Who is
my audience?
I am
reading an excellent collection of essays about books and the art of writing by
Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials series) and, since I am
in a very reflective mood at the moment, this made me think about who I try to
reach with my various essays and books.
This
also made me think about the magazines Nature and Scientific American.
Let me explain.
Nature is the peer-reviewed journal of
reference for the scientific community. It is authoritative, in-depth and
focused on research. It is not for everyone. It is a publication by researchers
for researchers.
Scientific
American, on the
other hand, is a magazine that is read by people who already know quite a bit
about science but want to understand more about recent discoveries. It is a
magazine which attempts to explains scientific facts clearly for the laymen. It
is not easy to read but it is much easier to read than Nature. In other
words, a magazine for you and me.
When I
write about Disney history, I sometimes have Nature for model, sometimes
Scientific American.
Let’s
take the Walt’s People book series. That one is clearly in the category
of Nature. It is a series by historians for historians and serious
Disney history enthusiasts. A casual Disney fan—even a casual Disney history
fan—is unlikely to really enjoy Walt’s People. You need to already have
a good grasp of Disney history to read and appreciate this series. This is not
a bug, it’s a feature.
They
Drew as They Pleased—The Hidden Art of Disney, on the other hand, is a series in the vein of Scientific
American. To really enjoy it, you have to have a basic understanding of
Disney history, but I try and make it easy for you, by including entry points,
reminders and words of explanation here and there to draw you in, whatever your
knowledge level. In this series and in similar publications like Disneyland
Paris—From Sketch to Reality, I consciously try to reach several audiences
at once, from casual Disney fans to Disney historians.
My
Disney monographs, like Mickey Mouse in the 1930s—The Christmas Season
fall somewhere in between.
And
then there are my articles and essays. The articles I wrote about Kay Kamen and
Disneyland Paris for the late Disney Twenty-Three, by the nature of this
wonderful magazine, were aimed at the largest possible audience. Those are my “Scientific
American” pieces.
But
Disney historians also need their Nature journal, which is why, a few
years ago, the Hyperion Historical Alliance launched the Hyperion Historical
Alliance Annual, a publication aimed at Disney historians and serious
Disney history enthusiasts. A publication that is, by definition, not intended
to be accessible by everyone.
Why did
we choose to go in that direction? Because in order for books or articles to be
written for casual Disney fans, in order for stories about Disney history to be
simplified and popularized by the Scientific Americans and Popular
Science of Disney history, Disney historians, Disney researchers must first
dig very deep to find those stories, verify them, set them in stone with
references to exact sources of information, etc. The results of that research
can be presented in well-written and entertaining essays, and yet, the casual
Disney fans will have a hard time really enjoying those essays. The same way
the papers released in Nature would be a very difficult read for yours
truly.
Some of
you will ask: If the audience of the HHA Annual is so limited, why
bother? I got the answer no later than earlier this week, when a reader of the Annual
mentioned that an essay written in one of the latest issues of the journal
inspired him to begin working on a series of documentaries for Disney+! In
other words, as intended, our in-depth research about a wide-range of obscure
Disney-related subject matters is inspiring new Disney historians and feeding
projects aimed at a much wider audience.
The
good news, of course, is that the editors-in-chief of the HHA Annual,
Jim Hollifield and JB Kaufman, are themselves serious and talented Disney
historians who know that essays for the Annual only make sense when new
documents have been uncovered, when the contributing historians have conducted
their research in-depth and without cutting corners, and when what they bring
to the table “moves the needle” from a Disney history standpoint, be it about
Walt’s childhood in Chicago in the early 1900s or about the making of a movie
from the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s.
Disney
historians having their own Nature magazine, and my having the privilege
of contributing to it from time to time is one of the great joys of my life.
Knowing
that Jim Hollifield and JB Kaufman are at the helm makes me confident that the soul of the Annual
will remain alive and unadulterated for years to come and that, thanks to it,
Disney historians will have a venue to publish their in-depth research—whatever
the Disney-related subject matter—in order to give other Disney historians the
building blocks they need to write their books, produce their documentaries of
develop their multimedia projects, some of which will be aimed at a much wider
audience.
A much
wider audience that is bound to be enthused by the richness of Disney history.
