"Classical music is tight, yo" - the great philosopher Kanye West (part 1)

Jump to 1:53 for the quote from the title, but every second of this "advertisement" is gold

Fantasia is a bit of an unappreciated classic gem and this was my first time watching the whole thing. I'm aware that it has quite the fanbase and Disney loves to promote Mickey in his Sorcerer's Apprentice garb. The hat itself is iconic even if Disney's Hollywood Studios (in Florida), formerly Disney- MGM Studios, has removed it as its signature landmark.

Those poor millennials who will never be able to take a selfie with this hat 

The park won't suffer much from it in my opinion. The whole "movie magic" is lost on me when you're a L.A. local who hates driving to Hollywood: like the rest of SoCal, there's too much traffic and parking sucks, add in the extra amount of tourists, plus strange people in costumes who you pay to take photos with. In that respect, it's like Disneyland, only you don't have to tip Mickey and his friends, and Mr. Incredible won't be picking fights with Batgirl while Elsa tries to intervene (you can't make this stuff up).  

The former home of the giant Sorcerer's Hat still has cool live shows like the ones with Indiana Jones and stunt cars (two different shows, but wouldn't it be awesome if Disney combined those two? If no, then eh I guess it's just me then). I rode Tower of Terror and Rock 'n' Roller Coaster eight times each that day (single rider line is awesome), but honestly there's not much to offer in that park for me. If you aren't a bitter ole grouch like me, there's Universal Studios Florida (and Hollywood) out there for your movie magic fix.

If cars dancing to Daddy Yankee isn't considered magical, then I don't know what is

 Fantasia was Walt's attempt to introduce culture and classical music to the masses, an animated masterpiece to rise above the typical Hollywood drivel and was going to be constantly reinvented with new material. Indeed what an odd match a Fantasia icon and Disney's Hollywood Studios was for the past fourteen years. My suggestion that's never going to happen for the new home of Mickey's hat?

Adding a giant hat would make a Frank Gehry design only slightly weirder

This shiny building which construction crews had to make less shinier because sunlight reflecting off it "roasted the sidewalk to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to make plastic sag, cause serious sunburn to people standing on the street and create a hazard to passing motorists" (60 degrees Celsius for any non-American readers, but a story like this would normally be in some goofy comic book plot). Lillian Disney donated the first $50 million to build the Walt Disney Concert hall. “I have al­ways had a deep love and ad­mir­a­tion for my hus­band and I wanted to find a way to hon­or him, as well as give something to Los Angeles which would have last­ing qual­it­ies,” she says in a state­ment. Who couldn't say if each reflected sunbeam that burned random tourists and blinded bicyclists wasn't Walt himself smiling down from the heavens?

Yeah right, you say because Walt Disney is cryogenically frozen underneath Disneyland. NO, that is just an odd urban legend that has somehow lasted all this time. Walt was cremated and laid to rest in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. The first cryogenic freezing of humans took place after he died. Stop spreading the frozen Walt Disney story and also stop spreading ashes in the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion rides, folks.

Speaking of death, I say cheerfully with "a song and a smile". The Skeleton Dance  was the first Silly Symphony in 1929. The Silly Symphony shorts are pretty much precursors to the Fantasia vignettes: animated shorts created to accompany music.

Whether it's Halloween or not, these guys are awesome

I was still just a kid when the Walt Disney Concert Hall was finally completed in 2003 and I questioned why it was named after Disney when there was nothing "magical" about it to me.

Ok, it's not like I expected the concert hall to look like Disneyland Castle.

If I watched Fantasia as a kid (totally ignored Fantasia 2000 when it was released in theaters), I honestly wouldn't "get it". I, like many people, grew accustomed to what was considered "typically Disney", which was singing princesses, magic, and wise-cracking animal sidekicks.

Dot Warner still has the best Princess name ever: Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca the Third

Indeed, they were winning Smoscars and raking in the dough. Then the era post Fantasia 2000 happened, but I'm jumping ahead in the canon. Onwards to Fantasia! All right, I know how this works, we're going to have a pretty storybook open up on us...

...What's going on?

