired their frustration with “Hotel Grunt”, which was visible in theaters for the final shot.\u00a0I’ll bet you can see it on the Blu-Ray.<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyway; this is just a fraction of my personal history with Disney. Roger Rabbit is a whole other animus; the equivalent of his movie and its subsequent shorts could and would not be made today.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s thanks to Disney’s\u00a0utter mollification objective.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tarzan is a classic naturally masculine<\/em> character. Naturally masculine men are a\u00a0threat to media, in multiple ways.\u00a0<\/strong>So Disney portrays Tarzan as a mushy, under-confident naif, with an utterly pusillanimous song from Phil Collins at his worst, “You’ll Be In My Heart”. Tarzan’s trademark vine-swinging is a vehicle for self-effacing slapstick and then-current effects. This sloppy mouthing of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ scrotum went on to be one of Disney’s most successful movies.<\/p>\n

The only time Disney is comfortable portraying strong masculinity is when it’s an animal. This is Disney post-Dumbo<\/em>. One of their few\u00a0decent animated features since then is\u00a0The Lion King<\/em>, despite its wholesale cribbing from a Japanese cartoon (Kimba the White Lion<\/em>). Masculinity is portrayed in two ways; quiet pride and treacherous evil. Children who embrace this Manichean reduction will become easy-to-herd adults. They’ll believe that anyone important in their lives will die randomly at any moment.<\/p>\n

And when things get “too scary”, one of the shittiest Elton John songs in the history of sound pours molasses over everything.<\/p>\n