Permit me a moment of mid-life anxiety, but: do children today know about old cartoons?
Way back in the days of my youth – that is to say, the 90s – the theatrical shorts of the 30s, 40s, and 50s found a second life as cheap programming on cable television, and I spent a lot of time under their spell. Warner Bros.’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies especially seemed to pop up everywhere, not just on Nickelodeon and (eventually) Cartoon Network, but even on some of the local channels in St. Louis, where I grew up. They didn’t just pass the time – they shaped much of my burgeoning personality and sense of humor, for better or worse. I still quote Daffy Duck at least twice a week.
I had less experience, however, with Silly Symphonies, the series of Disney cartoons that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were reacting against. (Note the similarity of the names. Everybody had their own version at one point, with MGM releasing some “Happy Harmonies” and Universal hosting “Swing Symphony.”) The Disney Channel was too rich for my parents’ blood, and at the time, Disney maintained its infamous “Disney Vault” strategy that limited access to much of its catalogue. I believe the only time I even saw “Steamboat Willie” was in the movie theater on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom when I was 10. More obscure cartoons, like the Silly Symphonies? Forget about it.
And that’s too bad, because from the perspective of animation history, Silly Symphonies is where Disney took most of the risks that would culminate in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and from there, the company’s legendary animated feature film canon, and from there, its current position of global domination. Silly Symphonies was where the company experimented with three-strip Technicolor, rotoscoping, and sound-on-film technology.
Unlike the more famous Mickey Mouse series of cartoons, Silly Symphonies were generally one-offs themed around musical pieces – in some ways, a prototype for “music videos.” As with many of Disney’s later feature-length animated films, the Silly Symphonies are often based on fairy tales, but a few feature outright classical mythological themes or characters. Having never seen any of the following before, I wanted to take a look for myself and see whether or not they might be of interest for modern Pagans.
“Playful Pan” (1930)
This is one of the earliest Silly Symphonies – #15 in the production order – and still features black and white animation. Many of the animals are of a piece with the early designs of Mickey Mouse and other Disney creations, and Pan himself is a rather noodly character with enormous eyes and ears that both trace upwards to a point.
“Playful Pan” (1930) [Walt Disney Company]
At first glance, it’s a lighthearted short, with hardly a plot to speak of: the god Pan, here depicted as a youthful figure with stubby horns, goatish legs, and no beard, plays his pipes in a forest to delight his animal friends, the fish, the flowers, and the trees. When the hot music hits the clouds, however, their voluptuous dancing leads to a thunderstorm that strikes a tree and causes a raging forest fire, depicted as prancing flame-spirits chasing after old trees to consume them. The animals try to fight the fire, but to little avail until a raccoon summons Pan, who beckons the fire to follow him into a pond to douse it.
But “Playful Pan” is fascinating in part because of how unremarkable Pan’s presence is in the short. Keep in mind that a bare-chested figure with goat’s legs and horns could just as easily be seen as the Christian Devil as Pan; in black-and-white, there’s no bright red skin and black fur to keep the iconography distinct. And while Pan is depicted as a bit mischievous and prone to causing trouble – it is his music, after all, that excites the clouds and causes the forest fire – he never does anything out of malice, and the forest animals are right to put their trust in him.
In this, the short reminded me of one of my favorite chapters in Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon, where he describes Pan’s development over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries into a god of the English countryside, who offered “both peace and joy, a return – if only for a few hours – to the lost innocence of a sylvan wonderland.” As Hutton notes later in that chapter, the 1930s and 40s would see Pan fade out of popularity until he was later adopted as one of the most popular forms of the Horned God of the Witches. It is fascinating to see him appear in such a straightforwardly positive way in popular American entertainment in 1930, just before modern Paganism as we know it today really begins.
