Animated Controversy In The 1930s - Disney Cartoons

 

I saw this recently of an obscure newspaper page. Now I don't agree with everything that's published, it's not possible that way but this honestly surprised me. It's from the earliest years of Disney's Golden Age from 1934. 

Yeesh, drawing Disney with wild-hair and creepy eyes while showing us the most saftest, most tamest wolf design ever created is going too far.

This is coming from someone as an artist who understands appeal and what's useful to the demographic, some of these viewpoints I relate to even today, even though humor doesn't only come from daily comics anymore.

I mean how would you feel if there was a film only centering around wolves, rats and wasps? You may think that sounds unpleasant but what if the wolf had a good personality, the rats were helpful and wasps were just centered as background characters? 

I seen enough of the Disney shorts at this point, and my experience to these characters were just tolerable. I honestly think that the wolves from Beauty And The Beast were more terrifying in my opinion and heck alot of people grew up with that movie during their childhoods. 

I wasn't particularly a Disney kid until I fell for the classics as a teen. From there, I was inspired by some of these classics. The Pied Piper (1933) was one I forgotten about though, and when I saw they mentioned the rats from that film, I was like what did they do to poor Piper?! And guess what? They just ate food and became Piper's followers. I know a little about the fable, in fact my first experiences to it were from Garfield And Friends apparently. 

Yeah, too many rats is often uncomforting for a younger audience. I wouldn't like it if it was a ton of bugs though. Also I actually haven't seen The Steeple Chase. I like the Mickey Mouse shorts when they're full of action and competition. I like some of his more heart-warming cartoons too like with Mickey's Good Deed but I was surprised to hear about this one.

To me, I always had a small theory on this type of humor where it's similar to slapstick you see in old comedies, but it's alot more rubbery and chaotic. It came from watching a quick scene from Sullivan's Travels, where Sully and the rest of the audience laughs at the flypaper gag from Playful Pluto. It's honestly such a beautiful scene to me because it represents joy and pleasure in a manner to leave the realities of the world. I'm not an escapist, but it was enjoyable, and this scene of the wasp stings looks really painful, but hey so as most of Tom and Jerry. I reread the bit and it wasn't as truly upsetting to McCord's viewing of something like The Big Bad Wolf. 

I think that now that 2D animation is slowly losing less popularity, and there's more knowledge to be learnt like kid's programming now that theatrical shorts are not primarily scaring everyone anymore? Gosh, this is a weird topic. Would anyone still enjoy a little bit of a detailed creepy villain like this?

Even if you can't have a villain, or teeny tiny creatures in a cartoon, you can catch upon some stuff that isn't suitable to everyone. 

Some of the best cartoons from it's Golden Age didn't have a bad guy, or villainous scheme.

I think even when it comes to entertainment, there should be enough value and elements to challenge someone just like reality can. I think filmmakers do a really good job at it. I don't feel like it's perfectly ok to show a kid a film like Secret of NIMH or an Old Hollywood movie but there should be variety to films in particular like strong and individual characters, and dark atmospheric imagery at times, that's why Disney, Don Bluth and some of my favorite films do it so well.

Well that was bizarre. A modern perspective on old Disney animation being menacing is something else.