Genius as a Collective Enterprise

The figure of the "genius" in US culture and society may be more the result of market necessity and economic reality than of true genius. The need for a "genius" is a side effect of the long Western tradition of authorship and individualism, which sees one single individual as the driving force behind cultural or social change. The "genius" persona is a necessity of the crowd. We ought to see a Walt Disney behind Mickey Mouse, a Pat Sullivan behind Felix the Cat, a Jeff Koons behind Puppy or a Steve Jobs behind Mac computers. Sure they all are behind their products and they all participate in the creative process as either originators or influencers; Even more, everybody agrees that some of them, like Walt Disney and Steve Jobs, are creative genius in the Renaissance sense, but their real importance and genius seems to lie in being the agglutinating force, the "make it happen" drivers, the facilitators without which no idea, no matter how great or wonderful, would have never been realized.

The following is an extract from a wonderful succinct piece of the history of animation in the US prior to Pixar animation. Highlights of it are the covering of the Orto Messmer/Pat Sullivan controversy, which I'm complementing with Wikipedia's point of view on the subject. It seems to me that Felix the Cat is a result of Otto Messmer, Pat Sullivan and Bill Nolan. The three of them may have contributed one way or another to the formation and evolution of Felix character, personality and physical features. 

Rather than looking at Felix the Cat's authorship as a matter of who was the original creator, I interpret it as a collective endeavor by a group of highly creative individuals under the guardianship of the studio head. If you have ever seen or participated in a kind of enterprise similar to the one featured in Discovery Channel's American Chopper, you know of the dynamics I'm talking about.  


While DigitalmediaFX account is great at recognizing the work of uncredited talents behind the animation studios, I found it patronizing and dislike its description of Otto Messmer as a passive, male fatale like draftsman. Otto Messmer may have realized that without the studio structure it would have been impossible for him to spend the day (or the night) seated at a table making a living out of his drawings (some animators such as Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising went to create their own studio companies after years honing their skills at Walt Disney)

According to Messmer, "Sullivan's studio was very busy, and Paramount, they were falling behind their schedule and they needed one extra to fill in. And Sullivan, being very busy, said, "If you want to do it on the side, you can do any little thing to satisfy them." So I figured a cat would be about the simplest. Make him all black, you know — you wouldn't need to worry about outlines. And one gag after the other, you know? Cute. And they all got laughs. So Paramount liked it so they ordered a series." (Source: Wikipedia).

You can notice on this account how the studio enterprise and its infrastructure made it possible for Messmer to sit at the drawing table and practice his drawing skills, which consisted of making the outlines on white paper, followed by inkers filling the inside, animators drawing the backgrounds on celluloid and photographers shooting the scenes. The final product never reaching the masses without the Paramount distribution system. It is apparent why Otto Messmer never did much more to get credit for his creation, being only one tooth, sure an important one, in the studio bread making factory.

One feature of American art and culture is that is not possible to separate it from commerce. Indeed, one of its great achievements throughout history is to have found out creative ways to blend art and commerce together. .John Phillip So, who "added USA to his name, making it Souza (and who) trained himself to become the world's greatest writer of marches, was characteristically American in that he combined artistic professionalism, commercial skills, and a strong propensity to promote the 'feel-good factor'" (Johnson 700).

Work Cited, Johnson Paul. A History of the American People. Harper Perennial.

"Otto Messmer was employed by the Pat Sullivan Studio in 1916. Three years later he created Felix the Cat; it was a milestone in the development of animation as an art form. Not since Gertie the Dinosaur had a cartoon character exhibited such a degree of personality animation as Felix's brooding, ponderous walk. But unlike Gertie, Felix was a studio character, which meant audiences could look forward to seeing him again and again, while affording Messmer and his co-workers the opportunity to explore the possibilities of ongoing character development in animation. Meanwhile, studio head Pat Sullivan took sole credit for the creation of Felix, earning millions of dollars in royalties over the years. Messmer continued to receive his usual salary. A quiet and unassuming man, Messmer never challenged Sullivan's claim to be the father of Felix, even after Sullivan's death in 1933. Indeed, Messmer probably would have taken the secret to his grave had not animation historian John Canemaker tracked him down in 1976 (the revelation produced quite a stir in animation circles....twenty years later the story was lampooned on an episode of "The Simpsons").

For the first time a studio produced what may be considered true art, but in doing so took the credit usually given to the artist."

Work Cited:  http://www.digitalmediafx.com/Features/animationhistory.html

"The question of who created Felix remains a matter of dispute. Sullivan stated in numerous newspaper interviews that he created Felix and did the key drawings for the character. On a visit to Australia in 1925, Sullivan told The Argus newspaper that "The idea was given to me by the sight of a cat which my wife brought to the studio one day."^[7] On other occasions, he claimed that Felix had been inspired by Rudyard Kipling's "The Cat that Walked by Himself" or by his wife's love for strays.^[6] Members of the Australian Cartoonist Association have demonstrated that lettering used in Feline Follies matches Sullivan's handwriting.^[8] Pat Sullivan also lettered within his drawings which was a major contradiction to Messmer's claims.^[8] Sullivan's claim is also supported by his 18 March 1917, release of a cartoon short entitled The Tail of Thomas Kat, more than two years prior to Feline Follies. Both an Australian ABC-TV documentary screened in 2004 and the curators of an exhibition at the State Library of New South Wales, in 2005, suggested that Thomas Kat was a prototype or precursor of Felix. However, few details of Thomas have survived. His fur color has not been definitively established, and the surviving copyright synopsis for the short suggests significant differences between Thomas and the later Felix. For example, whereas the later Felix magically transforms his tail into tools and other objects, Thomas is a non-anthropomorphized cat who loses his tail in a fight with a rooster, never to recover it.

Sullivan was the studio proprietor and — as is the case with almost all film entrepreneurs — he owned the copyright to any creative work by his employees. In common with many animators at the time, Messmer was not credited. After Sullivan's death in 1933, his estate in Australia took ownership of the character."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_the_Cat