What Walt Taught Me: Saludos Amigos

Last updated on: August 4, 2015 at 9:18 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

What Walt Taught Me: Saludos Amigos 2015-08-04T09:18:45-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Walt had a bad War, not of course as bad as Cousin Paul (D-Day, Bulge, German POW), but creatively hard.

Walt was too old to fight having done his bit in the Red Cross in World War I, but his studio was signed up by the government to make propaganda. His Education for Death remains my favorite way to start kids thinking about Nazism and the evils of totalitarianism. Donald Duck in a Nazi nightmare reminded us that we could laugh in Der Fuhrer face.

Still Walt lost control of the art and lost many of his brilliant animators and it showed. He made brilliant contributions to the war effort, but his brilliance was dimmed by the state. He could have done even better if he had been allowed less obvious messages. Bambi was a deep insult to the Hitler notion of Man untrammeled by Nature, but you cannot expect government bureaucrats to get subtlety.

Imagine Pixar dragooned by Bush to make post-9/11 movies and you will get the idea. By that time, thank God, we had learned that letting Pixar be Pixar was the best way to undermine the evils of the tyrants. They could not match untrammeled Walt and they can’t produce a Toy Story to save their lives, but the government in World War II would not let Walt be Walt and the results were not as good.

Perhaps only Walt Disney could make a propaganda film still worth watching over a half a century later. He did it by making another “package” film: think Fantasia without the arts stuff with Harold Ickes as an invisible co-writer. Pieces of Saludos are some of the best short subjects Disney ever made . . .the whole is less than the parts. And here is a warning: World War II so devastated the studio that we have four more to go. They did not know it at the time, but Cinderella was coming. Disney had not lost his magic, but government has a way of sapping the magic from anyone.

What did I learn from Saludos Amigos?

If you are in the generation or lived in a region where Disney was the one who first introduced you to Hispanic culture, then you grew up thinking Hispanic culture was awesome, modern, and wholesome. Add a healthy dose of Don Juan of Austria and Lepanto (read the Chesterton poem) and you have the making of a culture crush. Perhaps that is why the generation that knew Walt is so resistant to nativist scare mongering about immigration (legal or illegal). Those who came to the United States earlier just hum “It’s a Small World” and think how interesting life is going to be when south of the border comes north of the border.

Is anyone fearful of José “Zé” Carioca coming over the border? I know the imperfections and the stereotypes involved in the films the Roosevelt administration and Rockefeller Republicans pushed, but they did more good than harm. After all, they were very popular South of the Border as well.

Goofy takes a shot at being an Argentinean cowboy and learns that his way is not the only way. I grew up thinking the “cowboy” was the ultimate hero and when I finally met a real one on a trip to Arizona for Uncle Bob’s wedding, bliss is an inadequate word to describe my feelings. Seeing that there was a another type of cowboy meant the world was more wonderful than I imagined and that America did not have a lock on heroic archetypes: this is obvious when you are 52, less obvious when you are 7.

Finally, the film showed Walt and crew laboring to stay creative artists in a difficult time. They tried new styles of animation (one sees hints of Small World to come) and mixed live actors with animation in different ways. Sadly, it would all get even harder before it got better, but there are gems to be found in the difficult films to come (Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Melody Time).

Walt faced a world at war and did his bit for the country. He also kept the fire alive for better animation in the world after the war . . . even if he could not make it decade. He reminds me that patience is a great virtue: he took what he had, did what he could, and waited for Cinderella.

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What Walt Taught Me: Bambi

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