So that's Deems Taylor, noted music critic and composer, and he's the Master of Ceremonies for the entire movie. He introduces the back story of the music and the plot of each short before it begins. Some people would find him a nuisance if they prefer to be surprised before each short, but I personally don't care. Good animation is good animation and I'll watch it.

Our first piece Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by J.S. Bach begins with the conductor, Leopold Stokowski (more on him for the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment), and the musicians in shadow surrounded by a backdrop of color before we proceed into pure abstract art. I'm just going to say it's like your computer screensaver/Windows media player swirly colors things before computers were a thing.

"Hot dog", that's my interpretation.

Next are selections from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and Deems Taylor tells us The Nutcracker ballet "wasn't much of a success and nobody performs it nowadays." Oh Deems, what a kidder you are!

Do I look like I'm joking?

Oh, um... apparently reception to The Nutcracker was meh when Tchaikovsky debuted it in 1892 in St. Petersburg. It wouldn't catch on in the U.S. until George Balanchine's famous stage production of the ballet in 1954, which is fourteen years after Fantasia. Now the ballet is performed all around the world during the holiday season. George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein co-founded the School of American Ballet (basically the Harvard/Princeton/insert whatever prestigious school you like, of ballet) and the New York City Ballet.

So The Nutcracker was a piece of art that was unappreciated in its time, only to have its popularity greatly increased after its creator died. Where have I heard of this happening before? Eh, I lost my train of thought. Anyways, I love this short and it's in my top 3 for this movie (should be pretty obvious what the other 2 are).  I love the fairies dancing and flying to Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, it's such a perfect fit. Then we cut to Chinese Dance/Tea with mushrooms.

 A "Chinese" caricature,yes. Racist... eh?

I am Chinese and not offended by this, if you are slightly offended, yes I would understand why. If you think this is the mostly blatant racist thing to ever happen to the Chinese/Asian community, um... good luck to you in the real world? This was 1940 and we'll get into censorship later on, remember Sunflower from my Pinocchio post if you didn't already know about her. Also, c'mon that baby mushroom is damn adorable. And believe me, this segment could've been way more racist...

Really Disney, you had to add Fu Manchu mustaches?

Again, you have to judge this by 1940 standards. This wouldn't fly today because if there's one thing Disney knows how to do, it's to deny the non-squeaky clean parts of the company as much as possible. Song of the South, anyone? They have frigging Splash Mountain in their parks and the little kiddies like me don't find out where "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" comes from until adulthood. If you really don't like this interpretation of the Chinese Dance/Tea, here's the San Francisco ballet performance with a dragon.

Because ballet and dragons are awesome

Next is Dance of the Reed Flutes and it's pretty flower petals spinning on water. Nothing much there before get to the Arabian Dance/Coffee performed by fish. It is a pretty creative idea with the long flowing tails of the sexy fishes as the veils of Arabian dancers.

Ok yeah, Disney went through a bit of a sexy fish phase back then

I'm sorry but whenever I watch this segment, this pops up into my head for some reason.

End of the 90's gave us Will Smith and this... (yes I saw it in theaters, but I movie hopped that time, no one should have to pay to watch Wild Wild West)

Next is Russian Dance/ Trepak or Candy Cane, whatever version you wanna call it and it's much more livelier with the flowers doing the cossack dance. It really wakes you up from the lull of the sexy dancing fishes earlier.

And finally we have The Waltz of the Flowers, a piece I know personally because I played it a lot for enjoyment when I was in middle school. Well, well, well, you say, someone was quite the snobby child back then. Ahem, this is what I mean by "play".

No, I didn't have my puppies wear silly hats (most of the time) 

Nintendogs is a virtual pet simulator game (with puppies!) and when you walk your puppies sometimes they find neat little items like vinyl records (video games don't have to make sense), which has a neat little effect on your pups when they're played. Waltz of the Flowers makes them dance and the end of the record makes them do a back flip (because Nintendo said why not). I didn't have a dog at the time so virtual puppies were the next best thing. Also did I mention dancing puppies? (I'm going to spazz out so bad when we get to 101 Dalmatians.)

