Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (13 page)

“lacking importance; insignificant, petty.”27
The Facts on File Dictionary
of 20th-Century Allusions
says that “Mickey Mouse has come to mean somebody or something silly or inconsequential.”28 In Peter Blake’s ar-chitectural analysis of the two United States Disney theme parks, he refers to “Mickey Mouse” as a term usually describing tacky or crass taste.29 This would be in keeping with the general low regard that American animated cartoons have been held in relation to other art forms, including American live-action feature films. Yet, “Mickey Mouse” connotes a more complex notion than just “bad taste.” There is also an aura of oddness or “askewness.” In relation to its pejorative use, this aspect is read as unauthentic, hence cheap.

This aspect of the term most readily converts into usage by the homosexual subculture that was emerging in urban centers throughout the United States and Europe. Individuals in this culture were also being defined by the larger society as “off” or “askew,” so why not use

“Mickey Mouse” as a description, especially since it referred back specifically to a character who was a star across the world? In its own way, lesbian/gay use of “Mickey Mouse” might have been analagous to the ’90s use of “queer,” reappropriating and highlighting the positive 56

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aspects of the term. This would be especially true for lesbians, reworking the slang term “mouse,” which referred to female genitalia, and celebrating the “oddness” of their sexuality. This use of mass media as a type of code was common during this period in homosexual culture and involved reshaping iconography from the hegemonic culture in a humorous, slightly parodic fashion in order to facilitate communication within gay communities under the ever-present eye of the heterosexual hegemony.

But, if Mickey Mouse’s name was being used as a code term by various homosexuals, how does this reflect on the character? Mickey might have been an upstart and a troublemaker before the enforcement of the Production Code turned him into the iconic mouse-next-door that remains to this day, but what was there in him that could be appreciated as “queer”? The answer might be found in Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein’s attempts to analyze why he enjoyed the “oddness” and

“absurdity” that occurred within Disney’s films.

Eisenstein began writing on Disney as part of a larger (and never completed work) meant to examine how “the affectiveness of a work of art is built upon the fact that there takes place in it a dual process: an impetuous progressive rise along the lines of the highest conceptual steps of consciousness and a simultaneous enetration [
sic
] by means of the structure of the form into the layers of profoundest sensuous thinking.”30 Eisenstein planned to examine how the collisional dialectic between the conceptual and the sensuous worked in practice by analyzing the work of Griffith, Chaplin—and Disney. In notes and preliminary drafts, Eisenstein continually focused attention on the metamorphoses and juxtapositions that occurred in Disney’s animation. In the Silly Symphony
Merbabies
(1938), he describes how “a striped fish in a cage is transformed into a tiger and roars with the voice of a lion or panther. Octopuses turn into elephants. A fish—into a donkey. A departure from one’s self from once and forever prescribed norms of nomenclature, form and behavior. Here it’s overt. In the open. And, of course, in comic form.”31 Although differing from Forster’s specific focus on Mickey’s rambunctiousness, Eisenstein’s delight in watching objects transmogrifying in shape and substance and then used for purposes other than intended is extremely comple-mentary to Forster’s appreciation of Disney. While Eisenstein is more interested in the dialectical collision created by such odd juxtapositions than Forster is, both delight in the “askewness” or “queerness”

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that homosexuals often found somehow kindred to their lives.32

Eisenstein writes, “here we have a being of definite form, a being which has attained a definite appearance and which
behaves
like the primal protoplasm, not yet possessing a ‘stable’ form, but capable of assuming any form and which, skipping along the rungs of the evolu-tionary ladder, attached itself to any and all forms of animal existence.—Why is this so attractive?”33 He goes on to posit that Americans (and all individuals suffering under capitalism) are soothed and reinvigorated by witnessing in Disney’s films a liberty and freedom from use-value pigeonholing. Of course, this neglects to explain Eisenstein’s
own
attraction to these films, or what other absolutes or prescribed norms of behavior made
him
so value the freedom unleashed by such metamorphoses.

