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Institutional Power and the Fleischer Studios: The "Standard Production Reference"

1991; University of Texas Press; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1224976

1527-2087

Márk Langer,

Cinema and Media Studies

Many of the early texts dealing with animation, such as Edwin Lutz's Animated Cartoons, Art Babbitt's Analysis of the Goof, or John Halas and Roger Manvell's Technique of Film Animation, were written in order to standardize and regularize production.' Between the first publication of the Lutz book in 1920 and the appearance in 1959 of the Halas and Manvell book, the most influential document of this type almost certainly was the Standard Production Reference, published in Miami by the Fleischer Studios, Inc., in 1940. This procedural and technical manual outlined the rules of studio animation practice. Referred to as The Bible at the Fleischer Studios and at its successor company, Famous Studios, Inc., the Standard Production Reference later became a guide by which other animation companies were organized or by which they regularized production. Yet, in contrast to similar texts, The Bible did not receive much attention outside the industry. Never published or distributed in offset type, it circulated in a mimeographed samizdat format, passed from animator to animator until most copies deteriorated. Not intended as an introduction to the technique of animation, this document emphasized the interrelationship and coordination of the constituent parts of a complex animation production house. As a result, its targeted audience was a much narrower one than the amateur would-be animators who read Lutz or Halas and Manvell. Yet, unlike most other contemporary animation documents targeted at professionals, such as Analysis of the Goof,2 the Standard Production Reference did not regulate the depiction of specific, in-house characters. Because of this, The Bible was applicable to the production systems of other studios. For at least thirty-seven years after the demise of the Fleischer Studios, The Bible was the most commonly used reference work within New York animation studios. This continued from its utilization to train new staff in 1942 at Famous Studios, Inc., to its service as a guide for the reorganization of Perpetual Motion Pictures in 1978, prior to the making of the twenty-five minute long Berenstein Bears' Christmas Tree (1979).3 One of the problems encountered in the interpretation of documents is that an artifact's meaning is not immutable. Any document is the product of its specific historical conditions, and one's interpretation of that document can change as conditions change. Before examining the function of the Standard Production Reference and reconstructing its meanings, one must understand the origins and organization of American animation studios in general, and the