The DVD and New Media

Parker, Mark; Parker, Deborah

doi:10.1057/9780230119130_1

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“…By 2008, sales of DVDs had begun to markedly decline, reflecting in part the impact of the wider economic recession (Benson-Allott, 2013: 246: n70; Brereton, 2012: 201). As Mark and Deborah Parker (2011: 45) suggest, this has had a particularly negative impact on the viability of lavish ‘special edition’ box sets, especially for older films, with many studios citing poor sales and low profits as a justification for stepping away from these product lines. Disney discontinued its Treasures sets in 2009 and, although it has continued to release new editions of its historic features on DVD and more recently Blu-ray, there has been comparatively little done with the cartoon shorts since this time.…”

Section: Afterwordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walt Disney Treasures or Mickey Mouse DVDs? Animatophilia, Nostalgia, and the Competing Representations of Theatrical Cartoon Shorts on Home Video

McGowan

2018

Animation

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Theatrical-era short animation has often acquired a complex, even contradictory, textual identity: most cartoons were originally produced for a general audience, but were then marketed almost exclusively towards children as repeats on television. The rise of DVD has further complicated the status of these films. On the one hand, the format has facilitated the release of a lot of rare animated material, most notably within a series of multi-volume special editions entitled the Walt Disney Treasures, explicitly aimed at the previously marginalized adult viewer. However, Disney has also produced lower priced, 'family friendly' discs featuring many of the same cartoons. Unlike the Treasures volumes, the latter sets tend to censor problematic content and generally lack contextualizing bonus features. The choice to watch one of these collections over the other can thus have a significant impact upon one's interpretation of the collected films. Thomas Elasasser argues that film culture-embodied most fervently by the devoted cinephile (and, for the purposes of this study, the equivalent figure of the animatophile)-has often failed to recognize itself as a product of generational memory. It is frequently implied by such groups that DVD special editions are the most 'authentic' because they privilege the original cinematic experience, without acknowledging the degree to which the format itself serves to remediate its contents. For instance, while the Treasures discs generally present the films uncut-sometimes 'restoring' footage unseen since the 1930s and 40s-these are often prefaced with mandatory disclaimers providing historical context for contentious elements such as racism. The sheer volume of material that these collections provide, including opportunities for bingewatching with 'play all' functions, similarly alters the portioned availability of these texts in the theatrical sphere. This article will suggest that both the special edition and 'family friendly' DVD options ultimately reflect a nostalgic struggle to appropriate and define the present and future reception of the films, rather than to truly reclaim the past.

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Section: Afterwordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walt Disney Treasures or Mickey Mouse DVDs? Animatophilia, Nostalgia, and the Competing Representations of Theatrical Cartoon Shorts on Home Video

McGowan

2018

Animation

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The DVD and New Media

Cited by 1 publication

References 1 publication

Walt Disney Treasures or Mickey Mouse DVDs? Animatophilia, Nostalgia, and the Competing Representations of Theatrical Cartoon Shorts on Home Video

Walt Disney Treasures or Mickey Mouse DVDs? Animatophilia, Nostalgia, and the Competing Representations of Theatrical Cartoon Shorts on Home Video

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