Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney and today, continue Another Mouseka-View, my second chance look at the 2013 reboot of Mickey Mouse. And with today's review, I'm only focusing on one short as I have a lot to say about it and it would be too much of mood whip to go from this short that brought about many serious thoughts to a silly short.
The Plot
Okay, this is the first short that gives Minnie the starring role and that's kinda the problem. Minnie over douses herself with perfume and causes the entire town to become enchanted with her and the only way for Minnie to ward off all these unwanted advances is by rolling around in garbage.
Okay, I kinda wanted to avoid bringing this up but considering the spotlight that has been placed on men have been accused of sexually harassing women for ages in the Hollywood system, this short becomes rather uncomfortable. Sure, you could argue that I'm overthinking it and it's just a kid's cartoon and Minnie is warned by her reflection in the cartoon to not overdo it on the perfume. Yeah, that is true but at the same time, I can't help but argue the point that Minnie didn't want any of this attention that the perfume brought on from people grabbing her like she's a rolling pin. If you take off the last part of that sentence, you aren't too far off from what a lot of women have said about their harassers. I am sorry but I cannot keep my feminist views out of this particular review. I understand that it was most likely not the case, when the creators went to write this show and I doubt that anyone had this on their mind in 2014 but after everything that has happened in the last year, it's hard to watch this short and not think of what so many women have been put through.
My Final Thoughts
I wanted to avoid the real life comparison but it's near impossible to do with this short. Now, I know some people are going to argue that it's just a short and there is nothing more to it than that. Here's the thing, I have defended older shorts than this, that probably had worse things in them but those shorts had more of historical context. Again, I will highlight that it was most likely not the intention of the people that wrote this but from where I am sitting, I would be doing myself a huge disservice, if I did not point the problematic nature of this very short. Again, everything that happens to Minnie is played for laughs in this episode and I think that is part of my problem with this short.
In many ways, I have the exact opposite problem with this short as I do with Too Smart for Strangers. That Winnie The Pooh special that I reviewed so many years ago had an earnest charm to it and at best, it was just misguided in the kind of advice that it wanted to give. Whereas, when I watch this short, I just see issues that women are put through being belittled and used to make them the butt of a joke. And with my morals and beliefs, I cannot abide by what I saw in this short. And that in many ways makes this one of the worst shorts I've seen from Disney. I'm not going to say the people behind should have known better but I will say that it would be better off if this short didn't exist. Peace!
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