We should also remember, however, that Disney was once heralded as a serious artist, and praised by no less a figure than Eisenstein as "the most interesting director in America". "Our environment, our sensibilities, the very quality of both our waking and sleeping hours are all formed largely by people with no more artistic conscience and intelligence than a kumquat," wrote Richard Schickel. The reason for much of the opposition is almost certainly because of Disney's success in not only influencing the course of animation but also infecting us all with his grossly sentimental and often reactionary values. "I'll say nothing about the visual complement as I do not wish to criticise an unresisting imbecility." To Stravinsky, whose The Rite of Spring was restructured, and then made to illustrate what someone described as a "paleontological cataclysm of ponderous didacticism", it was torment. To Leopold Stokowski, the conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, it was a "concert feature" attempting to popularise classical music. To Disney, it was the most ambitious of his experiments in animation. The wonderfully kitsch Nutcracker Suite, the extraordinary pyrotechnics of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the witty anthropomorphism of Dance of the Hours and the brave attempt to illustrate Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in abstract form render Fantasia an undoubted milestone.
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