DCML Digest, Vol 16, Issue 15

danshane@bellsouth.net danshane at bellsouth.net
Mon Jun 14 20:06:03 CEST 2004


D van E WRITES:

> Indeed. All that's really important is that the comics are 
> made by Disney, just like Windows is created by Microsoft, 
> and E.T. by Steven Spielberg, etc.
> 
> Only few people care for credits when consuming products of 
> big companies. 
> Have many people do carefully read the credits after a movie 
> is over? How many people do carefully read the detailed 
> credits of a software programme?

AND I REPLY:

That is all of importance to some, perhaps, but not to all.  And by your analogy Steven Spielberg did not make E.T.  Universal Pictures did.  Universal did the special effects, wrote the screenplay, directed the actors, and wrote the score.  While film credits have become self-defeatingly endless since the early 1970s, there was a time when a half dozen title cards displayed the department heads mainly responsible for making movies, and that was mostly good enough.  I agree there are probably no individuals outside of family members who care who held the director's hat while he was mopping his brow, but can you really claim that no one ever cared who Ray harryhausen was, even though he never directed a major motion picture in his life?

Software is a completely different animal from visual entertainment except in the arena of video games.  And even there many titles are sought out specifically by the name of the author.

DANIEL CONTINUES:
 
> That's the risk of working and creating under an existant 
> company, using its product lines and marketing strategies. 
> Barks is credited for creating Scrooge, but he NEVER had to 
> PROMOTE Scrooge. That's what Disney did. Barks created 
> Scrooge, but DISNEY made Scrooge popular.

Now I'm beginning to get your dirft.  You seem to be looking at it from a marketing standpoint rather than from the creators' or readers' view.  I learned a long time ago it is useless to try to get a marketeer to understand how the real world works.

> There are even ADULTS who tend to think that Donald Duck and 
> Mickey Mouse are actual living creatures, copmplete with 
> life-story, family tree and traumas.

Really?  I've never met one who thought they were anything but realistic characters.  Could you introduce me to someone who believes these critters are real people?

> Full credits placed on every *other* children's book ever 
> published? This is not true.

Not literally, no.  Disney Little Golden Books often followed the Disney comics model.  But you have chosen to interpret hyperbole literally.  The rest of us probably understood what Don meant.

Dan




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