This website provides an index, in chronological order of release, of what looks like all of the Silly Symphonies shorts ever produced. Each entry includes the characters featured, the names of the director, producer, animator, and author, the run time of the short, the release date, and, for many, links to watch the original cartoons. Many also have summaries and information about the cartoon's production, often including original film posters and other pertinent images.

This resource would be key for watching each of the Silly Symphonies, especially Three Little Pigs but also those before and after it.  Watching the films in order also helps develop a sense of the trends in style and other aspects, such as use of color, sound, animation quality, and narrative and cahracter development.  With reference to Three Little Pigs, the site includes key information such as the fact that the film won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject in 1934, was animated by Fred Moore, Norm Ferguson, Art Babbitt, Dick Lundy, and Norman King, and was released on May 27, 1933.

Steven Watts argues a positive view of Disney’s importance in American history, although acknowledges the difficulty of understanding his impact on modern American culture. Many critics believe that Disney’s commercial success and popularity mean that his films cannot have cultural significance. In addition, the strong contradictory opinions of Disney make it difficult to simply look at his impact in order to gain understanding rather than to criticize or admire his work. Watts looks at Walt Disney as an artist of sentimental modernist films and as a promoter of American ideals, qualities that are evident in Disney’s rendering of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

America’s original perception of Disney was of a serious artist, inspired by both modernist art and sentimental realism. These two often contradictory influences show in his work. He blurred the line of reality and imagination by creating worlds where animals could talk, plants were animated, and household objects felt emotion. In Snow White, the forest through which the banished girl flees has trees which try to grab and trip her, but nearby, kind animals prepare to comfort her. In addition, he incorporated dreams often in his work. Walt Disney encouraged naturalism to a degree unheard of in animation and cartoons. He insisted that his animators take evening art classes and he invented the multiplane camera, which created the illusion of depth in Snow White and his other animated feature films.

Disney also used his films to imbue hope and to promote certain virtues to his audience during the depression. His films in the 1930’s remind Americans that they will overcome the hard times through vigor and virtue. Two Disney films in the ‘30s stand out in particular for encouraging the persistence and courage of underdogs. Three Little Pigs (1933) features the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” while the dwarves in Snow White (1937) merrily sing “Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go.” Snow White, too, exhibits a hard-working demeanor both in her house and the dwarves’. Disney claims that “wisdom and courage is enough to defeat big, bad wolves of every description, and send them slinking away.” Through his films, he encouraged self-reliance, a quality that he had exhibited since his youth.

Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts entry on The Three Little Pigs

In Chapter 1, entitled “Popular Culture,” the author addresses Disney’s populist tendencies, providing examples of Disney’s desire to bring high art to the people and provide messages of reassurance. While looking later in the timeline at works like Fantasia, he mentions the Silly Symphonies as originally being meant to illustrate both classical and jazz music, including the fact that the animators and writers were encouraged to experiment with the medium, aided by the absence of constraints like recurring characters. In addition, Three Little Pigs is cited as a prime example of Disney’s inclusion of his beliefs in battling urban industrialism with the ideals of agrarian and rural values. Looking deeper, the message of this short is seen as a reference to biblical tales like David and Goliath, and is seen as a possible mobilizing force in American society that may have catalyzed demands for solutions to the Depression such as the New Deal.

This source is interesting because it provides direct evidence for what other articles and writings, and my own viewings of Three Little Pigs and other Silly Symphonies, have only suggested: that the animated series began as a field for experimentation and discovery on the part of Disney Studios. It also provides slightly different readings of the moral undertones of the film, claiming that it might have been not only individually inspiring but may have contributed to or more directly affected societal change.

This book shows how Mickey Mouse’s character affected America. Disney himself is said to have “perceived Mickey as a powerful and important symbol in American culture.” He had previously been used to help “people escape from their Depression anxieties.” This is one reason why Disney films were popular, but this source investigates why Disney cartoons were so well liked and finds that “Disney combined the myth-making medium of film with his perception of American popular taste.” The author claims “Mickey’s creation of a fantasy world is an accurate reflection of the cultural mood in 1944. After three years of war, Americans were tired of propaganda, and beyond ‘those glorious days of 1942, when audiences cheered the American flag on the screen.’” Uelmen goes on to explain that the Disney studio offered an escape to the war by providing audiences with a fantasy world. Disney “played an important role in projecting images of wartime unity.” Unity was defined as the civilian war effort and “how Mickey perceives cultural difference in America is a reflection of both the wartime consolidation of public opinion and Disney’s unique way of seeing the culture.” For example, Minnie says that in San Francisco the sun sets in the perfect place, but in Chinatown she says that she cannot read any of the signs in stores. Disney may “have been making a subtle reference to the power of Western resources to defeat the ‘Asian monster.’
    This source is very useful as it answers both parts of my thesis suggesting that Mickey Mouse’s character allowed Disney propaganda films to be successful. Uelmen discusses the background of Mickey Mouse and shows that his character was a precedent for why Disney cartoons were effective. Mickey’s character was used to help people deal with the Depression, so Americans were able to bond with his character. Therefore, they would be more inclined to trust and agree with the ideas presented in Disney cartoons later on even if the beliefs were pro-war.

