Wartime Cartoon: Difference between revisions

 

== Disney ==

{{quote| "Vhen der Fuehrer says, 'Ve ist der master race', / Ve heil! (''raspberry'') Heil! (''raspberry'') / Right in der Fuehrer's face!..."}}

** [[Harry Turtledove]]'s Worldwar series included an alternate version of "Der Fuehrer's Face" directed at the Fleetlord of the alien invasion.

** In addition, Donald was the star for an major propaganda film called ''[[The New Spirit]]'' which encouraged Americans to pay their income tax promptly, followed by the sequel ''The Spirit of '43''. (No sequel was needed in '44, because by then Federal Income Tax Withholding had been introduced.) Reportedly, many more Americans did their civic duty because of these films.

** Similarly to the [[Bugs Bunny]] example below, these cartoons actually got recognized by the real-life United States Military; on his 50th birthday, Donald Duck was officially promoted to the rank of Buck Sergeant in the army and given an honorable discharge.

* The short ''Reason and Emotion'' starts as a simple visualization of the struggle between the mind's reasonable and emotional sides before delving into how Hitler manipulates his country's emotions to remove all reason. The propaganda aspects were removed and re-edited on later broadcasts, like on Disney's TV series ''The Wonderful World of Disney'' to have a new ending about balancing both sides.

* A [[Nightmare Fuel|particularly disturbing]] example is 1943's ''[[Education for Death]]''. It follows the life of a German boy called Hans from birth (where his parents prove to a judge they're of Aryan pedigree), through being told distorted fairy tales glorifying Hitler as a toddler, being taught to hate a bunny being eaten by a fox (since "the strong shall rule the weak"), participating in book-burning, and after the next few years spent "marching and heiling, heiling and marching" he, now in his teens, has become a "good Nazi" who says, thinks, and does only what he's told to. In the end, he and others march off to war, their figures fading into rows of graves. It's up to the audience if the dramatic depiction, or the fact that [[Real Life]] Nazism operated similarly, is more ''chilling''. All things considered, it did show that not all Germans accepted National Socialism of free will, but rather were forced and indoctrinated into it from a young age. It further portrays Hans' mother to be deeply afraid of it all.

 

== Tom & Jerry ==

* In "The Lonesome Mouse", we see Jerry paint a Hitler mustache and comb-over on a picture of Tom and then spit at it.

 

** Another instance of this happened in "Nasty Quacks," when Daffy packs up and leaves a man's house, then comes back to tell him that the government doesn't want anyone to do any non-essential traveling -- which would have been funny, if not for the fact that by the time the cartoon was theatrically released, the war was over.

* The Bugs Bunny cartoon ''Super-Rabbit'' (a parody of the Fleischer ''[[Superman]]'' cartoons) ends with Bugs going into a phonebooth and changing into "a '''real''' superman" — a Marine. He then promptly marches off to war. The actual [[Semper Fi|United States Marines]] were so flattered by this that they actually made Bugs a Marine. He was eventually promoted to Master Sergeant.

* ''Scrap Happy Daffy'' had him protecting a huge scrap metal heap from the Germans, who attacked with a submarine firing a torpedo with a Nazi goat inside it. And then Daffy is inspired by patriotic visions ("Americans don't give up!") to become a "Super American" (duck) and thrash the Nazi saboteurs.

* One example that seems quite edgy in retrospect — ''Draftee Daffy'' has fair-weather patriot Daffy Duck dodging "the little man from the draft board", who it turns out will literally follow him to [[Fire and Brimstone Hell|Hell]] to serve the notice. Related to the above, at one point Daffy tries to escape by buying a plane ticket only to be met with "Is this trip REALLY necessary?"

* Though (allegedly) not cartoons, several ''[[Three Stooges]]'' shorts had wartime themes, the most cringe-worthy of which (''The Yolk's on Me'') used actual Japanese-American internees bused from a "relocation center" (aka internment camp) to play the "bad guys". Though rarely seen today, it was still in the TV rotation as late as the early 1970s.

* On the funny pages, [[Dick Tracy]] battled Pruneface, spy for the Nazis and manufacturer of nerve gas.

 

 

=== Modern-day homages and parodies: ===

* [[The Simpsons|Itchy & Scratchy]] did a wartime cartoon where they [[Enemy Mine|team up]] (briefly) to kill Hitler. After chopping Hitler's head off, Itchy does the same to Scratchy.

* ''[[South Park]]'' paid [[Homage]] to wartime cartoons in "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants", where Cartman bamboozles Osama bin Laden a la Bugs Bunny while the other boys escape from the terrorist leader's lair.

** Another episode features Cartman asking Santa Claus to bring Christmas to Iraq and they end up shooting him down and kidnapping him, so it's up to the boys and Jesus to rescue him. The ending features Jesus and Santa blowing away many terrorists with machine guns, but Jesus ends up sacrificing himself so they can escape and to save time Santa turns the terrorist's weapons into toys and candy so they can't shoot them down.

** Part 1 of "Imaginationland" features terrorists invading Imaginationland and killing many fictional characters. They use a rocket character to release the evil characters, getting killed themselves in the process.

** "I'm a Little Bit Country", which looks at protest over the war in Iraq. Turns out the answer is to go to war and ''then'' protest against it.

** Another memorable bit has a suicide bomber asking his handlers what he's going to do afterwards, and their (failed) attempts to explain the concept to him.

** "OSAMAAAA!"

** The pre-9/11 episode "Road to Rhode Island" has Stewie distracting the guards at an airport security check by singing and dancing so that his bag (full of weapons) goes through the x-ray undetected. Upon picking it up, he says "Let's hope Osama Bin Laden doesn't know showtunes!" As he walks away, Osama shows up using the same technique. The Osama scene is cut from the later airings and the Volume 1 DVD, but is intact on the "Freakin' Sweet Collection" DVD.

** An episode during the First Gulf War had Yakko, Wakko, and [[Crossover|Slappy]] antagonizing Saddam Hussein.

** There was also a short with Rita and Runt that takes place during the Nazi invasion of Poland, where Rita and Runt keep the Nazi's dog (who happens to be Newt from the Minerva Mink shorts), and the Nazis themselves, from finding a Polish girl and her father and taking them to a concentration camp.

* [[Histeria (Animation)|"The Freedom League".]]

* ''[[Epic Mickey]]'', while not being an homage per se, draws quite a bit of its imagery from this kind of cartoons. And by "a bit", we mean ''an entire race of [[Non-Player Character|NPCs]]''.

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=== Other Examples: ===

[[Category:Wartime Cartoon]]

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