If there was any doubt as to Walt Disney's role as the benevolent dictator of American Popular Culture, "The Flying Mouse" dispels it.
In it, our protagonist, a mouse dressed in a hat and waistcoat, fantasizes about being a bird and learning to fly. Apparently this occurs in the far future, where mice have mastered the arts of construction and tailory, but have not yet developed the glider.
The mouse rescues the Blue Fairy (who had apparently abandonned Pinnochio and Gepetto) from a futuristic, hideously deformed spider with a badly soiled derby hat.
As a reward, the fairy grants the mouse the gift of wings. However, these aren't nice, pretty bird wings, they are nasty evil looking bat wings. The local birds look down their nose at him, and his brethren mice think he is evil. Instead of using his wings to fly away from the podunk town he lives in to someplace that is perhaps more urbane about these things, the mouse falls in with some bats, who are, of course, evil, and soon the flying mouse regrets his decision to wish for wings.
I won't reveal the ending here, but the message of the film that seems to shine through is: Mistrust new things. Don't aspire to dreams which are above your station. Change is bad. And buy your #$%*$ "Mulan" videos! Messages which shine through in Disney films to this very day, no matter how hard they try to sugar-coat them.
In it, our protagonist, a mouse dressed in a hat and waistcoat, fantasizes about being a bird and learning to fly. Apparently this occurs in the far future, where mice have mastered the arts of construction and tailory, but have not yet developed the glider.
The mouse rescues the Blue Fairy (who had apparently abandonned Pinnochio and Gepetto) from a futuristic, hideously deformed spider with a badly soiled derby hat.
As a reward, the fairy grants the mouse the gift of wings. However, these aren't nice, pretty bird wings, they are nasty evil looking bat wings. The local birds look down their nose at him, and his brethren mice think he is evil. Instead of using his wings to fly away from the podunk town he lives in to someplace that is perhaps more urbane about these things, the mouse falls in with some bats, who are, of course, evil, and soon the flying mouse regrets his decision to wish for wings.
I won't reveal the ending here, but the message of the film that seems to shine through is: Mistrust new things. Don't aspire to dreams which are above your station. Change is bad. And buy your #$%*$ "Mulan" videos! Messages which shine through in Disney films to this very day, no matter how hard they try to sugar-coat them.