Think of the Children

Once upon a time, we had Felix the Cat getting drunk surrounded by kitten babes before staggering home and being hit with a rolling pin with his wife. We had Heeza Liar out-cheating cheaters at poker before a hail of gunfire in the darkness.

And then Uncle Walt came along. With him came frolicking fish, singing little birdies, trees swaying in the wind, fairy tales, and a shy, very innocuous mouse. Other studios started to copy him.

In other words, Disney turned cartoons into children’s fare. People today still can’t shake that out of their heads; some are still outraged that Fred Flintstone smoked “on a children’s show.” It became a vicious circle when television grew. Cartoons were aired during periods when kids would watch. Pressure groups then demanded they be more kid-oriented. Quick Draw McGraw’s guns were out. Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears were in.

Which brings up to this article in the Pittsburgh Press of June 14, 1946, lashing out at Walt Disney (of all people) and demanding he make his cartoons more inoffensive so sensitive people won’t suffer.

The writer says people are forced to take their kids to the cinema (yet, there is no call to feature films kid-friendly, even though children would see them) and objects to “frenzied and dizzy” cartoons. To me, those are the best kind. I probably watched more Bugs Bunny cartoons in a week on TV than a kid saw in a full year in theatres in 1946. I think I came out okay. And so did millions of other kids who watched mounds of cartoons on the tube in the ‘60s. Maybe parents should teach their kid how to handle unpleasant things. The child is going to need that later in life.

Children Baffled by Film Cartoons Which Only Adult Mind Can Grasp
By FLORENCE FISHER PARRY
Some time ago at Loew's Penn they held a wonderful party for little children. The whole program wras devoted to cartoons and they tell me that the theater was packed and jammed with little children.
While I was up home in Punxsutawney over the holiday, a similar program was shown, and many, many conscientious young parents stopped in their tracks and took their little children to see this treat.
There were some, however, who kept their little cnildren at home. They had learned from experience that their own children were simply not "up to" many of the cartoons that are ostensibly designed for children, yet which only have the effect of confusing and frightening them, and they could not risk having their children become hysterical again.

This, I remember, happened not to be my experience with my own children, who took everything at the movies in stride very much as they did their oatmeal for breakfast. I dare say that was because movies were their usual diet. They had been conditioned to them just as they had been conditioned to Mother Goose and Grimm's Fairy Tales and other little children's stories, and therefore were prepared for the wicked queen in "Snow White" and the sorcery by which poor Pinnochio was turned into a donkey for as you know, the old children's classics contained much violence and even cruelty.
Lurid Stuff
The wicked persons were always punished by the most excruciating means. It was nothing to tie an evil person to four horses and let the horses gallop in different directions and tear the wicked victims limb from limb. It was nothing for Rumpelstiltskin to split himself in two with rage, or for wild beasts to devour the unfaithful. Little children go through a curious stage of savagery, as every parent knows, and can be conditioned to take almost anything in stride.
I have repeated before in this space how I took my little nephew to see "The Sign of the Cross" and, worried lest he become nervous when the Christians were thrown to the lions, leaned over and said: "Remember, this isn't really true. This is only a movie. The lions are really not going to eat the Christians." To which he replied: "Oh, I don't care whether they eat them or not." On the other hand, my little grandniece could not sit through "Bambi" or "Pinnochio" or "Snow White," all of which had the power to terrify her to the point of hysterics. Which just "goes to show" as we say Up Home, that there is no rule to follow in providing little children entertainment. Each parent must determine what is suitable for his child. Not even a Walt Disney can hope to find a formula for his cartoons and stories that would be acceptable to all little tots.
Becoming 'Slick'
Frankly, I have noted, in the past number of years, a growing tendency on the part of the makers of animated cartoons, to depart more and more from the type of picture designed purely for children, and to devote more and more of their appeal to the adult mind. Our cartoons are becoming more and more slick. Their very tempo has been so sped up that it is all that the adult eye can do to follow the insane action. Cartoon figures which used to move through easy sequences now seem to be jet-propelled, whizzing insanely through bewildering action which no small child could possibly follow! The audience reaction is gratifying. Grown-ups seem to love it. That is because their coordination is more developed, their reactions more acute! but this maniacal frenzy of action only serves to bewilder little children and make them nervous. They simply cannot understand what's going on, and their bewilderment gives rise to nervousness and petulance and is likely to end in their parents having to take them from the theater.
All this is too bad. The animated cartoon used to be one of the loveliest treats imaginable for children. The early Mickey Mouse cartoons, simple, easy in plot, leisurely to action, brought joy to millions of little children! The early Disneys were masterpieces in this regard. Then, once the animated cartoon had become a valuable piece of property to the exhibitors, there slipped into them a note of sophistication and smartness. All this is well and good for the adult audience, but leaves little children with no really suitable cartoons.
It can be argued, of course, that the motion picture theater is not the place for little children and that they should be kept away until they are old enough to absorb the kind of animated cartoon that is supplied today. This is just as ridiculous an argument as to say that the street is no place for the children to play. Millions of young American parents have no choice but to take their children with them to the movies for the simple reason that they have no one to leave them safely with at home. Children are tremendously patient, as a rule. They have an infinite capacity for boredom, and most of them would gladly sit through an interminable feature if at the end they would be rewarded by an animated cartoon they they would understand and enjoy. Surely, we can spare them these few moments even if the cartoon does seem childish to us.
Too Adult
Recently Walt Disney spent a fortune on a feature-length of animated cartoons which he titled "Make Mine Music." Delightful as was this variegated program, it was essentially adult in every number. There was only one which could be said to have child appeal, and that was Johnnie Fedora, a simple little romance of a hat for a bonnet. The others were, frankly, beyond the capacity of the average little child. Here is a man who, more than any other person in the field of animated cartoons, is possessed of the imagination, the tenderness, the genius to make beautiful children's animated cartoons. We do not want to feel that he has lost his simplicity. Yet many of his recent cartoons give us no alternative but to suspect just this.

Terrified 'Em
Walt Disney did wonders for children, older children, in "Snow White" and "Pinnochio" and "Bambi" and "Dumbo," even though in these, too, were interjected situations almost beyond a child's capacity to absorb. Tender-hearted and sensitive little children were terrified by the wicked queen in "Snow White," the anguish of Dumbo's mother; the fire in Bambi and the transformations that overcame Pinnochio. So even these pictures, as wonderful as they were, were definitely suitable only for children who could take suspense and excitement and horror in stride.
I find myself wishing very often now as I look at the animated cartoons of today, whether they come from The Disney Studio or those of his imitators, that there would be thrown on the screen some of the very first Mickey Mouse cartoons, the very first that featured Donald Duck and Pluto. The simplest, slowest mind of any child could follow their actions; and as I recall, they never bored the most adult mind. But lately all the cartoons have become so frenzied and dizzy that their action has become a veritable bombardment. If they appear thus to us, how confusing and senseless they must seem to little children!
Please, Mr. Disney, come to their rescue and restore to them the safe little world that was yours once to give them!