November 18th is the birthday of Mickey Mouse, a good friend of all the children in the world. His red shorts and round ears themselves represent the childhood and beauty of generations. The huge Disney DreamWorks spans two centuries and creates dreams for people all over the world. However, you would not have thought that this DreamWorks was an absolute military factory. Looking through history, Mickey Mouse was a girl dressed up like history. It has recruited soldiers, went to the front line, promoted policies, and sold national debts under the national flag.
On its birthday, let's talk about the 20th century that has not yet gone, when Mickey Mouse and his friends represented not only laughter and childhood, but also missiles, bombers, gas masks and everything you can imagine, related to war. .
Mickey Mouse's "between" gene
In fact, Mickey Mouse has been flowing with "between" blood since its birth. In 1917, Walt Disney, the father of Disney, was 16 years old. Like many young Americans, he yearned for joining the army, but failed to do so due to his age. During this period, Walt served as the main writer of the school magazine's comics, and his paintings expressed his yearning for his military career. By 1918, the situation of World War I became clearer and the failure of the Allies was a foregone conclusion. Walt was unwilling to give up his last chance to go to the front line and faked his identity and joined a volunteer ambulance team under the American Red Cross. However, it was not until after the end of World War I that Walt had the opportunity to set foot on the European continent and missed his military dream.
Walt's yearning for military life is reflected in his works. Mickey Mouse's first appearance was in the "Crazy Aircraft" cartoon. At that time, American pilot Charles flew the "Louis Spirit" single-wing aircraft for the first time, successfully flying from the United States across the Atlantic Ocean and directly to Paris in France, becoming the most amazing adventurer in the minds of the new generation of Americans. There is no doubt that Charles is Walt's hero and the inspiration for the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
Then it is not difficult to understand that since the 1930s, Disney began to produce propaganda videos for Canada that declared war on Germany. In the early 1940s, it also produced "Three Jockey Kings" and "Greetings to Friends" that appeared in Donald Duck to weaken the influence of Nazism in South America.
But Mickey Mouse and his friends officially entered the war, and it must be counted after the Pearl Harbor incident in 1941. The United States declared war on Germany, and Disney stars became the protagonists of various government propaganda posters overnight.
You can see that Mickey Mouse encourages teenagers to love "Uncle Sam", teaches Americans how to spend days with limited necessities in life under the rationing system, and soothes the public. It published the Green Thumb Manual to encourage people to open vegetable gardens to be self-sufficient. When the U.S. government needed to limit the supply of sugar, coffee and meat due to wartime financial austerity, Mickey, Minnie and Donald Duck appeared on the propaganda poster of relevant policies. The picture was warm in color. They had just received the ratio and held the "Limited Supply Manual" in their hands, with a happy expression.
Mickey Mouse is more "practical" in other military fields. During World War II, Disney designed more than 1,100 badges for the military, suitable for different services. The earliest badge was designed for the U.S. Navy Supplementary Squadron, where Mickey Mouse rode a diving bird with the Statue of Liberty in the background.
In addition, Disney's lively and cute animal stars have become the symbols of all combat tools you can think of during wartime: aircraft, ships, tanks, armored vehicles... The symbol of the 799 bomber squadron is that the furry rabbit is sitting on the missile, and the nurse team's badge, Donald Duck's girlfriend Daisy heals the earth with a gentle expression. The familiar "Flying Tigers" logo for Chinese people is also written by Disney.
Disney star's lively and cute image has an undoubted counteracting to the horror of war. When the shadow of chemical warfare began to cover the United States, and the ordinary gas masks made by the government were rejected by children because of their horrible looks, Disney designed the Mickey Mouse gas mask and promoted that children can wear masks to play games to prevent possible Resident Evils.
Smash the tomatoes on Hitler's face!
