Disney Exposed
by w9lh9f3
Journals / Literature Features
There’s an element of Disney cartoons – not an essential element by any means, but still a noteworthy element – of which I’ve been acutely conscious almost from the very beginning of my days as a fan of all things Disney. It is an attribute about which I’m not likely to go around boasting anytime soon when singing Disney’s praises. It is, indeed, so delicate a matter as to qualify as the elephant in the room – or perhaps the mouse in the room – where Disney is concerned. It is the tendency of Disney cartoons – especially vintage Disney cartoons – to showcase various characters dropping their pants, ripping their shirts, and occasionally even losing all of their clothing. In other words, “wardrobe malfunctions” – in some cases well over half a century before that term was coined.
I’m not referring to all incidents that might come to mind. Animal characters, no matter how humanoid, don’t really count, because they’re…well, animals. They’re not supposed to be wearing clothes in the first place. I’m also not thinking of, say, the nude fairies in the “Nutcracker Suite” segment of Fantasia, since they were clearly not human as well as sexually androgynous; or of the nude harpies in that same film’s “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence, since those creatures were equally inhuman and obviously meant to terrify rather than titillate. What I truly find bothersome are “clothing-optional” scenes in vintage Disney fare that unveil humans – and, to put it bluntly, more often than not the kinds of humans I do not want to see in any state of undress. Certain people on deviantART will be familiar with most if not all of these characters and scenarios: Captain Hook pursued by a crocodile at Skull Rock in Peter Pan; Mowgli gripping a tree as his loincloth is stretched by Bagheera in The Jungle Book; the chasing of Edgar’s motorcycle by Napoleon and Lafayette in The Aristocats; Penny tracked down by Brutus and Nero in The Rescuers (a relatively rare female example); and, though this example does not seem to have yet caught on with Deviants, the 1937 Silly Symphony cartoon Little Hiawatha too. I viewed all of these cartoons as a kid in the 1980s – some of them multiple if not countless times – and ever since my attitude about them has been ambivalent at best. On the one hand, I found the “stripping” gags refreshing and even welcome, because they kept the cartoons from coming off too squeaky clean and therefore boring; on the other hand, even in my prepubescent years I grasped right away that there was (to put it mildly) something amiss about Disney’s “exposure” shtick. These gags were obviously supposed to be funny…but, for heaven’s sake, they weren’t that funny, and yet the animators kept slipping them in time after time after time. It was not long before even the thought of them – let alone the sight of them – was making me extremely uncomfortable. I would feel embarrassed if one of these scenes came on television while anyone else was in the room; I preferred to watch these particular cartoons alone, for many of the same reasons I always preferred to watch EUF/ENF scenes by myself as a teenager. Decades later, that discomfort I felt as a boy has diminished only slightly. Strange to say, I find the “nudie” moments in vintage Disney even more disturbing than the racial/ethnic stereotypes that were also common in cartoons of the period: after all, every cartoon studio was mining that kind of humor, and Disney was far from the worst offender; but what I’ve described above always seemed to be unique to Disney, to the point that it struck me less as lowest-common-denominator vulgarity and more as…yes, I am going to say it…kink/fetish kind of stuff.
If my mind were really that base, I would happily theorize that the animators – almost all of them male – at Walt Disney Studios during the 1930s and for many years afterward were secretly – or not-so-secretly – homosexuals and/or pedophiles. I’d even submit Walt Disney himself to Freudian analysis, observing that he came from a repressed Congregationalist family and was frequently spanked when he was a boy. But now that I consider the matter more thoughtfully, I doubt the truth is anywhere near that simple. I would guess that many factors – shock value, a desire to stand out from other studios, pure boredom on the part of the animators – all played a role. And of course they were going to recycle as much content as they could from successful cartoons, because why mess with a winning formula? Even so, the fact remains that within many of the older Disney cartoons there are moments that strike modern audiences, who’ve been conditioned to interpret everything as covertly if not overtly sexual, as problematic.
Given my audience here, I doubt any of you will think I’m being overly cynical; the way I see it, I’m just stating a fact. Now, I’m not saying these cartoons should be banned or even censored, because far more dangerous stuff exists out there. But I do believe that care needs to be taken to distinguish true ribald humor from Disney’s more innocuous exposure hijinks. And I contend that one of the ways to do this is through outrageous parody.
Yes, parody. If you take something controversial and exaggerate it to the point that it’s unrecognizable, it makes the original version look normal and even bland. I’ve seen that sort of thing done a LOT on deviantART; hell, I’ve done some of it myself. I don’t imagine my efforts coloring people’s perceptions of the originals because they’re not likely to encounter the parodies in the first place unless they seek them out…and if they do seek them out, then their brains are already wired the way ours are. Bottom line: while the original plots and gags in those cartoons may carry unsettling implications, at least they’re not blatant the way our spoofs tend to be.
But, to be honest, that’s not the chief reason I write the stuff I do. My foremost objective is to grapple with some of the pop-cultural bêtes noires of my formative years and master my fear of them in two ways: by co-opting them and by making fun of them. If there’s an elephant in the room, then I say shoot the elephant, cut off its tusks, and use them to pole-vault over the dinner table! Besides, seeking refuge in audacity can be great fun!
Quite a few of you have already read my three-part story Victorian Secrets, and perhaps also seen Dragnus’s pinup cartoon (“Vicki Vale Snapped by Tick-Tock”) inspired by that story. Well, now I’ve started working on an adult female twist on Little Hiawatha, which I’ve decided to call Dianita. I think people will find it very clever; I’m sure they’ll also agree that it’s different enough from the 1937 original (and limited enough in its distribution) to not taint it in any way, while also making the basic innocence of the original all the more apparent by comparison. I’ve already got the entire storyline plotted out, and I’m pleased with the way it dramatically diverges from the 1937 short at the point of the “bear” climax. I’m strongly anticipating it being enjoyed by a sizable number of people for a number of different reasons. Look for it soon!