Starting with snow white

Snow White 
tale, and while Disney was careful not to 

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break the earlier traditional narrative logic and cohesion, Gág’s style, audience (child 
readers), and textual positioning (as a successive American representation) necessarily 
transformed the tale. 
Even as her German upbringing coaxed a return to the Grimms’, Gág could not 
stray from a host of Disney markers present in the images, softened text, or romance of 
her tale. And, even if one’s inclination is not to see Disney but the Grimms’ in Gág’s 
tale, critics force the association. Because of this complicated response to Disney’s 
Snow 
White and the Seven Dwarfs
, at once intent on turning away from the animator’s impact 
and
gesturing to an earlier precursor (the Grimms’), this version needs Disney’s 
Snow 
White.
Yet, as I have shown above, Disney proves more than Gág’s “calling card,” of 
sorts. His version, with its poignant images, broader reach of audience, and romance, 
proved influential for Gág as both artist and translator. In short, even though both the 
publication industry and critical reviews aimed to showcase Gag’s as “the original, un-
Disneyed version” of 
Snow White, 
her artistry could not follow Disney’s successively, 
without employing Disney’s American influence (Crosbie 18).
Deliberately Following Disney: Securing Success in Animation 
Disney’s influence on animation through the fairy tale film, 
Snow White and the 
Seven Dwarfs 
struck a chord that other Hollywood studios and corporations similarly 
could not ignore. At the same time, they were not all too eager to jump on the Disney 
bandwagon, even though the production of 
Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
—a short, 
produced just six years following the renowned Disney version—might well lend to 

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another impression. Geoff Pevere states that “Sixty years ago, Warner Bros. reluctantly 
entered the animation age, and only because the seemingly out-of-nowhere success of the 
Disney operation—where [Cartoon Director Chuck] Jones had once worked, miserably—
made it impossible for competing studios not to make cartoons” (Pevere C3). Despite 
this disinclination toward animation, under a “subcontracted” “independent company run 
by Leon Schlesinger,” a host of animators and the Warner Bros. company together 
“evolved [their] own style” (Pevere C3). What they termed their own style, however, 
was not so far removed from that of the master animator, Walt Disney himself. 
Walt Disney was referenced as a conductor, of sorts; all artful activity in the 
studio fell under his purview and discretion. The Warner Bros. animators, while fully 
recognizing the distinction of Disney’s work, which “possessed a different, seemingly 
higher quality than their own” likewise strove to represent their own imagined desires 
and styles on screen (Arnold 96). Leon Schlesinger, pinpointed the divergence in the two 
studios animated films, saying, “‘We’re businessmen. Walt Disney’s an artist’” (Arnold 
96). Jones’ remarks mirrored the same, though with a slightly more defeatist tone, 
understanding, “No matter what we do, Disney is going to be ahead of us,” and later 
“recall[ing], ‘We never thought of ourselves as artists. We never used the term’” (Pevere 
C3). Ironically, calling out the distinction between their work and Disney’s enabled the 
animators to thrive as owners over their own cartoons and cartoon style, just as Disney 
had with 
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 
(and later fairy tale films). Only the Warner 
Bros. “cartoon style” was more boastful in its “belief that cartoon character was an ideal 
screen for the projection of the animator’s personality. The stronger that personality, the 

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bolder the cartoons it produced” (Pevere C3). Although Disney’s work is often 
disparaged on the grounds of his self-interest, the Warner Bros. openly committed to this 
model, and this is the style presented through director, Bob Clampett’s 
Coal Black and de 
Sebben Dwarfs.
This overbearing weight of Clampett’s self-interest may have, in part, clouded his 
perspective as to what he actually had produced in 
Coal Black
. Instead of the voraciously 
researched and cohesively unified blend of previous 
Snow White 
traditions, adapted by 
Disney, Clampett’s version callously throws away the tradition of the tale, in favor of his 
own “fascination with black entertainment” (Lehman 77). It was understood that 
“Clampett appreciated African American music and frequently used it in films” (Lehman 
77). Therefore, Clampett, and even critical perspectives of his work, such as that of 
Jaime Weinman, view the film as “Clampett’s tribute to music and culture that he loved,” 
where “voices [were] done by African-American actors” and “jazz musicians [were] 
brought in to augment composer Carl Stallings orchestra” (57). Another, similarly 
minded critic, Michael Barrier, argues, “The characters are black because the idea for 
[Clampett’s] cartoon was born when Clampett saw the Duke Ellington revue 
Jump for 
Joy 
in 1941” (Barrier qtd. in Beck 103). Norman M. Klein also argues that “[Clampett’s] 
primary source for 
Coal Black 
was 
Harlem as Seen by Hirschfeld 
(1941), a book of 
caricatures […] [one that] specialized in theater entertainment imagery” (192). These 
perspectives, complimentary in the first and nonchalantly disputing any ill treatment 
through caricature in the following two, gaze upon 
Coal Black 
through the director’s 
eyes, per the Warner Bros. cartoonists’ self-conceived mission and vision. However, 

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there is quite a bit more to this 
Snow White 
inversion than representations of jazz and 
entertainment. For one, 
Snow White
, the tale itself, is entirely absent from these 
assessments, and in their praise for the director’s vision, they avoid the troubling racially 
infused perspective that has been produced. 
While Clampett may not have seen race as he had produced it in 
Coal Black
, one 
cannot help but see how he attempted to claim ownership anew over the popular 
animated fairy tale by taking a measure of control over the race caricatured within. There 
was a need for animation or film to respond to Disney’s wildly successful 
Snow White 
and the Seven Dwarfs
. Yet the response also needed to depict a distinct departure from 
the same. What better way to differentiate this new 
Snow White
than to caricature the 
tale’s fair heroine as a black figure? Clampett’s response may well have been based upon 
the jazz culture that he found himself entranced by, but it was equally oppositional to 
Disney’s fairy tale form. Where Disney’s version directed its story to all Americans, 
displaying its national influence in relatively broad strokes, Clampett’s version more 
specifically detailed particular facets of American culture by means of racial parody and 
played to the purchasing classes or “dominant culture” of Americans (Gabbidon 699).
Shaun Gabbidon finds,
The humor of the film drew from existing exaggerated perceptions of African 
Americans by the dominant culture. The film was thought innocuous when 
released to the general public. However, at the time of its release, the general 
movie audience was predominately Caucasian due the social segregation of the 
1896 Plessy decision. Blacks were not permitted to attend theaters operated and 
attended by Whites. (699)
Similarly, Robert L. Tefertillar notes, “There was no public outcry when they [(cartoons 
using ethnic or racial stereotypes)] came out, […] since certain ethnic stereotypes were a 

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