Is Mickey Mouse all right?

    Is Mickey Mouse good reading for kids? People have been arguing about that for decades, with some ranting and raving directed against the subtext of the Disney stories. Marco Respinti writes about that in this article that I translated, which was published on the Italian online daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the publication of the first Topolino comic book.    

    

    Mickey Mouse, a very young eighty-year-old.

    By Marco Respinti (Translated and edited by L. Pavese)

    Mickey Mouse (“Topolino” in Italian) arrived in Italy on December 31, 1932, and for most Italians his is now a familiar name. However, the mousy detective does not have a real family, and for that reason there are some who argue that Mickey Mouse is not a good example for our children. We think that fear is exaggerated, even though today’s Disney production is rather ambiguous.

    New Year’s Eve of 2012 marked Topolino’s eightieth birthday, but his was surely a case of multiple births. The true date of birth of this very famous character, created by Walt Disney (1901-1966) and Ub Iwerks (1901-1971) was 1928. In fact, the two short, animated movies that made Mickey Mouse famous came out in that year. The first, Plane Crazy – which went basically unnoticed – was first shown on May 15. But on November 18, the very-well-known Steamboat Willie was played at the Colony Theatre in New York City and opened wide the doors to fame for Mickey.

    The American character, renamed Topolino, landed in Italy in 1930 when it appeared for the first time on the March 30 issue of the Turin weekly Illustrazione del Popolo. But it was on December 31, 1932, when the publisher Nerbini of Florence published the first issue of a comic book simply entitled Topolino. It was originally a tabloid publication; but in the following years the fame of the character grew in a way inversely proportional to the format of the publications that featured him.

    In 1935, the Disney-Mondadori publishing joint-venture stepped in and replaced Nerbini; then, in the vicissitudes caused by Fascism and WWII, Anonima Periodici Italiani and Helicon Italiana briefly took charge of the publication, until Mondadori took over and re-launched Topolino in 1949. In that year, the Topolino comic book resurrected with a new number 1, monthly, sizeable one-hundred-page issue, in its unmistakable “booklet” format that all Italians today know so well. Eventually, in 1988, Mondadori ceded the publication to Disney Italia.

    Therefore, the 2012 anniversary in question is the one of the Italian Topolino publication which, after all, is all one thing with its main character, the anthropomorphic mouse from the city of Topolinia who loves investigating crimes. (The anniversary was celebrated by an exhibit entitled Storie di una storia (Histories of a Story), which was held in the Wow Spazio Fumetto art-gallery, the Milan, Italy, illustration and animation museum).

    But is Topolino-Mickey Mouse good reading for kids? People have been arguing about that for decades, with some ranting and raving directed against the subtext of the Disney stories. From the United States, from where it originated in some Protestant Christian circles, the polemic has reached several other countries including Italy, starting even some boycotting campaigns spearheaded by groups of “concerned parents” and “mothers against …” (You fill in the blanks).

    For example, in the Topolino stories the family is always and therefore intentionally missing. Topolino and Minni (Mickey and Minnie Mouse), as well as Orazio e Clarabella (Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow) or Paperon de’ Paperoni and Brigitta (Scrooge McDuck and Brigitta McBridge) regardless their venerable age are perennial fiancés who never marry. So, instead of moms and dads, the Disney world is populated only by uncles and aunts, a swarm of grandchildren and a few rare grandmothers. It is one of those comic book absurdities. Topolino’s nephews, called in Italy Tip and Tap, Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie (Qui, Quo, Qua in Italian) and Ely, Emy and Evy, the nieces of Daisy Duck (Donald Duck’s girlfriend), whose children are they? And who is the mother or the father of Donald Duck whom uncle Scrooge McDuck is the brother of? And Grandma Duck (Nonna Papera), the ancestor of Donald Duck and all his nephews, where did she come from? Let alone the fact that all the nieces and nephews nonchalantly call “aunt” all the above-mentioned perennial fiancées whom their uncles never marry.

