It would be hard to find a deeper, darker yet more philosophically interesting short film than the “Silly Symphony” that Walt Disney produced in 1929. And while many Disney franchises were built around classic stories and fables, one might have trouble naming one more directly based on an ancient art form than “The Skeleton Dance.”
Animated by Disney’s most trusted animator, Ub Iwerks, this six-minute long absurdist cartoon, is a kind of children’s version of memento mori. It features a series of skeletons dancing while playing music and was surreal and controversial enough in its own time that many theaters refused to show it. Maybe they didn’t get it or thought it was too morbid. That’s understandable since Walt Disney himself couldn’t fully articulate what was so special about it.
“It’s hard to explain just what we have in mind for this series, but I feel, myself,” he said, “that it will be something unusual and should have a wide appeal.” He was absolutely right. Almost 90 years later, the film still holds up. And it has had an influential legacy, informing other Disney projects like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. There is even a shop in New Orleans Square in Disneyland called Memento Mori!
But should we really expect anything different from something based on an incredibly popular but unusual ancient art form? After all, “The Skeleton Dance” is just a modern interpretation of the Danse Macabre, a beautiful, haunting, and humbling art form that dates back to the late Middle Ages. Even the humor and silliness of the Disney take is not new, for centuries artists worked to make light of the absurdity and randomness of death—how no one can escape it and how small it renders each of us. In the “Dance of Death” print we re-created for DailyStoic.com—which was inspired by a famous German engraving dated to 1635—the skeleton has an enormous grin on his face. He is laughing at you, looking you in the eye as he does so, and quite possibly asking you to laugh right back. And of course the operative word in the Dance of Death genre is dance. They’re having fun, they’re enjoying it, and their enthusiasm is perversely contagious. After all, we’re all in this ridiculous dance we call life (and death) together.
There’s no question that death is ominous. Our mortality is this looming, haunting thing. No matter how good we feel or how strong we are, it turns out we’re just a pile of bones that can collapse at any moment. The question is what are you going to do about this? Are you going to cower in fear? Pull the covers over your head and hope in vain that death doesn’t find you? Or are you going to bop along with the music and have fun with it? Why be scared silly when being silly is more fun?
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