USA / 1943

I was recently asked to contribute to a Walt Disney article a magazine was producing. Typing something up for this one evening my thirteen year old son approached and asked me what I was doing. “Walt Disney?” he replied when I told him, “He was friends with Hitler you know”

The idea that Disney was some racist or antisemitic Nazi has somehow penetrated the popular consciousness to such an extent that its almost accepted fact. And I’m not just saying this because of the daft utterances of a thirteen year old, just type it into google and witness the discussions where its treated as gospel by grown adults. Whether this comes from discredited books such as Marc Eliot’s Walt Disney: Hollywoods Dark Prince or from lazy Family Guy writers who apparently include knowing jibes about Disney being a racist in every mention of his name or just from urban mythology I don’t know, but like most conspiracy theories the whole argument pretty much collapses on any examination of any actual facts , historical documents or personal testimonies.

In direct contrast to the idea of supporting Hitler and the Nazis, during World War II, like many other animators and animation companies worldwide, the Disney Studios produced a number of anti-Nazi propaganda films for the US government in order to help the war effort and also to help the company survive this time of economic hardship. Although another motive was to try and recoup the losses suffered from Pinocchio and Fantasia, the profit margins that Disney charged on many of the government films were small or nonexistent as part of his contribution to the war effort.

Disney was contracted to make 32 propaganda, training, and educational shorts from 1941–1945; this kind of volume multiplied the studio’s usual output many times over and was achieved by producing the films in a simpler style. The best-known of these propaganda films was the Donald Duck short Der Fuehrer’s Face, winner of the 1943 Oscar for best animated short and one propaganda film that was produced to the full Disney quality of other Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse shorts.

In this satirical cartoon directed by Jack Kinney, Donald is a rather unwilling citizen of Hitler’s Germany, a totalitarian regime in which every surface and item is plastered with swastikas and images of Hitler’s face, each of which Donald is expected to salute, even when working an intensive 48-hour shift on a production line and a lot of the humor rests on the volatile duck’s increasing rage at the ridiculous and increasingly surreal demands put on him by the Nazi state. The film is a typical beautifully animated Donald short from this era, also featuring an excellently realised caricature idiotic marching band puffed up with mindless nationalism and annoying everyone with their pompous music and salutes. The title of the film was changed from Donald Duck in Nutzi Land in order to relate to a hit novelty tune “Der Fuerhers Face” by Spike Jones and his City Slickers, which voiced contempt toward the Nazi leader and his delusional master race egotism.

Other Disney wartime propaganda films included the distinctly non-Disney-sounding Education for Death; the Raising of a Nazi (1943), the story of how a German child called Hans is brainwashed from birth to be a good Nazi and a cold killer. The film is as strange as it sounds; its Disney stylings and gags are at odds with the rather disturbing subject matter and depictions of a sinister fascist state. Reason and Emotion (1943) is an interesting short with an adult psychological theme, again not something usually associated with Disney, concerning the struggle between our sense of reason and our emotions, and how Hitler used the rabble-rousing potential of the latter. This film is a good example of how these projects allowed the animators to experiment with different styles from the usual Disney house style; the characters here are often more caricatured, simplified and stylized, at times going toward the kind of designs that UPA would become known for in the 1950s.

Victory Through Air Power (1943) is a feature-length PR push for Major Alexander de Seversky’s proposal of more resources to be concentrated on building war planes. Disney felt strongly enough about this issue to devote his own resources to making the film. The realistic designs and the lovely 1940s-style special effects details recall the Fleischers’ popular Superman series. Reportedly, it was not until Franklin D. Roosevelt had watched Victory Through Air Power that he decided that the long-range bombing strategy would be part of the USA’s battle plan.

Similar to the way I have heard Der Fuehrer’s Face used by the hopelessly uninformed as evidence for Disney’s ‘Nazism’ (“Yeah and he made this Donald Duck cartoon where he salutes the swastika and stuff !”) the 1946 film Song of the South is used as evidence of Disney’s racism when in fact it had the opposite intention, if anything.

Now justifiably seen as tainted by its dated racial stereotyping, Song of the South presents several of the Uncle Remus stories from the books of Joel Chandler Harris. The animated stories are linked by scenes featuring live-action actors portraying Uncle Remus and two children. As Uncle Remus tells his stories, the film dissolves in and out of animation. Animation and live action would not be mixed together as successfully as this until Disney’s Mary Poppins in 1964 and yet Song of the South has never been released on video or DVD in the USA because of racial sensitivity to the portrayed image of the ‘happy slave’, although it has been re-released theatrically and released in all formats in other areas of the world.

