the titles. For a variety of reasons we recognise that we are being given material that our
heroes will have to deal with. These reasons will be in part to do with our familiarity with
the locale, language, pace of cutting, camera angles and music that we associate with this
series but also because, in general terms, we have learnt the conventions of the ‘tease’
at the front of such a programme.
The argument here then is that watching and viewing are not lazy, unimaginative acts
but ones that involve learning and cognition analogous to reading. Merely because when
Alice appears in a film she moves and talks across a screen (1933, 1951, 1972), does
not mean that when we read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) (where she does
not move) that the brain is working less hard. What is actually taking place is that other
forms of interpretation are taking place.
Radio is much reduced in significance but recorded sound for children is, of course,
now available in cassette tapes and compact discs. Without labouring the point, once
again we are presented with a whole series of conventions, some of which are nearer to
literature. The phrase ‘Once upon a time’ coming at the beginning of a piece, whether
read on the page or said in any number of voices near or far from a microphone or with
any number of sound effects in the background or foreground is likely to be understood
by someone listening as the introduction to something we call a fairy tale. On the other
hand, these tones of voice, acoustic settings, sound effects and musical interventions
have all been put there on the understanding that listeners will make knowing
interpretations: this is a scary story, this is a sad story. However, simply because these
forms cannot be dismissed as inherently and inevitably inferior to reading, it will not be
claimed here that all films, tapes, videos, and television programmes are of equal value—
though the claim is sometimes made for reading (‘So long as they’re reading something—
I’m happy’)
Historically, children’s films have always offered a diet that mixed versions of the
classics with new specially scripted material. A film of Alice in Wonderland was made in
1903, while in the 1890s the French film-maker Georges Melies was making fantasies
about such things as the man in the moon (though not made only and expressly for
children). On the other hand, when cartoon films were first made for children, new
characters were invented, notably Felix the Cat (1921), but then in 1923 Walt Disney
also turned to Alice with his Alice’s Wonderland. It combined live human figures with
drawing. The new invention of Mickey Mouse (drawn animation) first appeared in 1928.
What has become known as the Disney classic cartoon—full-length, musical cartoon
adaptations of traditional or classic literary material—began with Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs in 1937. But the Disney Corporation has also been responsible for many
live-action films, also offering a mix of adaptations of classics, such as Treasure Island
(1950) and new, specially written material, notably Davy Crockett, King of the Wild
Frontier (1956). This drew on a hotch-potch made up of a version of an autobiography,
old dime novels and legends about an American hunter, Colonel David Crockett (1786–
1836). Old Yeller (1957), also specially written, was set on a Texan farm in 1869; a
young boy adopts a stray yellow dog but is then exposed to trials of loyalty and
maturity.
A film, popularly regarded as the classic children’s film of all time, The Wizard of Oz
(1939) shows that in reality such films are received by families—the ‘family film’. Then,
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