Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out by Sean Griffin Read Free Book Online

their panties. There are many characters with the back flaps of their pants undone, lots of spitting and lots of violent abuse of animals for fun and profit (kicking ostriches, pulling on cats’ tails, etc.). In The Chain Gang (1930), Walt had no problem putting Mickey in jail and having a climactic prison riot and jail break before throwing Mickey back into “the hoosegow.” No attempt is made to tell viewers that Mickey was unjustly imprisoned, and the cartoon ends with Mickey firmly re-planted in a guarded cell singing joyfully “There’s no place like home.”
    Mickey was an incorrigible bounder, and audiences loved it.
    “THE GOLDEN PERIOD”: CREATING THE
    “DISNEY MYSTIQUE” (1931–1941)
    A rodent running around like a sex-crazed Harpo Marx is not the Mickey Mouse that most parents and their children remember, and certainly not the Mickey that greets visitors at the theme parks. The appearance of a kinder, gentler Mickey signaled a new era for the studio.
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    M I C K E Y ’ S M O N A S T E RY
    The studio in this new era, commonly referred to as “The Golden Period,” would gain even greater success as it began to reject the carnivalesque attitude towards sexuality and the body. Taking its place—in both the films and in a concentrated public relations effort by the studio—was the “wholesome” image that is today considered essential to the “Disney mystique.”
    The “new and improved” Mickey did not evolve until a little over two years after his initial debut. During that time, much had changed.
    The United States had been plunged into the Depression, and many citizens looked for a scapegoat on which to blame the woes of the nation.
    Many found fault with bankers and stock brokers. Many others found the Depression the obvious result of the lax morality and lawlessness of the “Roaring ’20s.” Consequently, a new sense of moral rectitude began to rear its head in America.
    One of the earliest indicators of this change was the publication of Henry James Forman’s Our Movie-Made Children in 1933. Research for the book, done between 1929 and 1931, blatantly equated the loss of morality with the economic downswing. “Virtue may have been at a premium once—but apparently it slumped along with the other leading stocks,” the work bemoaned.24 Detailing the results of how motion pictures affected children, the book not so subtly indicated that the rampant violence and sexuality displayed on American movie screens had dire potential for the younger generation. The study claimed scientific veracity, but the researchers themselves obviously had preconceived opinions on the subject, which translated into survey questions that reinforced their beliefs that films had a detrimental effect on children.25
    Although today the methods of observation and statistical compilation seem incredibly unscientific and biased, the work was quite popular at the time, creating a call for stricter methods of film censorship. The industry had heard these charges before, and, in the 1920s, responded by hiring former Postmaster General Will Hays to ensure that films were
    “safe” for family viewing. This new call, though, made the film industry worry about the possibilities of federal regulation of censorship. Attempting to forestall this potential calamity, the Motion Picture Producers and Directors of America commissioned Martin Quigley and others to write out a Production Code in 1930. Although the Code provided no means of enforcement (that would come in 1934 with the establishment of the Seal of Approval provision), the document stringently declared all manner of sexuality and “blue” humor as off limits. In coming to M I C K E Y ’ S M O N A S T E RY
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    terms with the new technology of sound, the Code went so far as to list specific words and noises (the flatulence of Bronx cheers, e.g.) that would be prohibited.
    At the same time that this was going on, Mickey Mouse had quickly become the biggest star in