More cartoon fun: from a lecture by Professor Hasan Bolkhari on Iran’s Channel 4:

“There is a cartoon that children like. They like it very much, and so do adults – Tom and Jerry.” […]

“Some say that this creation by Walt Disney will be remembered forever. The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon. It is still shown throughout the world. This cartoon maintains its status because of the cute antics of the cat and mouse – especially the mouse.

“Some say that the main reason for making this very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was prevalent in Europe.” […]

It should be noted that mice are very cunning…and dirty.” […]

“No ethnic group or people operates in such a clandestine manner as the Jews.” […]

“Read the history of the Jews in Europe. This ultimately led to Hitler’s hatred and resentment. As it turns out, Hitler had behind-the-scenes connections with the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion ].

“Tom and Jerry was made in order to display the exact opposite image. If you happen to watch this cartoon tomorrow, bear in mind the points I have just raised, and watch it from this perspective. The mouse is very clever and smart. Everything he does is so cute. He kicks the poor cat’s ass. Yet this cruelty does not make you despise the mouse. He looks so nice, and he is so clever… This is exactly why some say it was meant to erase this image of mice from the minds of European children, and to show that the mouse is not dirty and has these traits. Unfortunately, we have many such cases in Hollywood shows.”

Bolkhari is a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry.

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6 responses to “Mickey Mouse Politics”

  1. J.Cassian Avatar

    Let’s hope it’s a worthy follow-up to Ariel Dorfman’s classic “How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic”. The motto of the Cultural studies department: “Will fail to understand popular art for money.”

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  2. Juan Golblado Avatar
    Juan Golblado

    Well, J.Cassian, I suppose that comment must be an example of the British humour that I sometimes find inscrutable. Para leer al Pato Donald was paranoid but this guy is stomach-turning.

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  3. Judy Avatar

    Professor Bolkhari isn’t the first person to offer this analysis. If you look at the second volume of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus”, he quotes a Nazi newspaper of the 1930s:
    “Mickey Mouse is the most miserable ideal ever revealed… Healthy emotions tell every independant young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal… Away with the Jewish brutalization of the people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika cross!”
    – German newspaper article, mid-1930’s (quoted in Art Spiegelman’s Maus)
    Looks like that’s the literature that’s inspired Bolkhari…..

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  4. William McIlhagga Avatar
    William McIlhagga

    I say the guy is a fucking moron if he doesn’t know that Tom & Jerry is not a Walt Disney cartoon. If he gets this basic fucking fact wrong, how can anyone with more that 2 neurons believe anything else he says.

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  5. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Well, at least he didn’t credit it to Fred Quimby, an MGM accountant with neither any noticeable imagination nor any particular interest in cartoons who somehow wangled the biggest credit on the Tom & Jerry films, leaving actual creators/animators/presiding geniuses William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with barely readable small print (they would only achieve fame years later when they founded Hanna-Barbera on the back of cheap TV animation far inferior to that which they’d produced earlier).
    As for the claim that “the Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon”, I think he’ll find that MGM had already amassed more than enough international fame well before their animation division produced Tom & Jerry. And the mere fact that so few people seem to know that Tom & Jerry are MGM properties… well, so much for “international fame”!

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  6. SnoopyTheGoon Avatar

    “The mouse is very clever and smart. Everything he does is so cute. He kicks the poor cat’s ass.”
    So what is so insulting in this? Guilty as charged 😉

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