The Walt Disney Company sure made a lot of crazy-ass public service films. Everyone knows about anti-fascist Donald Duck (ironic, when you remember Uncle Walt’s purported Nazi sympathies and participation in anti-Semitic organizations). My personal favorite was the one on menstruation.
That is, until now!
This extremely vague cartoon on family planning deals with a far more controversial subject than der Führer or female puberty, and yet somehow skirts giving out any specific information. I guess whatever remnants of prudishness were left in 1968 still demanded you avoid explicit conversation about birth control, then euphemistically referred to as “family planning”:
Family planning means, that without affecting normal relations as man and wife, you can decide in advance the number of children you will have, and when you will have them.
Informative! The weird thing about this weird little piece of propaganda is that unlike the previous examples, it’s intended neither to boost national morale, nor to educate children—it’s literally Donald Duck telling grown-ass men to wear condoms or look into hormonal birth control. And you even have a doting, whispery little wife using her husband as a proxy to ask questions about her own health—it goes without saying that this is primarily aimed at men, and the film doesn’t have much insight into the economic incentives for having a lot of children if, for example, you operate entirely on a traditional agrarian economy.
Given Disney’s supposed Nazi sympathies, one has to wonder if the motivations behind the film are based in an authentic investment in public health education or the Malthusian racism that lead so many eugenicists to fear they would some day be “outnumbered” by other races and cultures.
And come on, if any Disney character is a racist, you know it’s gotta’ be Donald.