Brigitta McBridge

    Donald Duck (Paperino in Italy) comes under fire then for his congenital and maladroit laziness, which the comic book de-facto glorifies. Scrooge McDuck always greedy – even in his very rare moments of generosity – never repents, as instead does Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” And even Topolino, when is investigating a crime, as he frequently does, is always skeptical and rationalistic; always impersonating Sherlock Holmes, without even a hint of Chesterton’s Catholic priest detective Father Brown. Sometimes he looks even too materialistic, except in the short X-Mickey feeler series (totally Italian produced), in which some people saw a few unusual but not less dangerous openings to the occult. And what about the not crazy but certainly Enlightened scientist Gyro Gearloose?

    A troubling mess indeed. After all, it is well known that Walt Disney was a high-ranking Freemason, who did not keep that secret, and was publicly celebrated with a flourishing of compasses and carpenters’ squares, tools that he also quietly disseminated, with other esoteric symbols, in his comics.

    That is true, all documented, and all in the open. But is that enough to deliver the entire Disney’s world to hell, and to forbid it to children, as we rightly do with foul-mouthed, violent, and obscene movies and novels? Maybe not.

    The great Disney’s stories, for example, especially those told in the long feature movies that made the history of animation cinematography, deserve an appeal process. Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs is still a splendid metaphor of the fight between good and evil: in the end, candor and innocence triumph, destroying an evil that was depicted so horridly that some, at the time, found it scandalous (the movie came out in 1937). Also, Cinderella. And Sleeping Beauty too, enriched as it is by beautiful scenes, which remind us of the pious Christian story of Saint George who fights to rescue the princess, Lady Truth, threatened by the dragon of heresy.

    Although depleted by some reductionism, even Disney’s Pinocchio is not worse or more dangerous than the original, written by Carlo Lorenzini, pen-name Collodi, who allegedly was also a freemason – so that Cardinal Giacomo Biffi was able to turn it into and extraordinary means of catechesis. In Pinocchio, the Blue Fairy is clearly an angelic being from Heaven – as well as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella – and characters in the story are shown praying. There is prayer also in the more recent feature-film The Rescuers, kneeling prayer, even though the Rescue Aid Society – an international mouse organization – is described as an arm of the masonic United Nations Organization. While there is nothing at all pernicious in the sumptuous Disney’s The Jungle Book, inspired by Kipling’s tales: the story is an exaltation of the humanity of Mowgli, who cannot be reduced to an animal, like the king of the apes who believes to be Mowgli’s cousin but, as the movie clearly shows, is just delusional (an obvious reference to the theory of evolution ndt). And the noble educational principles that Robert Baden-Powell was able to extrapolate from the stories of Mowgli creating the Boy Scouts are very well known.

King Louie of the Apes

    Whoever points the finger against talking animals should read again Aesop’s and Phaedrus’ fables – and C.S. Lewis; and those who do not understand the suggestive power of myths should familiarize themselves with Plato and J. R. R. Tolkien. The important thing is not making myths an alternative to the Logos, which was incarnated in Jesus Christ, but rather celebrate their union. And whoever thinks that talking about man by means of animal stories is really going too far, maybe never saw a medieval bestiary.

    Maybe that’s the reason why Disney created that modern bestiary entitled The Lion King: a splendid metaphor of the maturing development of the person, of life as a vocation and of the real meaning of authority. The story of The Lion King is a graalic tale that exalts the thaumaturgic royalty of a restored monarch, who chases away the usurper, healing the decaying land with his scepter blessed from Above. And there is even a priestly cast who, at the beginning of the movies, baptizes the royal scion.

    While it is not true that pornography is only in the eye of the beholder, it is unfortunately true that the Omnia Munda Mundis principle was very often butchered. But that is exactly what distinguish a man from a cartoon character: the ability to discern the spirit even in Disney’s ambiguous offer.

Your comments will be appreciated, 

Thanks,

L. Pavese