Although Mickey Mouse is Disney's "backbone", the funny Donald Duck shines in the war propaganda film. As early as 1942, Disney's old rival Warner filmed an animated short film set against the Duck World and satirized reality. The film shows Hitler duck, Mussolini duck and Showa duck. The story is about Hitler duck inciting some ducks to bully ordinary duck people, while the Peace Dove (on behalf of the United Nations) with an olive branch organized a duck farm turmoil, which eventually defeated the Axis Duck.
video is extremely ironic. When Showa duck was beaten by a turtle because he inserted a card everywhere, "This is Japan" and "Showa duck took out a badge: "I AM CHINESE."
Disney is of course not willing to fall behind. A series of anti-Nazi films such as "Chicken", "Cause and Feeling", "Death Education - Made in Nazis", "The Face of the Head", "Donald Duck Agents" tells the story of the Nazi cruel rule and the importance of overthrowing the Axis powers in a humorous way. In "Donald Duck Agents", Donald Duck was quite brave and infiltrated and destroyed a Japanese military base with his own strength. "Education of Death - Made of Nazis" tells the story of a German teenager named Hans joining the Hitler Youth League and his thoughts are twisted.
The most successful video is "The Face of the Head". In the film, Donald Duck wears a swastika armband on his arm and is monitored by a group of soldiers and works hard on the assembly line of the factory's production accessories workshop. As the production line gets faster and faster, there are more and more bullet patterns to deal with, and every row of bullets passed by, a row of Hitler's photos flowed through. It must shout "Long live Hitler" to every photo of the head of state and raise its right hand to pay tribute. The operating speed of the production line increased from "walking" to "bicycle" and finally reached "train speed", and Donald Duck fell into a mental breakdown.
At this time, the ringtone rang, and Donald Duck stood up with a salute gesture in his sleep, only to realize that it was just a dream. After waking up, it walked towards the Statue of Liberty and the American flag beside the bed, and sighed, "Oh my god, I am so happy that I live in the territory of the United States of America." The story ends with Donald Duck smashing a tomato on Hitler's face.
Interestingly, Donald Duck's contribution in wartime is not only remembered by the audience. In 1984, Donald Duck celebrated his 50th birthday, the US military promoted him to sergeant to show his gratitude, and Donald Duck was honorably retired.
Mickey Mouse was in Vietnam and was shot and died in the late stage of the war. Since the war propaganda films shot in the early stages were rarely profitable and designing for the army is basically free of charge. Disney fell into an economic crisis, stopped serving the military, and returned to the production of entertainment videos.
However, this does not mean that Mickey Mouse has no relationship with the war anymore. In fact, due to Disney's close cooperation with the military during the war, it was already difficult for people at that time to tear some of the labels off Mickey Mouse.
1968, before the end of the Vietnam War's "local war", Milton Glaser (a famous American image designer and "I love NY" logo designer) produced a 1 minute and 7 second silent short film for the "Anger Art Festival". Like other works participating in the art festival, it expresses the artist's views on the Vietnam War. Mickey Mouse in
film became one of the millions of American youths. He saw the slogan "Join the army and take you to see the vast world!" on the street. He happily joined the army and went to Vietnam. Mickey Mouse walked into a dense forest and lost its direction. At this time, a rain of bullets hit, and Mickey Mouse was shot in the head and died.
There are rumors that Disney tried to destroy every copy of "Mickey Mouse in Vietnam" they could get, and the video did disappear shortly after 1968 and only saw the light of day again on YouTube in the 1910s.
"Mickey Mouse in Vietnam" is not an isolated case. More and more artists use Mickey Mouse's image (yes, no copyright consideration) to express dissatisfaction with politics, fear of the expansion of power in developed countries, and resistance to religious invasion. The artists put him on Guy Fox's mask and let the naked girl in the Vietnam War photo "Girl in the Fire of War" hold hands with the smiling Mickey Mouse and Uncle McDonald's. In a sense, Mickey Mouse has become a symbol of the export of strong American culture.
text/Zhu Xingyu Edited by/Du Qiang
(The picture in this article comes from the Internet)
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