Metamorphosis was not some new technique that the Disney studio had invented or discovered. Far from it, metamorphosis had been one of the founding conceptions of animation, beginning with early French animator Emile Cohl.34 Shape shifting and the like, for either fantastic or comic effect, is common in animating figures. Such trans-mogrification is one of the advantages of working in animation rather than in live action; not being grounded in the actual physicality of a live being, animated figures are capable of transforming at the whim of the animator.

Disney’s unique mark on the tradition of metamorphosis in animation is tied directly into his development of character animation. While animators like Emile Cohl turned any object into any other object at their discretion, Disney’s early silent films show their most promise when inanimate objects become humanized. Rather than specifically becoming human, the objects retain their same properties but begin to move and react as if they were human. Church steeples duck to avoid low flying planes, steam shovels seem to eagerly “eat up” gravel, etc.

Through clever movements and body stances, viewers could intuit emotions from these objects—the early stages of character animation.

(One of the studio’s early exercises in drawing character was for animators to draw a half-full flour sack in a variety of moods—happy, sad, angry, scared—to practice poses.) Eisenstein describes examples from early Mickey Mouse cartoons: “There’s the steamboat that folds logs like pastries; hot dogs whose skins are pulled down and are spanked; there are piano keys which bite the pianist like teeth, and much, much more.”35

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The example of hot dogs being spanked highlights the introduction of the erotic that occurred with such anthropomorphizing. As inanimate objects began to move like human beings, they also seemed to have erogenous zones.
The Whoopee Party
(1930) was a Mickey Mouse cartoon made during the shift in Mickey’s character towards respectability. Yet, the animation of household props reintroduces the sexual energy that had been quelled within Mickey. As the party gets increasingly frenetic, the furniture begins to sway to the music. First, the piano stool under Minnie begins to move under her rear end, much to her initial shock. Soon, lamps and chairs are dancing in time. One lamp uses its shade as a skirt, constantly lifting it up in its own version of the

“can-can” to show its “butt.” A hat rack and a chair dance together, and each is gendered by the animation: the hat rack with its man’s bowler and cane, the chair with its hourglass back and “bustle” seat. Finally, the bed gets up and starts to shimmy—and, depending on where one identifies the “head” of the now humanized object, the bed’s pillows act as either a pair of breasts or its behind.

While the tradition of metamorphosis “queers” all objects in animation, Disney’s anthropomorphizing of inanimate objects more specifically sexualizes everything. By equating specific props with specific body parts and often gendering the objects, it becomes simple to fetishize previously inconsequential objects. In the conclusion of the Silly Symphony
The Cookie Carnival
(1935), a jello mold woman starts shimmying out of control, turning a gelatinous dish into a “cooch show.” For individuals who were attracted to “nonprescribed” objects of desire, such a reveling in polymorphous perversity would have an appeal.

The Disney studio’s philosophy of the “illusion of life” emerged out of the tradition of metamorphosis as a consequence of this anthropomorphizing but eventually seemed to be at odds with the earlier concept. Rather than figures that changed shape at the slightest provocation, the “illusion of life” style attempted to keep bodies and objects under control. Yet, even during the height of Disney’s “illusion of life,” the “metamorphosis” tradition was never completely supplanted. Various characters such as “Johnnie Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet” in
Make Mine Music
(1946), “Little Toot” in
Melody Time
(1948),
The Little House
(1952) and
Susie, the Little Blue Coupe
(1952) carried on the motif of humanizing inanimate objects. The short subject
Noah’s Ark
(1959) literally took common household items (pipe

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cleaners, thread spools, etc.) and turned them into a menagerie of animals through stop motion animation.

