Coming Attractions: reading American movie trailers

Other cinematic practices that delivered the unreal and the unnatural to their audiences’ (p. 127) demonstrates a lack of awareness of Walt’s reasons for wanting his animated feature-film characters to look as realistic as possible, reasons which centred predominately around his belief that movie audiences, accustomed as they were to watching live-action feature-length films, might be unwilling or unable to follow a 90-plus minute story which used characters departing too far from a kind of photographic realism. The emphasis at the Disney studio on striving toward realism was hugely important to its history and the history of US animation: it was Walt’s way of competing with live-action feature films. Though overall this study deserves much praise, this praise must be tempered. Walt Disney and the Disney Company’s roles are incorporated in some very interesting and effective ways, but Sammond’s uneven knowledge of Disney’s history and its productions hurts the study in ways that are both unfortunate and unnecessary. Nonetheless, as a study of the history of 20th-century American childhood and popular culture, this book is to be commended for filling a gap in our collective understanding, and no doubt will spark numerous other studies, debates, and discussions.