Continuing on ruining childhood movies and shows, this installment is going to be centered around the Mickey Mouse franchise. This includes all of his friends in the universe of which they live in.
If you are unfamiliar with Mickey Mouse or the characters I will discuss, here is a quick overview: Mickey Mouse is a mouse who is friends with Donald Duck, Daisey, Goofy, Minnie Mouse, Pluto and other animals and in the universe. They all went on quests and adventures similar to many other children’s TV/movies in the 2000’s. I will mostly be referring to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show throughout this installment.
All of these characters are made up animals that in the first place shouldn’t be speaking. Somehow, they all have personalities and their own ways of lives. This does tie into the children’s show aspect of it, but why can’t there be real children that the kids can connect with in it?
Pictured above are Mickey, Goofy, and Pluto. They are all the best of buds, but there are many questions revolving around their friendship dynamic. Goofy and Pluto are both in the canine family, meaning that they are similar in species. Why does Goofy wear clothes and speak articulately while Pluto wears a collar and is portrayed more as a pet to the friend group? There are many different reddit theories out there including one stating that Pluto was actually once like Goofy. He had a brain tumor and underwent surgery. The surgery left him in the state that the viewers now know him as. This is just a theory and is not canonically true, but I would like to know Disney’s answer to it.
Another question that sits with me is the clothing situation with the characters. Back to the original picture, we see that some of the characters are wearing only tops, only bottoms, or a full set of clothing. The only characters that are wearing a full set of clothing are Goofy which makes me wonder if it goes back to the Pluto-Goofy situation and Minnie Mouse. Mickey is the only one not wearing a top while Donald and Daisy Duck wear tops and no bottoms although their bottom feathers are supposed to suggest bottoms. The clothing situation confused me as a child considering that this was a children’s show, and that half of the characters appeared to be half naked.
One of my questions that actually have an answer is the gloves. The characters that have paws wear gloves instead of having bare paws. When Disney was questioned about this, they answered that they wanted to humanize the characters. Which brings me to my next series of questions. Why are we humanizing animals? Why are we wanting the children to feel as though these animals are just like them? What lessons will they learn from humanized animals going on quests throughout their made-up universe to solve nonhuman problems?
thank you for asking the important questions.
i have a vague memory of this disney short where donald duck and mickey werent allowed into a restaurant bc the restaurant had a sign that said “no shirt, no shoes, no service”. i can’t remember exactly what happened but i think mickey ended up stealing donald duck’s shirt to get into the restaurant ?? maybe i made this up in my head, i dunno
Last thing I heard about gloves was just that it was easier to animate back in the day and it just kinda stuck. Pluto situation has always been weird and I doubt we’ll get an answer </3