The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 90

The Saber
collapse. In this short, Mickey is the
hero and pulls Minnie out of a burning
building, but the rope holding them
burns and snaps. In a bit of exaggeration
and fantasy, a pair of trousers is
turned into a parachute that helps them
land safely. 43
The Fire Fighters and other Mickey
shorts also explore the American
government’s “incapacity to handle the
dynamics of urban life.” 44 Even before
the Depression, many lost faith in the
achievability of the American dream
amid rapid urban industrialization
and the farm crisis following the end
of World War I. This loss of faith is explored
through Mickey Mouse in 1929’s
The Plowboy. The Fire Fighters reflects
the chaos of crisis and the hope for rescue.
Debilitating poverty during the
Depression is explored through Mickey’s
Good Deed in 1932, but the “hope
emerging with the 1932 presidential
campaign and election of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt” is shown in Building a
Building in 1933. 45
Disney and his animators knew
the value of “shock and titillation”
among fantasy stories. 46 The fantasy nature
of Mickey Mouse shorts and Silly
Symphonies helped free the audiences’
minds from “normal expectations of
what the world is like” 47 while also opening
up their imaginations to the ways in
which “all would be alright eventually”
through propaganda of Roosevelt’s New
Deal and the reinforcement of traditional
American working-class values.
Over at Warner Brothers in the
late 1920s into the 1930s, creators were
making live-action shorts and cartoons
4