Isaiah Davis

Bury the Axis is a short animated film made in the UK and the US during WW2 and heavily depicts the Axis powers. This film starts by depicting the birth of Adolf Hitler from a Stork, he then immediately is shown wearing Nazi symbols and singing. He enters Russia, then immediately leaves, battered and injured. This could play on the stereotype that Russian people are violent and Unfriendly. The film then displays Hitler’s “duche” as an “animal” like a person coming out of a dog house, with him barking and proudly exclaiming his support for him, before getting back inside his dog House. While it was common for people to be “Othered” in American media by comparing them to animals, this depiction of Germany is less exaggerated than what we would see in another American cartoon like for example, American Menstrual shows. The film portrays Japanese people in an arguably more racist and stereotypical way. Representing them as snakes while the European characters have actual titles and introduce themselves as such, the Japanese man refers to himself as “the son of son am I” and speaks in a stereotypical Japanese-English accent, while singing about bombing people. The film presents the Axis powers as unintelligent groups of people with shallow motivations.

“Steamboat Willie” is known for its use of fully synchronized sound. The film uses sound to aid in its storytelling and setup of the scene. At the very beginning of the film, the audience can hear a loud scratching sound that is paired with smoke coming out of the steamboat’s exhaust. This is followed by a scene of Mickey Mouse whistling, Mickey Mouse is then confronted by a bigger mouse over who gets to steer the boat, while there are no words spoken in this confrontation. The film differentiates the characters by giving the big mouse a raspy, deeper voice, where he speaks gibberish and directs Mickey to the back. The use of sound here functions to add more context to the scene, as without it, it would be harder to decipher what’s actually going on in these interactions.