The whole time I was watching this beautiful animation, I kept thinking of puppies

Thus concludes Fantasia's interpretation of The Nutcracker Suite, utilizing images of nature and the four seasons, and one of my faves.  Like I've said in my Snow White review, I don't need much plot to entertain me. But Deems Taylor introduces the next segment as something that tells a definite story. In fact, the story came first before the music....

Ok,who doesn't know The Sorcerer's Apprentice?

Add caption-insert obligatory Nic Cage joke-   (I think what has happened to his career is enough of a joke though)

So the story is Mickey decides to give up being a sorcerer and becomes a treasure hunter, but he has to steal the Declaration of Independence first to solve the clues left behind by America's Founding Fathers (sorry I couldn't resist, and National Treasure is a Disney property).

All kidding aside, this short is the real reason why Fantasia was made. Walt thought Mickey needed to regain popularity, hence why such a relatively expensive and quite epic short was made. Releasing the short by itself wouldn't justify the expense of distributing it. And so like a boss, Disney decided to make more animated shorts and combine them into one fantastical film.

In a way, The Sorcerer's Apprentice made the marketing for Fantasia more difficult later on. Walt Disney had always considered his animated films as high quality products for audiences, young and old. He made family films, not kiddie stuff. Like I've said in my introductory post, being an adult animation fan (in the U.S. at least) carries some kind of stigma. For example, the representation of bronies in pop culture, but I'm a MLP: FiM fan myself (please, don't look so shocked). Animation is treated at the Oscars like they're the kids' table, but I forget that it's the Golden Globes where the celebs get to have dinner.

Disney often being delegated to "kids' stuff" happened early on with the cartoon shorts and the premiere full-length feature that became a box office smash was a story about a singing princess. So imagine all those families in the theater being excited about seeing Mickey Mouse in his red robe and blue magic hat... well prepare to schooled in classical music, yo! (The kids still use yo, right?) You get Deems Taylor and the Philadelphia orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Disney and Stokowski met by coincidence in Hollywood and the famous conductor was ecstatic about the development of Fantasia. How popular was Leopold Stokowski? Nine years after Fantasia, he would be impersonated by Bugs Bunny in the Long Haired Hare (lucky son of a gun).

Bugs snaps the baton in half here, reminiscent of Stokowski's preference to conduct with his hands 

For a short while, both of these figures were a huge part of American popular culture

 My favorite Sorcerer's Apprentice parody? That honor goes to Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons (if for some reason you don't know them, think Tom and Jerry but with more cartoon violence and gore in less time).

From The Simpsons' Season 6, ep 4, "Itchy and Scratchy Land", one of my favorites, featuring a twisted version of Disneyland :)

Next up is Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Taylor states that science tells about single-celled organisms that became fishes, which became amiphibians, and eventually dinosaurs... and holy cheese on crackers, is he talking about evolution... in 1940? We're somehow still having the whole creationism vs. evolution debate on education today.

Last Simpsons reference for this movie, I swear

The segment begins in outer space where we zoom into Earth, ravaged and inhospitable on the surface. In the ocean, we see the little prokaryotes evolve into eukaryotes. (I fell asleep in Biology class, but I remember these terms.. that and um the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.) Honestly, this segment kind of... bores me. Yes, yes, I've committed the unforgivable sin of stating something in Fantasia is boring to me. When we get to the dinosaurs, (and all the dino nerds who've seen this animation shouting that all those dinosaurs were from different time periods millions of years apart, yadayadayada, I don't care), I was still eh, that means we're almost done right? Even when there's an epic fight between the Stegosaurus and the T-Rex, there's no blood or gore (because this is a family picture), and I was a kid who never had a dinosaur phase, but damn it even I watched Jurassic Park. 

Of course, I was traumatized to the point where I refused to go on the Universal Studios ride for years

It ends with the dinosaurs dying off by drought, but I was kinda was hoping for a meteor attack. At the very least, if you've ever ridden the train at Disneyland, you've probably seen the dinosaur animatronic exhibit (the T-rex and stegosaurus at the very end most likely plays homage to the Fantasia segment).

                                              And hey, now it's time for Intermission!

                                          

To be continued in part 2! Yeah, I know I lied about no more Simpsons references, but that was funnier than the classic 1950s version to me.