I try to make a point of picking the weirdest still from any given Pluto cartoon that I can. This is not difficult, honestly; Pluto cartoons are full of weird visuals. I don’t know why it’s more true for Pluto than any other Disney character, but I didn’t animate the things. Today’s title, though, is kind of a strange one that makes me think of assorted unsavory insults that almost certainly are things people under the age of forty have never heard used. It also calls to mind even far more innocent imagery that we don’t ever get; the title would work better with something like Donald’s nephews, where you could reasonably use actual pirate tropes.

Pluto is trying to get food out of the kitchen. “Mammy Two-Shoes” (Lillian Randolph), who I promise you we’ll be getting to in a minute, ties him up to his doghouse. She takes a roast—the Disney fan wiki calls it a roast ham and is objectively correct—out of the oven, and Pluto smells it. He manages to get himself out of the rope and sneaks into the kitchen to eat the ham. There are shenanigans with an ironing board and then a box of soap flakes I’m going to go ahead and assume are Lux Toilet Soap because you can’t convince me they’re not.

So Mammy Two-Shoes. A character along these lines appeared in four Disney cartoons, from what I can tell voiced by Randolph all four times. She also appeared in a vast quantity of MGM cartoons. And both studios are left dealing with the legacy of the character, who has aged poorly. When possible, she’s edited out. I’ve also seen versions where she’s changed to a white woman and redubbed. It’s one of those things that’s really frustrating inasmuch as Randolph was a talented actress and an enormous percentage of her roles have aged like milk. She’s not in much of this short, but she’s a stereotype when we do see and hear her.

It’s weird that she exists at all, though. Like, why can’t Mickey be the one who ties Pluto up and who tries to prevent him from eating the ham? One of the other Disney shorts with a similar character features Figaro and Clio from Pinocchio, and that’s no weirder than anything else to do with the history of Figaro in Disney shorts. And the other two are Silly Symphonies, so a human is what it is even though, you know, the aforementioned aging like milk. But having her here? Why? Pluto is Mickey’s dog. That’s his purpose in life. That’s why he exists. There’s literally no reason for an ethnic stereotype to be involved in the first place.

I watch these shorts because I found a video with what I assume to be all the Pluto shorts on YouTube. So fine, I keep watching, even though I really do not care about Pluto. Someday, I’ll make my way through the whole folder and we’ll be done with them. One of the problems I have with Disney shorts in general is that my preferred comedy tends to have more wordplay, and Disney didn’t generally do that. But since Pluto doesn’t talk, when it’s mostly Pluto alone onscreen, the cartoon doesn’t do anything for me at the best of times. This is not the best of times.

We’re actually about to run out of laundry soap, so it sure would be handy if you’d support my Patreon or Ko-fi!