Fantasia 2000 - Experimentation Analysis

Disney’s Fantasia 2000 uses experimentation of form and animation to bring the highbrow art of symphonic music to general audiences and, specifically, children. It modernizes the idea of high art and tempers its rules and traditions with abstract, animated expressionism. Children in particular respond to this experimental hybrid of high and low art because of its base emotional appeal—the music and the color-rich pictures eliminate the need for traditional storytelling.

Communication through words is not a child’s strong suit, but that doesn’t imply that they’re emotions aren’t complex. The music serves as the dialogue, the character’s (or abstraction’s) voice being a violin, oboe, French horn, or other instrument. The complexities of the musical compositions and the abstract stories expressed through the visuals communicate to children what they themselves have trouble expressing in words.

Three of the musical segments express different aspects of this experimentation with animation, music, and emotion. The film opens with an abridged rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This piece pulls the archetypal theme of light versus dark from the song through an abstract animation of triangles (butterflies?), light cascades, and angular black shapes. The “story” of this segment is more concerned with the struggle between heavenly color and light, and the dark, sharp black of below than it is with any character development or moral. The winging triangles and rapidly changing moods and backgrounds of the animation recall the formal practices of modern art. Children’s identification with the theme of light (good) versus dark (bad) of the music, gained through the visuals, provides them access into the world of high art and emotional expression.

The segments “Pines of Rome” and “Firebird Suite” provide a more narrative-based interpretation of the music, but also abstractly interpret the emotions of symphonic music. Though its title evokes images of trees and ancient Rome, Respighi’s piece is translated into an arctic ocean with giant whales swimming in the water and the sky. The animation stretches the imagination as whales, seemingly by the power of a star, take to the sky and breach breathtakingly in seas of clouds and light. The separation of the baby whale from his parents and the communal flight of the herd of whales to the clouds suggest a theme of familial love and protection, a theme reinforced by the tonal shift in the music from eerie/cold to grand/warm that children respond to emotionally.

The “Firebird Suite” sequence, similar to the “Beethoven’s Fifth” sequence, uses abstract ideas of nature of myth to express the archetypal struggle between destruction and renewal. Using the incredible emotion of Stravinsky’s composition, the animators visualize a soulful elk and a fluid nymph who is destroyed by a volcano spirit, but emerges from the ashes to renew nature once more. At moments the music surpasses the capability of the animation, and at others the animation interprets the music with such skill that it surpasses what the music could accomplish on its own. The hybrid of symphonic music and skilled animation communicate emotional and abstract concepts that dialogue and story alone could not accomplish.

By experimenting with the mixing of high and low art, orchestra and cartoon, Disney brings a legitimization to animation as an expressive art while making symphonic orchestration more accessible to a general audience. The animated visuals of the film appeal to the need for a form of story for the audience, children especially, and the music speaks the characters emotions and compliments the colors and movements of the animation. By demonstrating that Beethoven, Stravinsky, and other composers can express joys, fears, and emotions that children experience, Disney legitimizes the childish experience and condition.