With all do respect to your decision there, I do have the couple of thoughts...
1. Walt probably never gave a fuck about the art crowd or how 'seriously' his work was taken by academia.
2. Having people dissect your films on a message board isn't all that great an aspiration. I'm pretty sure a lot of that 'kid stuff' touched us in a far deeper way than Donnie Darko or City of God ever could.
3. I wonder how things would be different, if you had spent your energy chopping it up with the 3 or 4 people here who shared your love for animation, rather than arguing with hundreds of Transformers fans. Probably not at all, but I'm just saying.