Wednesday, May 17, 2006

NOT Japornimation

When I was about 12, I got a phone call from my friend ZLA demanding that I drop what I was doing and go turn the volume up really loud on my copy of Disney's Aladdin, because apparently you could hear something dirty if you did that. Obviously I jumped to it. As it turns out, and in keeping with this investigation, I couldn't hear anything. But over the years, these claims, urban legends or no, have popped up in the news from time to time. Mostly, they're probably the result of over-caffeinated religious crazy groups with too much time on their hands, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the validity of the phrase "he who smelt it delt it." I haven't seen any of the in-film messages or images (not for lack of trying) but I have seen the phallic tower on the Little Mermaid box and well, you really had to be searching for something, which says more about you than about Disney's perverted artists.
That said, had the before-mentioned hyper religious groups turned their attention to Disney a little earlier in his career they might have come across cartoons bearing titles the likes of which I found in the basement of the FH today while going through old 3/4" videos. Read on and judge for yourselves both my wicked mind, and what could have POSSIBLY motivated this nomenclature, BESIDES drugs and sex:

DRUGS
Minnie the Moocher
The Stupid Cupid
Porky in Wackyland
(okay those were maybe a stretch but read on)

SEX
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B
Red Hot Riding Hood
Brownie Bucks the Jungle
Bimbo's Initiation

This just goes to show that although Disney may not be hiding messages in its features anymore (or else they're just much cleverer than us), they have still embraced film's general propensity towards pornography. And don't try to give me any "Those were more innocent times... They wouldn't have made those associations..." bullshit, because I've seen Abigail Child's Mayhem and all of its turn of the century porno footage (I can't find any reference to it, but I don't THINK it's reproduced). Anyway the point is, the association of sex and film and its subsequent repression has been around as long as the medium itself. When I get to dub those tapes I'm so watching these cartoons.

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