If we’re being precise, we must admit that this series lasted several years. 1943-1946, specifically. However, when I saw the titles in the source I use to determine my Year of the Month entries, I was intrigued. We’ve covered several Disney educational films in the past, everything from automotive safety to birth control. These, made for Our Friends South Of The Border as part of the work Disney was doing for the government during World War II, are far from the weirdest ones we’ve got. At least Donald isn’t telling the kid not to poo in a cornfield, you know?

But, yes, that’s one of the messages of these shorts. “Cleanliness Brings Health” compares a healthy family and an unhealthy one, and the main difference is cleanliness. The clean family, among other things, has a latrine, while the dirty one just goes into the cornfield. So yeah. “The Unseen Enemy” includes a fair amount of the same thing as well. “Insects as Carriers of Disease” includes some of that and also, you know, lice and flies and mosquitoes are bad for you, kids! “Tuberculosis” is the one most entirely swept from the internet by Disney. I’ve found clips, but it’s the one of the four where the whole short is nowhere accessible.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these shorts. I participate in conversations with people that make me suspect there are still those who don’t believe in the germ theory of disease. There’s an off-hand reference to vaccination in a couple of these that would get argued with a fair amount today. Some of what’s going on here is a little more basic than things like “The Story of Menstruation,” even; “avoid human feces” is something our species has known for a very, very long time now. Though how well we’ve followed it has been uneven, as any student of history can tell you.

On the other hand, these are also paternalistic as hell. Because after all, it’s Uncle Sam telling “Careless Charlie” to swat mosquitoes. (Actually, in an area without endemic typhus, lice aren’t as much of a problem as they used to be, but given current malaria rates in the US South, maybe let’s not encourage that.) It’s about Those People not knowing enough to keep flies from walking on their food. One assumes the tuberculosis short has more detailed information, and a more conspiracist person than I would wonder what Disney was hiding, that it’s the one swept from YouTube.

What’s keeping me less than annoyed about all this is that I’ve also seen some of the shorts designed for Americans from this era, and they don’t assume Americans are any less ignorant. This isn’t even just wondering who needs to be told the value of springs. Some educational shorts from the ‘50s make you wonder if the people watching them need to be reminded how to breathe.

Help me afford to have my septic tank pumped, because we don’t even have a cornfield; consider supporting my Patreon or Ko-fi!