| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, I investigate Mickey Mouse as both a character and a cartoon series during the period of his birth in 1928 through the early 40s, when his character became relatively fixed, to show that not only was the early Mickey Mouse a very different character from the one we are familiar with today but that the cartoons themselves were quite different in the nature of their appeal and that there were a number of causes and underlying forces for this transformation. In Chapter One, I exemplify the dramatic changes in Mickey’s physical appearance, relationship to other characters and to the world in which he lives. I argue that while the early Mickey was essentially a cartoon embodiment of what Freud terms the “pleasure principle,” the “mature” Mickey who emerged in the late 30s and early 40s is a virtual caricature of what Freud calls the “reality principle,” that is to say, a disciplinarian force that seeks to repress the very desires it once embodied.
Drawing on Norman Klein’s and Steven Watts’ respective studies of the transformations in Disney’s animation aesthetics, in Chapter Two I show that the Disney Studio’s turn from visual metamorphoses and improvisational play to what Watts calls “Victorian sentimental realism” was a gradual process that entailed the relinquishment of vaudeville-based lower-body jokes and Jazz-based improvisational play in favor of cultural forms and practices such as organized sports and concert music that emphasized discipline as a socializing force.
In my third chapter, I describe and exemplify the various causes and underlying forces that encouraged Disney and his animators to transform both the character and the cartoon. Chief among these were Disney’s desire to promote his studio and compete with other major film studios in Hollywood and the enforcement, in 1934, of the Hays Code, whose draconian provisions, while not directly targeting at the animation industry, sought to censor the very characteristics that had given the Mickey Mouse cartoons such wide appeal. In my conclusion chapter, I show that Disney and his animators did not blindly comply with the Code, but sought to retain aspects of the cartoon the Hays Code was designed to censor by deploying various strategies of transposition, disguise and framing.
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