No School Like the Old School

When I lie awake at night, I ask myself the important questions. The questions with no answers. The questions that hound me all the time.

Questions like “Why isn’t Donald in Mathmagic Land streaming on Disney+?”

(Listen, this is a Disney-themed Substack. You will have to accept that I’m not always going to be asking actual tough questions.)

A couple weeks ago, I was tagged in a Twitter thread inspired by a question very much like that one. The basic question isn’t about any specific title, but the general confusion as to why it is that Disney+ has failed to build out its vast library of catalog titles as much as it could. Yes, they have the MCU and Star Wars and the Pixar filmography. But the Walt Disney Company has lots more animated shorts and features, documentary features and shorts, and live-action fare that it could add and hasn’t.

As this thread progressed, I didn’t add to it but I did see the general back-and-forth between two sides. One side basically mirrored my own frustration. For example, the 1959 short Donald in Mathmagic Land, nominated for an Academy Award and beloved by many animation buffs. It’s Disney-created and Disney-owned. It’s been released on VHS and DVD in the States before. But it’s never been available in HD, before or after the advent of Disney+. So the side I’m on would ask: why isn’t it available? Why not add it?

The flip side of this argument was represented by a prolific Disney blogger, who wound up making a combination of the following arguments. 1) Not enough people care about older fare, whether it’s got Donald Duck or not, so Disney isn’t adding it to the streaming service. 2) Disney is being very careful in withholding titles like these, so let’s not rush them. 3) Many of the titles fans are champing at the bit for are fairly problematic and/or straight-up offensive, and Disney would rather avoid any undue controversies. (All of these were presented while framing the argument as a way to chide the original tweeter for holding Disney+ to a different standard than Netflix or Peacock, and…uh…OK. That’s too ridiculous to delve into.)

Now, I subtweeted all of this, because putting it lightly, I think at least two of these arguments are idiotic. If not idiotic, they are self-canceling. If, for example, Disney believes not enough people care about the presence of Donald in Mathmagic Land on Disney+, why would they strategically withhold those titles? Also, why strategically withhold titles that Disney presumes — not inaccurately, I would begrudgingly agree — will not raise the needle among its subscribers?

That, of course, leaves the last option: that stuff like Donald in Mathmagic Land is problematic. I instinctively wanted to dismiss this argument as being foolish, because — if nothing else — Donald in Mathmagic Land is championed enough among animation buffs that if it indeed was problematic, wouldn’t that be fairly common knowledge?

But I kept wondering to myself over the last few weeks why I was so quick to dismiss this theory. Maybe this blogger was right. Luckily for me, there’s an easy enough way to solve the problem, with three different short-feature examples: Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom; People and Places: Disneyland USA, and Donald in Mathmagic Land. The following are all on YouTube, and you will be able to watch them…right now. See for yourself and read on.

Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom (1953)

This is a major part of animation history, first of all. Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom is the first piece of animation ever produced in CinemaScope, and it netted Disney an Oscar. If you’re around my age (I’m 36), you may well have a memory of watching this, or some version of it, via VHS. Though there were only two Adventures in Music shorts ever made (and this was the second one), its legacy is strong at least among animation buffs and it wound up on plenty of VHS compilations as well as on The Disney Channel.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the premise is simple enough: over 10 minutes, we get an extremely quick crash course on how four basic sounds (those mentioned in the title) serve as the foundation of all music, past and present. We see how four different cavemen with four different crude instruments were able to produce these sounds and make changes to them over time throughout the course of humanity. This short is quick, clever, distinctively animated (if owing a heavy debt to Disney rival UPA and its low-budget style of the 1950s), and memorable for filling a widescreen space.

For most of its 10 minutes and 19 seconds, I was wondering, “Why would this not be available on Disney+?” Like the other two shorts listed here, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom was previously available on DVD, as part of the Walt Disney Treasures series. It’s not a lost item. There are some easy and insulting slips into stereotyping, with depictions of Asian and African people playing musical instruments that make them racial and ethnic caricatures. But — and it’s not meant as a defense — there are racial and ethnic stereotyping examples in films and shorts you can stream on Disney+. That doesn’t give Disney a pass, but if Lady and the Tramp and Swiss Family Robinson are available, why not this?

And then, at roughly 9 minutes and 20 seconds in, this happened.

So.

I do not have a defense for that. I can contextualize it, and so can anyone with a passing awareness of racial representation in mainstream cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. But as soon as I saw that image — it lasts for about two and a half seconds, and is largely intended as one of many examples of how the music of today morphed from the quartet of cavemen just playing crude instruments — I was both disgusted and enlightened.

I now know why Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom isn’t available on Disney+. No explanation is needed beyond that image. But let me present you with another image.

I am sure you and I can agree that this image is racist and offensive. Here’s the key difference between this image and the one from Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom. This image? The one of the man lighting the rocket? Well, you can find it right now on Disney+. It’s from the opening minutes of Man in Space. But wait. That’s not all. Man in Space is inexplicably missing one thing on Disney+: this image.

The “outdated cultural depictions” language on the Details page remains, but where many other films, shows, and shorts on Disney+ feature this title card (deservedly so), Man in Space does not.

