Nesbet analyzes Disney’s impact on Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, especially the similarities between style of Snow White and Eisenstein’s film. Like Disney, Eisenstein valued full understanding of the characters and stories he portrayed on film. He studied Ivan’s story from multiple angles, from folklore to histories, to do just that. Eisenstein admired Disney for the comfort he brought to America and the world through his films. He believed that Americans were trapped in a world of torment and injustice, and Disney offered a temporary escape from that. Even though Disney films seem to support a form of obliviousness to the misfortunes throughout the country, he gives the nation something else that they need: laughter. One critic cited the American proverb: “A laugh a day keeps the doctor away,” which certainly brings to mind the similar proverb about an apple, and how it connects to the stepmother in Snow White and her deceptively beautiful poisonous apple that leads to “sleeping death.” Nesbet wonders if Disney has played the role of the apple for Eisenstein, irresistible to the Russian director.

            Eisenstein valued animation as a medium, due to its versatility of form. It allows for metamorphoses and transformations otherwise unachievable on film. The fire behind the mirror’s mask in Snow White, for example, also exhibits “flowing diversity of forms.” Shadow, too, has this quality. In Snow White, the dwarfs’ shadows occasionally move independently. At one point, Doc’s shadow turns and motions for quiet from Dopey’s shadow. Soldiers’ shadows in Ivan also seem to occasionally move independently across the wall. Disney uses the versatility of form to create comedy. However, occasionally malleable forms seem more grotesque than comedic, so certain characters had to be drawn more realistic than others. It was acceptable for the dwarfs to have unusual and exaggerated features, but Snow White could neither be comedic nor grotesque, so Disney based her motions off those of a real actress.

Steven Watts argues a positive view of Disney’s importance in American history, although acknowledges the difficulty of understanding his impact on modern American culture. Many critics believe that Disney’s commercial success and popularity mean that his films cannot have cultural significance. In addition, the strong contradictory opinions of Disney make it difficult to simply look at his impact in order to gain understanding rather than to criticize or admire his work. Watts looks at Walt Disney as an artist of sentimental modernist films and as a promoter of American ideals, qualities that are evident in Disney’s rendering of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

America’s original perception of Disney was of a serious artist, inspired by both modernist art and sentimental realism. These two often contradictory influences show in his work. He blurred the line of reality and imagination by creating worlds where animals could talk, plants were animated, and household objects felt emotion. In Snow White, the forest through which the banished girl flees has trees which try to grab and trip her, but nearby, kind animals prepare to comfort her. In addition, he incorporated dreams often in his work. Walt Disney encouraged naturalism to a degree unheard of in animation and cartoons. He insisted that his animators take evening art classes and he invented the multiplane camera, which created the illusion of depth in Snow White and his other animated feature films.

Disney also used his films to imbue hope and to promote certain virtues to his audience during the depression. His films in the 1930’s remind Americans that they will overcome the hard times through vigor and virtue. Two Disney films in the ‘30s stand out in particular for encouraging the persistence and courage of underdogs. Three Little Pigs (1933) features the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” while the dwarves in Snow White (1937) merrily sing “Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go.” Snow White, too, exhibits a hard-working demeanor both in her house and the dwarves’. Disney claims that “wisdom and courage is enough to defeat big, bad wolves of every description, and send them slinking away.” Through his films, he encouraged self-reliance, a quality that he had exhibited since his youth.