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Article Excerpt
On November 4, 2003 the video/DVD release of the film Finding Nemo, a computer animated collaboration between Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, set a new sales record for the retail home video market, selling 8 million units during the first day of its release. This new record was not surprising; after all, Finding Nemo was the breakout hit of the 2003 summer season, generating almost $340 million in box office receipts (Business Data for Finding Nemo, 2003). Finding Nemo was not only one of the biggest grossing movies of 2003, but it also outgrossed Disney's most successful animated feature film to date, The Lion King. Given Finding Nemo's stellar sales, one would expect that Disney and Pixar would be celebrating their profitable collaboration. Instead, the success of Finding Nemo brought heightened public attention to the two studios' unhappy business relationship. Indeed, even before its DVD release, while Finding Nemo was setting records at the box office, Pixar's CEO, Steve Jobs, was making the rounds of other major studios in search of a new business partner (Holson, 2003). In addition, as Brett Sporich (2003) reported at that time, 'Early revenue figures for [the DVD release of] "Nemo" will be critical indicators as to whether Disney can deliver what Pixar chief Steve lobs is looking for in a distribution and funding partner' (p. 1).
Pixar's relationship with Disney was not always acrimonious. In 1991, Pixar signed a deal with Disney to produce three feature length animated films, and it was out of this agreement that Toy Story, Pixar's first feature film, was developed. Although it is difficult to imagine today, given the success of Pixar's films as well as other computer animated features such as Shrek and Ice Age, but at the time of Toy Story's release a full-length computer animated feature was considered a risky proposition, and it was believed that Disney had the most to lose in this joint business venture (King, 1995). However, Toy Story proved to be an enormous success, both critically and commercially, and on the basis of that success Pixar and Disney entered into a new five-picture development deal. It made good business sense for the fledging animation company to align itself with Disney; Disney's brand name functioned as a stamp of approval, signifying that this new form of animation met the same standards of excellence and wholesomeness in family entertainment associated with Disney. So it is easy to understand why at that time Pixar CEO Steve lobs (1997) would wax rhapsodically about Disney in his company's annual report:
Once we had decided that our best long-term strategy was to have a partner, our first choice by far was Disney. They are, quite simply, the best. Disney invented the feature animated film art form with Snow White in 1937 and has produced more than 30 animated features since then. They are the number one studio in the world, with an over 20 percent box office market share in 1996, and they dominate the home video market as well. It's also important that we have a relationship with Disney that goes back 10 years. They were there at our side as an invaluable mentor when we made Toy Story. We like working with these guys. (p. 1)
When the two studios signed their deal, Disney certainly brought more to the table in the way of name recognition, distribution networks and ancillary marketing networks than did Pixar, so it is not surprising that the agreement assured Disney would be rewarded accordingly. The agreement stipulated that both studios would share production costs and profits, but Disney would receive an additional distribution fee off the top of the gross receipts. In essence, this fee meant that revenues for Pixar's films were split 60/40, with Disney receiving the larger share. To put the point more bluntly, with all other costs and revenues being equal, Disney makes more money from a Pixar film than does Pixar itself, in the years that would follow, however, Pixar Animation Studios would prove itself a profitable partner for Disney; indeed, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. collectively generated more than $1 billion in profits. In fact, when Disney CEO Michael Eisner met with stockholders in February of 2002, the success of Monsters, Inc. was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal fiscal report (Furman, 2002).
By 2003, however, it was clear that what had once been acceptable to Pixar was no longer so, and Jobs no longer liked working with the 'guys' at Disney. In addition to growing contractual conflicts, the Disney brand was dropping in value. Indeed, Disney's image as a source of family entertainment was under attack by socially conservative political and religious organizations that claimed that the company no longer embraced 'family values'. In fact, boycotts against the company had been organized by the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention (Catholic League, 2000). Apart from these public relations problems, Disney was slowly phasing out its animation studios, cutting back sharply on the very type of film production that made had the company famous. In 1999, Disney employed 2,220 people in its animation division, but by 2004 that number had dropped to 600, and the company had closed animations studios in Paris, Tokyo and Orlando ('Despite Troubled CEO', 2004).
Motivated in part by these closures, Roy Disney, head of the animation division and nephew of the company founder Walt Disney, resigned from the Disney board on December 1, 2003 (Gavin, 2003). Upon his resignation, Disney (the only remaining member of the Disney family to be actively involved in the company) issued a three-page letter in which he claimed the company's image had been tarnished and CEO Michael Eisner had taken the company off its course. In the months that would follow, he would mount a 'Save Disney' campaign, rallying Disney stockholders to remove Eisner and restore the company's persona as a purveyor of family friendly entertainment ('Disney Shareholders Put Pressure,' 2004). Shortly after Roy Disney's departure, Pixar also split from Disney. After the financial markets had closed on January 29, 2004, lobs announced that Pixar's contract with Disney would be allowed to expire in 2005, and that he was seeking new partnerships for his animation studio (Rose, 2004).
For the alert viewer, evidence of this rift between Pixar and Disney could be found prior to their public parting in an unexpected place: the extra features accompanying the DVD release of Monsters, Inc. The Monsters, Inc. DVD contains many extra features that introduce the viewer to Pixar Animation Studios, its employees, and its animation process. Although these features are marketed to consumers as adding entertainment value to the DVD version of the film, we will argue they do much more. Specifically, we contend the DVD allows Pixar to present itself not only as a purveyor of family entertainment, but also positions the studio as a media brand recognizably independent of Disney. Furthermore, we argue Pixar accomplishes this by appropriating the persona that was once distinctively Disney's: positioning itself as a family-friendly company with a commitment to family entertainment.
The paper continues the ongoing theoretical exploration of the DVD as a new communication product that collapses primary and secondary media texts into a single commercial unit. As Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus (2002) have noted, the inclusion of 'extra text' features on the DVD has changed the intertextual relationship between entertainment products and their means of promotion:
Primary and secondary texts are usually physically distinct from one another and are often read at different times, creating an intertextual relationship that is marked by both temporal and physical distance. However, by including such distinct but interrelated texts in a self-contained package, the DVD turns this intertextual relationship into an intratextual relationship. Thus, the DVD is perhaps the ultimate example of media-industry synergy, in which the promotion of a media product is collapsed into
the product itself. (p. 93)
This synergistic blending presents scholars with new critical challenges. We extend the critical engagement of the DVD and its various extra text features through our examination of the DVD version of Monsters, Inc. We begin our study with a discussion of auteur theory that ties the evolution of this theory to the current market-driven construction of the creative personae. We then discuss the commercial exploitation of the auteur personae and point out how DVD extra textual materials contribute to that exploitation. Next, we offer all analysis of the extra textual features included on the Monsters, Inc. DVD in which we examine how these features serve to construct Pixar's auteur persona in such a way as to promote Pixar's business interests.
The Auteur Persona
Auteur theory was introduced by French film critics in the 1950s, who viewed cinematic texts as the artistic expressions of their directors, whom they termed auteurs. These critics argued that an auteur's signature was distinguished by his or her distinctive style, and that critics should examine a director's entire oeuvre in order to identify his/her unique stylistic expressions. Andrew Sarris (1963) is credited with theorizing the auteur to better accommodate the study of American film, offering in the process a framework with which to rank American directors with respect to their auteur status. His theory equated style with personality, and he argued that a film's 'interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director's personality and his material' (p. 7). The role of the film critic then is to divine this personality from the style of the director's films, and in this critical move the persona of the auteur emerges. The auteur persona is thus the product of and is reflected in a body of work...
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