As one might expect from the prevalence of anal humor found in Disney’s films, many of the anthropomorphized objects in these films inevitably display some sort of buttocks. How to analyze why Walt enjoyed shots of baby derrieres or a character being paddled so much that even chairs, cars and tugboats were given rears to be spanked, prodded or wiggled goes beyond the capability of this research. Some have tried to tie this obsession with the anus to the anality of Walt’s personality (his obsessive need for control and order).36 While an interesting idea, this theory pushes at the realm of possible analysis. What is important to note, though, is that the constant display of behinds—and the fetishization of certain objects that seemed to “have” rear ends—would also appeal to a number of gay men and fits in with Forster’s and Eisenstein’s seeming appreciation of the “inappropriateness” in Disney’s work.

Oftentimes human buttocks and inanimate “rears” shared screen or narrative space in these films. Many of the Silly Symphonies contain shots of toys that poke each other from behind, while the rosy dimpled butt cheeks of the children playing with the toys are exposed because the backs of their Dr. Denton’s pajamas have come undone. (The children’s butt shots reached their apex in the Pastoral Symphony section of
Fantasia,
ending with the behinds of two Cupids morphing into a Valentine’s Day heart.)

Pinocchio
serves as an exemplary text for using both animate and inanimate objects as a source of anal humor. In fact, in the opening fifteen minutes of the feature, this type of humor dominates the narrative.

After the opening credits, Jiminy Cricket describes how he came to Geppetto’s workshop to get out of the cold. Hopping to the fire, he turns his backside to a hot ember, while narrating, “As I warmed my

. . . myself—.” Geppetto enters the workshop to finish making his boy puppet, and Jiminy hides himself among the figurines that line the shelves. As he watches Geppetto and his puppet with interest, he unconsciously leans on the bustle of a female figurine and blushes in embarrassment upon realizing what he has done. Having finished the marionette, Geppetto introduces Pinocchio to his animal pets, and the puppet inadvertently kicks Figaro the cat in the behind. In the midst of this impromptu party, a variety of cuckoo clocks announce the hour for bedtime. One of these elaborate clocks shows a mother with a young 60

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boy over her knee with his pants down as she spanks him (his cries serve as the cuckoo chime). The dependence on anal humor lessens after this initial onslaught but never completely dissipates. The evil puppet show impresario Stromboli prominently wiggles his fanny as he announces his travel itinerary (particularly when enunciating “Constan-tin-opoly”). When Pinocchio and his friend Lampwick turn into

“asses” on Pleasure Island, each gets his own butt shot, so that the audience can witness a donkey’s tail suddenly protrude through the pants.

The Three Caballeros
(1945) displays all these issues in seventy incredible minutes of comedy, chaos and color. As mentioned in chapter 1, the film marks a return to the carnivalesque mood that the Disney studio basically eschewed from its work after 1931. As Donald Duck receives a number of elaborate gifts from his friends in Latin America, the screen veritably explodes with music and design with hardly any concern with narrative coherence. Although the film starts out as yet another “package film” of various short subjects, the film gets increasingly audacious. Things start to come unraveled when Donald watches a film on native birds of South America. A wacky bird called the Araquan leaps off the screen and walks on the light beam of the projector to shake Donald’s hand. Later, he moves so erratically he accidentally seems to run right off the film strip itself and has to pull the film back onto the screen.

When Donald opens his second gift, he remeets José Carioca (introduced in
Saludos Amigos
). From here on in, the film regularly turns quite surreal. On a trip to the town of Baia, the infectious rhythm of the Latin American music sets the entire town—not just the population, but chairs, tables, lampposts, cottages, buildings, and the mountains—to swaying. Animated roosters in cockfight blend into live-action male dancers. José is capable of shrinking, multiplying or transforming himself at whim, and he pulls Donald into such metamorphoses along with him. While watching a colorfully surreal abstract representation of the optical soundtrack to some Latin music, Donald’s body gets sucked in and becomes part of the graphic manipulation. At another point, when Donald tries to unshrink himself, his body gets completely contorted like a twisted balloon.

The manipulation of the body is often associated with gender and sexuality. Both José and Donald also transform themselves at points into women. (José actually multiplies himself into four Carmen Miran-

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