Reflections of a stormy petrel

I just had an insight, from the New York Times' disgraceful attack upon the Little Sisters of the Poor. It is this: Freud was right in pointing to transference as a mechanism, but wrong in believing that it is principally a defence mechanism. Here, for instance, we have a classic case of transference: the New York Times claims that the Little Sisters’ suit “boils down to an unjustified attempt by an employer to impose its religious views on workers.” We know perfectly well that that is transference, that the so-called newspaper of record is the place where unshared religious opinions would not long survive. But the point is that there is nothing defensive about it. The Times, even in its current parlous financial state, has nothing to fear from the Little Sisters, any more than Obama has. The fact is that they are simply transfering the company's own standard behaviour on to the nuns because that is what they would do in their place, or in anybody's place. The oppression of conscience and the silencing of religious independence is their way to be. And when you look at cases of transference, you will always find it clear: the person who ascribes to others his or her own standard behaviour does so because it finds it natural. It also explains a streak of paranoia that made Freud see this as a defensive reaction. There may be nothing to defend oneself against, but there would be if the modus operandi that the person sees as natural were actually present. If others behaved to the NYT executives as the NYT executives behave to their employees and to anyone under their influence, they NYT executives would have reason to fear. And the same goes for anyone whose similarly low expectations of human nature are really based upon their own low standards.

There can be no doubt that FANTASIA is one of the most beautiful movies ever done. At the same time, one visual image in the central "Sorcerer's Apprentice" episode struck me intensely. The movie was produced in 1940, when the world war - begun in 1935 in Africa, in 1937 in East Asia, in in 1939 in Europe - was lapping dangerously at the shores of the United States. Well, the repeated images of those murderous enchanted brooms marching in line, violently lit in a very strong contrast of light and shadow, brought forcibly to my mind the idea of armies on the march. I certainly don't say that Disney or his employees intended "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" for an allegory of contemporary politics; its point, if any, is far more general and quite timeless. But I don't think there is any doubt that the images they used carried those overtones. Such images at such a time could not but carry a very strong message of concern and danger - real, immediate danger, fear that was a daily affair. World War Two is history to us; it was a direct concern in their lives to them.

So how does Disney resolve this frightening image of the violence then seizing the world, of the wave of destruction which is lapping even at Mickey Mouse's calm suburban America? Why, Daddy comes home. The Sorcerer had simply been gone a while; he comes back, takes in, in an instant, what had happened, and puts an end to it with no more than three dramatic gesture. And to complete the parallel with the life and mind of a child, Mickey does Bambi eyes at him to try and charm his way out of a well-deserved punishment, and gets his bottom warmed for his pains. A splendid sequence; but a sequence that expresses, to my mind, nothing so much as a desire to regress from the difficulties and fears of the contemporary adult world into a safe, familiar world where Daddy takes care of everything - even if Daddy takes care of spanking your botty, too.

This is in effect infantilism, an attempt to transform the real world into a nursery. Several years earlier, Disney had been guilty, in another masterpiece (THE THREE LITTLE PIGS) of a distortion nearly as bad and even more heartless. This cartoon is indubitably about the great depression, and, unlike that FANTASIA scene, nobody can doubt that the point is conscious and deliberate. Not only is "to have the wolf at your door" an ancient expression for being dangerously in debt or poor, but the wise pig insists on the concept. If you build your house of bricks, you'll be safe and not be sorry when the wolf comes to your door. The problem with the other two pigs is that they could not be bothered to build their houses solidly enough first, before running off to have fun. Now this is not really a very good account of what went wrong with US and international economy in the late twenties, but it is particularly bad when you realize that it is aimed not at the societal leadership but at the common man. There is no evidence whatever that the average American of the twenties had been any less hard-working or any more of a wastrel than that of any other time; and to suggest that the catastrophe was caused by improvidence is not only wrong, it is positively insulting. It is a slap in the face of all those Americans who, throughout the twenties, had effectively worked, saved and invested - done the real-life equivalent of building their house of brick - only to see their life savings destroyed by the collapse of the whole banking system. The Great Depression actually punished saving and sensible investment, rewarding those who had either stuffed their dollars in their mattresses or spent them as they made them. To preach, in 1934 or so, the virtues of thrift and hard work, as a panacea to "keep the wolf away from your door," is utterly beside the point.

It may be that the Great Depression was Disney's original sin. He did very well out of it, and naturally did not want to look too hard into what had caused it. It was only because of the Depression that he was able to hire hundreds of the best artists in America when word went round that one man in Burbank was in fact hiring. People came from all the forty-eight states, and Disney could pick the best. And mind you, he was a good employer, paid well, rewarded effort and talent, and made people feel as though they were part of something important. Certainly nobody in Hollywood at the time could be remotely so certain that what they were doing would go down in history, as those who took part in, say, the creation of SNOW-WHITE. But, at the same time, he had taken advantage of something that had ruined his countrymen. I wonder whether he was running away from this.

So there you have it. A great artist, indubitably; but also a dangerous infantilist, whose view is time and time again over-simplified and damaging. How do we look at him?