“King Neptune” (1932)
Now this one really is a bit of a trifle. “King Neptune,” #31 in the series, starts under the sea with the sea-god announcing himself: “I’m Neptune, king of the sea, and a jolly old king am I.” His “jolly old king” model was a familiar type in early Disney cartoons; we could place Neptune, Santa Claus, and all people, the Biblical patriarch Noah, together and call them brothers. His aquatic subjects, including fish, octopi, and seahorses, play an overture, and a group of flirty mermaids emerges from a clamshell. In a move that would see this cartoon excluded from some DVD releases, the mermaids are topless, albeit without discernible nipples; apparently, Ariel’s bivalve bikini top was still some years away.
King Neptune design sheet [Walt Disney Company]
After their cavorting, the mermaids swim to the surface to lounge on a rock, where they attract the lustful attentions of a ship full of pirates (one of whom is strikingly queer-coded.) When the pirates try to kidnap the mermaids, the ocean goes to war. The montage that follows shows all manner of strange combat, including a whale spitting out a stream of swordfish to cut down the pirates’ mainsail and octopi spinning around like helicopters so their fishy comrades may drop cannonballs below. Neptune, briefly detained by an anchor chain, eventually rises from the depths to drown the pirates and their ship in a whirlpool. The mermaids make off with the pirates’ pearls, and Neptune finishes with a cheerful reprise of his song as, presumably, the pirates’ bodies begin to surface far above. “Jolly old king” indeed!
Unlike “Playful Pan,” this version of Neptune really has little in common with either his classical inspiration or the modern reception of that figure. He’s just a fat guy who lives under the sea. But the animation, especially of the fish characters, is gorgeous, and some of the sight gags are still hilarious. From a historical perspective, “King Neptune” is also notable for being the first Disney short completely produced in three-strip Technicolor, though the prior short, “Flowers and Trees,” had been redone to take advantage of the format.
“The Goddess of Spring” (1934)
This is likely the most famous of the three cartoons covered in this article. “The Goddess of Spring” was in many ways a proof of concept for ideas that would later result in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs three years later, especially in presenting a dramatic story with more or less realistic human characters. On a technical level, it is notable for its use of rotoscoping to try to achieve fluid, realistic movement. This comes out to mixed results; the titular goddess’s arms are oddly spaghetti-like, with no sense of bones underneath. Despite those shortcomings, the cartoon is stunning: the vision of the world in spring is lush and inviting, a Romantic painter’s dream, and the underworld sequences feature dazzling choreography between the devils and their fire-lit shadows.
“The Goddess of Spring” [Walt Disney Company]
Ah, yes – the devils. What a confounding short this is from a Pagan’s eyes! This is the most clearly mythological short of the three, being a straightforward adaptation of the abduction of Persephone to the underworld by Hades. But Hades appears not as he will later on in the 90s Hercules film, but as an operatic Satan, complete with horns, goatee, and shiny red tights. He erupts from the earth on a spout of flame, surrounded by dozens of tiny imps with pointed tails and pitchforks. Yet his identity isn’t in question: once they arrive below, he presents her with a crown and announces, as the backing music changes from opera to jazz, “With this crown I make you Queen of Hades.” Whereas in the years before, we had pagan deities acting out non-mythological plots, here we have a mythological plot, but half the iconography is unmistakably Christian.
The story proceeds as it must. Persephone (never directly named, as far as I can tell, only described as the “Goddess of Eternal Spring”) is very sad to have been kidnapped and taken to Hell, and Hades, not quite getting what the problem is, offers her diamonds and other riches in gold and stone to console her. Meanwhile, the world above is covered in winter, and Persephone’s band of animal friends and flower children huddle together against the snow. Hades finally asks her what she wants: “I’m willing to do anything you say, if you’ll only smile, be a little bit gay.” She, obviously, wants to go back to the world above. He agrees if she will return and spend half the year below with him. She takes the deal and returns above, whereupon the snow melts and spring returns.
Despite all the strangeness, “The Goddess of Spring” is a short that any Pagan interested in the history of animation, or film more generally, owes it to themselves to watch. It’s a fascinating middle stage of Disney’s development from the enthusiastic, spontaneous line-work of the early black and white cartoons done by pioneers like Ub Iwerks to the smooth perfection of Snow White.
“The Goddess of Spring” may be uncanny, but then, what myth isn’t?
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