We have to remember that his was a time when segregation between black and whites was absolutely normal and acceptable in public places, transport and schools in many southern states of the USA, with black people treated as second class citizens. In this way racism was not only common and acceptable at this time it was actually enshrined in law. Reflecting the attitudes of the era, some of the attitudes in Disney’s work could be seen as racist by today’s standards but than again so could any other work that reflected the attitudes of the era. You see these attitudes in many films and books from that time. In Song of the South Disney was making a genuine (if now seemingly-misguided) attempt to have a likable charismatic warm and funny African American central character in an era when this was extremely rare. If Uncle Remus is portrayed as uneducated and living in a wooden shack, unpalatable as it may be now, that was the second class reality many American blacks were forced to accept.

According to writer Neal Gabler in his book Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006), in contrast to having racist intentions, Walt Disney was actually sensitive to the potential for racial stereotyping or “Uncle Tom” accusations in Song of the South and assigned Jewish left-wing writer Maurice Rapf to work on the script with southern writer Dalton Raymond. Disney hoped this would counteract any tendencies in that area, a detail of history which, along with providing more evidence that contradicts the image of his racism, also also shows a different perspective on the accusations of Disney’s antisemitism and intolerance of left wing views.

Note: The 100 greatest animated shorts is a list of opinions and not an order of value from best to worst. Click here to see all of the picks of the list so far. All suggestions, comments and outrage are welcome!

The post 100 Greatest Animated Shorts / Der Fuehrer’s Face / Jack Kinney appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

USA / 1933

Of the seventy five Silly Symphonies animated shorts produced by the Walt Disney company from 1929 to 1939, Three Little Pigs was by far the most successful.

The original Silly Symphonies concept was, as the name suggests, a series of cinema shorts which were accompaniments to pieces of music, almost like the music videos of the day. As the intention here wasn’t to sell records however, the music wasn’t necessarily contemporary popular hits, it could be old standards or classical pieces or anything else that inspired the animators. The films were mainly one-offs, with no continuing characters or themes, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts which were also being made by Disney Studios at the time.

As the Silly Symphonies series progressed however it became less about the music and more about the company experimenting in pushing the art and techniques of animation, and in doing so, developed (not necessarily invented) many of the building blocks of animated films we take for granted today; advanced character animation, multi plane camera, special effects animation (see also The Old Mill article in this list), emotional storytelling and even full-colour film all emanated from this avenue of intense experimentation from the studios.

Whereas films like The Old Mill pushed the envelope of special effects, realism and multi plane photography, Three Little Pigs represents a big step forward in the sophistication of character animation, pushing Disney way ahead of the competition. The three pigs, although sharing almost identical character design, have very distinct personalities, which are defined by brilliantly expressive animation.

The lead animator Fred Moore, one of the great animators of the Disney Studios’ golden years, was known for his appealing drawing style and was credited for the classic redesign of Micky Mouse for Fantasia. Moore was tragically killed in a car accident in 1952.

Three Little Pigs is typically Disney in that it redesigns an old fable for a new audience. It became one of the most successful short films of all time, a cinema attraction in its own right rather than just a supporting film, and won that year’s Oscar for short film. Its theme song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” became a huge hit in the depression years, as the song, and therefore the film, came to express and symbolize the hope and resilience of the American people during harsh economic times. During the early years of World War II it was also used to refer to Hitler’s expansion in Europe. This made it, whether by accident or intention, almost unique among Disney cartoons in that it could be considered a political allegory (another candidate would be the 1943 Donald Duck short, Der Fuehrer’s Face).

One sequence in Three Little Pigs was self-censored; originally showing the Big Bad Wolf dressed up as a stereotypical Jewish peddler, this was quickly removed and changed to have the character dressed as a brush salesman. This was used by Walt Disney’s critics as evidence of anti-Semitism, but this charge was refuted by everyone close to him and is perhaps best seen in context of the aforementioned Der Fuehrer’s Face which was an unambiguous attack on the rise of Fascism. In actual fact this kind of gag was typical of the unfortunate casual stereotyping common at the time in much popular entertainment. At least Disney realised it was offensive and cut the scene.

Disney followed Three Little Pigs with three sequels, failing, however, to achieve the success of the original. This is believed to have convinced him of the value of moving forwards with new ideas and taking risks, rather than adopting the cautious and short-sighted policy of sequels, an approach which reaped rewards for his company. His slogan after this was “You can’t top pigs with pigs!”

Note: The 100 greatest animated shorts is a list of opinions and not an order of value from best to worst. Click here to see all of the picks of the list so far. All suggestions, comments and outrage are welcome!

The post 100 Greatest Animated Shorts / The Three Little Pigs / Burt Gillett appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.