[As I’ve done for the last few years, I wanted to start the New Year by looking back on some prior years that we can commemorate as anniversaries. Leading up to a weekend post with some 2023 predictions!]
On an
obvious (if entirely unintended) symbol for cultural hegemony, and a more truly
lasting one.
Few
landmarks have changed in meaning more dramatically than has the Hollywood Sign. The mammoth sign
was first
erected in 1923 and read “Hollywoodland,” as that was the name of the new
housing development that the real estate moguls Woodruff
and Shoults were building in the Hollywood Hills. They and the sign’s
designer Thomas
Fisk Goff (an English immigrant, local painter, and the owner of the
Crescent Sign Company) intended the sign to stay up for only a couple years,
just long enough to secure sufficient buyers for these desirable Los Angeles
homes. But the Hollywood film industry became significantly more prominent at
precisely this moment, and the sign quickly morphed into a symbol of that
cultural phenomenon. For another couple decades it read “Hollywoodland,” but
when it began to deteriorate and was slated
for demolition in 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in to preserve
the sign, but without
the “land” so it could more accurately represent the community and film
industry alike. Thanks to another campaign to restore the
letters in 1978, it continues to serve as that symbolic landmark to this
day, a reflection of both the larger than life and the genuinely mythic nature
of Hollywood.
While the
Hollywood(land) Sign might be the clearest symbolic representation of that pop culture
presence and force, however, I would argue that another 1923 cultural
innovation has been significantly more influential than any overarching images
or myths of Hollywood. It was in that year that the talented young illustrator
and animator Walter “Walt” Disney
(not yet 22 years old at the time, and having just moved to Hollywood from
Chicago in July) and his
brother Roy (older than Walt by a decade and living in Los Angeles already)
first created their Disney Brothers Studio. Originally set up to create a
series of six short film adaptations of Alice
in Wonderland for groundbreaking animation producer
Margaret J. Winkler (which resulted in innovative
short films that combined animation with live-action), Disney Brothers
would truly begin its ascent into the stratosphere five years later with the
creation of the character of Mickey Mouse, who appeared in a couple shorts and
then in the megahit Steamboat Willie
(1928) that truly launched the character and the Disney brand alike.
Neither
the Hollywood Sign nor Disney Brothers Studio were in 1923 even a fraction of
what they would become over the next few decades, but Disney was of course far
closer, or at least a genuine starting point for the work that the studio would
continue to do and amplify (rather than a random advertisement intended to last
only a brief time). But that’s not the distinction that I want to focus on in this
final paragraph. I know that here in 2023 Disney has become a symbol of all
that’s wrong with mega-corporations and cultural monopolies and streaming
juggernauts and etc., and I understand all that (even though, as I wrote in
my Thanksgiving series last November, I love much of what they stream). But
I think it’s pretty damn cool that a pair of brothers, the younger a
super-talented artistic prodigy and the older a supportive partner, created an
illustration and animation studio out of nothing more than their own will and
goals, and a century later it’s become one of the most pervasive cultural
forces in human history. Even before Mickey steamed onto the scene, Walt and
Roy’s 1923 studio was a profoundly powerful embodiment of what Hollywood and
creative and popular culture can be, much more so than a collection of giant
letters on a hillside.
Last
anniversary tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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