The question I have now is simple: why is one image acceptable enough to be in something you can stream on Disney+, but not the other? The true answer, of course, is that neither image is acceptable. But you can stream one on Disney+.

I do wish that Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom was available to stream. I get why it’s not. But I don’t particularly get the lack of consistency in what Disney+ makes available, and in how they present what is available. I fear that the lack of consistency exists because the people who make whatever decisions must be made aren’t aware of the issue.

But moving on.

People & Places: Disneyland, USA (1956)

From 1953 to 1960, Walt Disney Productions released a series of documentaries under the heading People & Places. It was an expansion of the True-Life Adventures of the 1940s and 1950s that helped spearhead the modern nature documentary, showcasing different parts of the world to an audience that might not otherwise get a glimpse. In 1956, in glorious CinemaScope, People & Places released a 41-minute documentary that gave its audience a front-row seat to Disneyland, USA.

Now, listen, the short answer is “Yes, this is a glorified ad for a theme park.” But a few caveats are worth noting. First, if you watch People & Places: Disneyland USA in the year 2020, it’s potentially the only way you’re even going to see Disneyland this year. More to the point, this is a glorified ad for a theme park that no longer exists. Even if you just watch the two-minute tracking helicopter shot looking overhead at the entire park, you’ll realize that you recognize almost none of it. This Disneyland is lost to home movies and other filmed remembrances.

I’m happier that this exists now precisely because it speaks to the common line that Disneyland was never intended to be a museum. (That line is often wielded as a cudgel by fans who approve any and all changes to the parks, just because. Sometimes, though, that line is truer than we know.) There’s nothing overly complicated about this 41-minute documentary. It’s a you-are-there depiction of what it was like to visit Disneyland in 1956. That’s it.

So is it problematic? That will depend on your definition of “problematic”, which is not a sentence that’s terribly exciting to type. It would be wrong to imply that there are no racial or ethnic stereotypes depicted in Disneyland USA. The earliest iteration of Frontierland included Native American performers, but the trip down the Rivers of America also included life-size Native American figures in the garb you might have seen when they appeared as the largely faceless villains in Westerns of the era. And the early version of what is now the Jungle Cruise features a run-in with the natives, who are dark-skinned and seemingly nefarious.

Of course, if you were to visit the Rivers of America today (in the hypothetical world where Disneyland is open), you would see…Audio-Animatronic life-size Native American figures. And if you visit the Jungle Cruise, you’ll see Trader Sam, shrunken heads, and natives trying to shoot you with spears. I don’t include those here as defenses against racial and ethnic stereotypes, as opposed to simply stating the undeniable: those stereotypes haven’t gone away. And Disney — at least as of this typing — hasn’t endeavored to remove them.

So, unlike with something such as Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom, I can’t come up with a great answer for why we can’t see People and Places: Disneyland, USA. Is it potentially problematic? Deserving of the Stories Matter title card? Deserving, frankly, of a more detailed introduction than that? Yes. Is it so problematic that you shouldn’t ever see it? No.

Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959)

On this one, I have to just kind of throw my hands up. I really have no idea why Donald in Mathmagic Land is unavailable to stream on Disney+. Like the other shorts highlighted in this post, you can find it on YouTube. (Obviously.) And like the other shorts, it was released on DVD through the Walt Disney Treasures collection.

(And it is here that I must digress on one point. While I am in no way a technical mastermind, I find it strains credulity, at least, to imply that Disney would have to wait to release HD-quality versions of these shorts. Do you have Disney+? If you do, try a fun experiment. Search for The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World. Watch it. Does it still feature the 70s-era commercials in the ad breaks? Does it still look like you’re watching a worn VHS copy? So…yeah. Seems weird to presume that we’re waiting on HD upgrades for anything.)

So, Donald in Mathmagic Land. It’s an Oscar-nominated short from 1959 that features our friend Donald Duck learning about the power and history of mathematics, and how math can be applied to games and life in general. Donald is guided through his adventure by an unseen narrator voiced by Paul Frees, from the days of Pythagoras to a pool table to learn how mathematical principles are used today vs. how they were used in the earliest days of mankind.

There are a literal handful of moments that could qualify as problematic, with the most likely offender being a very brief glimpse of a postcard of Daisy Duck giving a come-hither look. (This postcard appears in one shot that takes place inside Donald’s mind, and if you’re not really looking for it, you might miss it.) That’s about as edgy as this short gets, at least in my estimation. Considering that you can stream films like Splash, in which Tom Hanks has sex with a mermaid a lot, and Three Men and a Baby, in which two men believe a pair of drug dealers are picking up the baby, instead of the kilo of heroin the third man has been watching, on Disney+…why isn’t this available? (As always, I must clarify: the thing I said about Three Men and a Baby? Just there? NOT A JOKE.)

I have no idea what 2021 will bring for Disney+ outside of the glut of Marvel and Lucasfilm shows that we’ve been advertised lately. What I want from Disney+ in the future — and I think I’m not alone on this — is a TCM-style treatment of its older titles. Continue adding older content. Add filmed introductions, newly recorded commentaries, special features from earlier DVD and Blu-ray releases, as well as new ones. Disney likes its legacy. Maintain it. Create a legacy section of Disney+ for viewers to discover. Even one of these would be nice to see in 2021.

Fingers, as ever, tightly crossed.