Feminisney: The Movies You Never Watched (Part 1)
In which Disney decides story-telling and seeing female characters is dull.
So, this one’s a little bit late. I apologize. It has everything to do with these movies being a bit of a struggle to get through and absolutely nothing to do with the 20 miles I walked this weekend in search of Squirtles and Rapidashes.
Definitely nothing to do with that.
Anyway, you’re getting a triple feature this time because, frankly, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, there was this weird period in Disney where the movies didn’t have any story or plot, barely had characters, and were just… odd. And most of you have likely never seen them, much less heard of them. There’s no real point in the criteria this go round, so I’ll just do a summary for each and talk about them. But next week… Things are going to get a bit racy, because we’re going to the South.
Saludos Amigos
This film, clocking in at 41 minutes, barely makes the cut to be considered a feature-length film (40-minute minimum). And it barely counts as animated, as a large portion is live action. The film sort of serves as an educational documentary as the Disney animators travel throughout South America to get ideas for cartoons, music, and other such entertainments. The film is interspersed with cartoon segments about random location-related segments, such as Donald traversing Lake Titicaca, Goofy educating the viewer on what a gaucho is, or a family of airplanes. Things like that.
There’s only one female character (with no lines) in the film at all, including the animators: A plane called Mamá, who is medium sized, represented by pink frills, and whose engine isn’t strong enough to travel over the mountains, though her male son (depicted as a little kid plane) is. So, that’s less than great. Especially since the story of the big, strong dad plane Papá, Mamá, and the kid Pedro is the only story in the film. Anyway. There is a moment where Goofy’s male horse is wearing a dress, which is kind of a take it as you will thing, and a line talking about the music where they say, “Their music is strange and exotic.” Very colonialist, as though things that aren’t what we’re used to are automatically strange. I didn’t see anything strange about it. Personally, I find the popularity of Nickleback to be far stranger, especially since everyone seems to hate them. That’s just weird.
All in all, this is a very forgettable film. Though it did introduce a character who will appear later, José Carioca, and thank goodness Disney actually cast a Hispanic person to voice him. And with this film, the core trio of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy have finally all appeared. …but that’s really all there is to say about this.
Fun notes: Pretty sure this was where they started getting the idea for Emperor’s New Groove.
The Three Caballeros
Now, I said these are the movies no one’s seen, but I actually did grow up with this one. It holds just a bit more semblance of story that Saludos Amigos does… but not by much. It’s Donald Duck’s birthday, he gets gifts, and each gift he opens discusses a different area of South/Central America (including Brazil and Mexico). There are only 4 named characters this time, all men, though there are more women taking an active role in events. …to sometimes awkward effect.
So, for positives… Well, I guess you could consider the fact that Joe (José Carioca from the previous film) at one point wears female dancer’s garb is a positive, but it’s done during what may be “Pink Elephants on Parade”s strongest contender for trippiest Disney sequence, so.
Sadly, even with so few women, it manages to have some really awkwardly and terribly perpetuated stereotypes and tropes. Specifically, there’s a REALLY long scene (only 5 or so minutes, but that’s well beyond what was necessary) in which Donald is on the beach lecherously chasing women in swimsuits, trying to give them kisses forcefully. He calls them toots, constantly leers at them… and the girls react fairly playfully. That’s a dangerous trope because have you EVER met a SINGLE woman that would react to that situation with giggles and playfulness? Unless it was an understood situation between people that knew each other very well? It gives that sort of scene a positive view, and that’s not something to instill in the mind of young people.
Beyond that, there’s a later sequence in which José Carioca and, again to a far stronger degree, Donald lecherously leer at and physically fight over a woman (Donald preparing to smash in a man’s head for daring to talk to this woman). The idea that men get violent over women is… not new. But instead of being played for laughs, it should probably be discouraged wholly, because male possessiveness is a real thing. And a real bad thing. Especially violent possessiveness.
The film also indulges in a trope I’ve mentioned briefly here and there, but one Disney uses a lot. They love to give women “female indicators.” It’s this idea that there are physical traits that belong to women. Specifically, it’s breasts/curvier bodies, makeup (often blush and eye shadow), and long, noticeable lashes. This kind of encourages an expectation of a “female figure” or how a woman “should look.” Which is dumb. Because women can look however they want, and people of any gender should not be pushed into a single type or style or expectation. But Disney does use this on men, too. Specifically, they love to use the long eyelashes, and sometimes eye shadow, on men… when representing coyness or pretend innocence. This subconsciously makes us equate feminine features (again, these eye alterations are the same repeated features used on all the female characters) with innocence or playfulness. Honestly, any sort of forced stereotype on a gender or group of people is a thing to avoid. And this one is media’s most prolific trope, still used today. (Though media has leaned more toward the sultry stare than the coy flirtation these days, it feels like.)
Fun notes: I’m just going to leave this here for you to watch and say Walt Disney Studios clearly had access to some prime drugs.
Make Mine Music
Remember Fantasia? This is… basically the same. Except the music usually has words and is far more modern. There are nine musical segments, and 5 of them tell a story. Among all nine segments, there are 14 named characters. …and one is female (Alice Bluebonnet… a hat).
It’s becoming increasingly clear that our feminist positivism will likely be well after the ‘60s.
Again, we see the eyelashes trope indicating cute “Little old me?”-style behavior in men. And again we see violent men at a baseball game both when the team is doing well and when Casey strikes out in Mudville (“Casey at the Bat” being one of the two only well-known parts of this film, the other being “Peter and the Wolf”). And, again, women are represented by makeup, pink, lacy things (the lace will appear again next week). But the really awful “Why are these even here?” parts are just… Ugh. Not Jim Crow awful, but still.
In “All the Cats Join In,” the scene is set up as though someone is drawing it all out while it’s happening. It’s a jazzy tune, with a bunch of (white) kids heading over to the local sock hop/soda joint to dance and revel. The hand starts drawing out more people to dance… and at one point draws a woman with a larger posterior than the other skinny girls. The expectant male sees this, turns, and yawns in disdain. So the eraser comes out and the woman is made more pleasingly curvaceous.
Do I really need to talk about what makes that bad? I hope not, dear reader. (The same segment also sees the ONLY people not invited to the event being the cop, the young girl kid, and the seemingly same-age-as-the-rest girl who happens to be wearing glasses. As a guy who grew up wearing glasses knowing the cruelty of kids, that’s a crappy thing to perpetuate.)
The second pretty awful bit comes with “Casey at the Bat.” Most of the segment is simply the famous Ernest Thayer poem set to music. But there are additions. One of them is the intro. You can watch the whole segment in the video I’m posting… If you do, see if you notice something being said. It’s pretty early.
“The ladies don’t understand baseball a bit. They don’t know a foul from a strike or a hit.”
I mean, come on, guys.
Speaking personally, I never liked baseball. I can guarantee my female roommate knows more about baseball than I ever could… or would ever even want to. And there are tons of women besides that actively go to watch these games. Just… Can we stop the gendered stereotype that sports are a man’s realm? Seriously. Just… it needs to end.
…that’s basically it for this week, though. Again, not much to discuss… but it’s unfortunate that Disney had such a streak of poor female representation. And less entertaining films beside. But, due to the difficult nature of finding the films for “The Movies You Never Watched (Part 2),” we’re soon coming up on a stretch of films far more recognizable to the random viewer. Until next week.
