History of animation. Semiotic Analysis of Early Disney Animated Shorts: Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie

Semiotic Analysis of Early Disney Animated Shorts: Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie
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In this essay, I will be focusing on the semiotic analysis of early animations with synchronized sound, by comparing two 1928 classic animated short films of Walt Disney. These animations initiated the explosive ascent of Mickey Mouse:” Plane Crazy” and “Steamboat Willie”. Steamboat Willie (1928) was the widely accepted as the film that debut Mickey Mouse; however, Disney already made some animated shorts that showed Mickey Mouse, like Plane Crazy, prior to the release of Steamboat Willie where Steamboat Willie was actually the third Mickey Mouse animation (Rollin and West, 1999). Steamboat Willie was in fact the first sound-synchronized animated film that was accepted and loved by the general audience by using innovative technologies of that decade where the short film had a soundtrack of dialogue, fully synchronized sound and an iconic theme music that reflects the on screen action of the characters while setting the mood of the film (Sinha, 2017). Although, Plane Crazy also had synchronized sound effects, it failed to appeal the approval of its audience (Rollin and West, 1999). According to McCloud (1994) a comic is a "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer." Through semiotic analysis of the films, the signs that inputs aesthetic response that can be readily found and recognized will be examined.
In Plane Crazy (1928), Mickey Mouse was building an airplane with his barnyard friends while reading a "How to Fly" manual that had a page about Charles Lindbergh's face. Charles Lindbergh is the first pilot to make a non-stop transatlantic flight (Charles Lindbergh Biography, 2019). Mickey then tries to shake his hair so that it looks liked Charles. Mickeys dog showed elastic properties that turned it to a set of stairs and became the engine of Mickey's Plane by twisting itself like a rubber band powered plane making the propeller spin; however, as expected, the plane crashed but Mickey made a new plane using his car, by morphing and stretching its dimensions, and making the tail of the plane using the tail of a turkey, by grabbing the tail and putting it at the back of his plane. This short film shows something uncanny. According to Freud as cited by Rollin and West (1999), the sense of “uncanny” or uncertainty is seen by exploring unusual coincidences, the discovery of a double and the fear that we are feeling when alone in the dark. This uncanny feeling is the sense of something familiar yet unknown blurs the line that divides reality and fantasy. The films want to take full control of reality. Freud did not see the usage of the uncanny using animated films but this peculiar art form resonates to the senses in which imaginary becomes fully engaged in our perception. Added by Freud, as cited by Rollin and West (1999), the creation of uncertainty or the “uncanny” can be from anything to form a particular figure of a human being or anything else is called an automaton. ...