This newspaper article commends Disney for not continuing in the direction of Steamboat Willie, but instead “fleshing out” individual characters., giving them “soul” and “color.” The author cites Three Little Pigs as a major turning point for Disney, especially in that it was the first Disney film to have a real plot. The relation of each pig to his house and its construction differentiates and enriches each character. The article includes a quote from Chuck Jones on the subject of Three Little Pigs which comments on character differentiation, saying that in the past, different characters looked different, but in this film, similar-looking characters were differentiated using elements other than visuals alone. The quote also clearly states Jones’ belief that Three Little Pigs was a turning point.

The article mentions music, color, and style as contributing to the success of the film, and states that these factors and the short’s popularity led Disney to another plane. His animated work was, as a direct result of this film, treated seriously, as art, and this can possibly be seen as the beginning of the “Disney empire.” The production of subsequent films, shorts and features, served to codify the Disney style, epitomized by the first Disney feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

This article provides a primary source: animator Chuck Jones states that Three Little Pigs was a turning point. Also helpful is the discussion of why the short was so important, with a focus on characterization and plot. An interesting view expressed here but not elsewhere is that not only did Three Little Pigs serve as an internal bridge from experimental to feature-length fairy tale, but it also launched Disney’s fame externally in the eyes of critics and film journals, and in this way contributed to Disney’s future dominance.

This article is a review and discussion of four newly released double-disc sets in the “Walt Disney Treasures” series.  The discs contain Silly Symphonies, and the author discusses how Disney used technology to gain a competitive edge over the Fleischers.  Disney took more care in music and sound editing and synching, using a technique which enabled animators to listen to already-recorded music and effects and animate in synch with these soundtracks, while the Fleischers’ sound seems more like improvisation.  And Disney signed an exclusive contract, giving him the only rights to use a new three-color Technicolor process that gave his films a “visual pop” unlike any others available. 

This article discusses the technical care and expertise put into Disney short films.  The article argues that the color, shading, draftsmanship, depth techniques, and expressivity of movement eventually used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were first used in Silly Symphonies like The Goddess of Spring and Three Blind Mouseketeers.  The author also discusses the differences between Walt Disney’s television persona and behind-the scenes “persistent dissatisfaction,” claiming that whichever one considers, Disney’s efforts edged the country towards “greater technological feats.”

This article, while it does not mention Three Little Pigs explicitly, helps fill in some information about how Disney managed to employ technology to his favor, and the details of some of that technology, especially color and sound.  It also shows how the Silly Symphonies served in some cases as proving grounds for new techniques that eventually emerged in full-length animated features, and echoes an often-expressed belief in Walt Disney’s quest for perfection through bigger and better technology. 

Kemnitz, Thomas M. "The Cartoon as a Historical Source." Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 4, No. 1 (1973): 81-93.

Cartoons often capture the seriously formed judgment, usually representative of the prevailing national sentiment, of a prominent idea, situation, or event, though in humorous terms. The key of these sources is how the current national opinion of that time differs (or not) from the current opinion of the viewer. The power of cartoons lies in how it conveys its message quickly and pungently. The rest of the article describes the six specific interrelated areas for investigation, which include artists and method by which cartoon reaches people, but this is less relevant to my thesis.

This is a guiding framework for this paper. It is crucial in watching the propagandistic animation to consider how the expressed views reflected public opinion and how the views tried to shape public opinion. It suggests that there are two types of cartoons: the joke cartoon and the cartoon of opinion. The propaganda falls under the second type, which are cartoons that try to advance a particular agenda of sentiment, as opposed to the joke cartoon, which tries to capture a sentiment in one moment. In particular, I tried to look at the medium, in this case film, to transmit the opinion to the target audience, the soldiers. In Spies (1943, Private Snafu series), there are the buck-teeth Japanese spies and objectification of the German female spy, which is funny as an animation, but underscores the point that no one is to be trusted. I propose that the blend of joke cartoon (such as the objectification of the Nazi woman's breasts as a transmitter) and the cartoon of opinion ( the point that everyone can be a spy) associates a serious message with humor and makes acceptance easier, leading to desensitization.

Shull, Michael S. and David E. Wilt. Doing Their Bit: Wartime American Animated Short Films 1939-1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004.

Chapter 8 of Shull and Wilt's book describes the history of Private Snafu and his role as an educational tool. GIs could relate to Snafu, yet did not want to be him. Private Snafu was goofy-looking, physically unimposing, ignorant, and disgruntled young soldier: "a diametrical opposite of the handsome soldier portrayed in Hollywood films." Private Snafu proved to be the transition between the sanitized training videos and the harsh realities of war.

Wartime US military videos often downplayed the gory traumatic injuries and death of war. The Private Snafu series, being an animation, could portray GI death and ease soldiers into reality that disobedience and noncompliance would lead to death. After all, animations lived in the borders of fantasy and reality, so death, capture, or pain were unreal, even comical to the viewer. Such has to be the outlet for the anxieties the soldiers felt. It had to allow soldiers to desensitize them from the senseless destruction around them. In many ways, the transformation of Private Snafu mirrors the transformation of every GI. In the beginning (the first few episodes), Private Snafu is the complete idiot who disregards authority, but by the end, becomes a quirky member of the unit that gets the job done.

This article focuses on the animated depictions of the First World War, and examines the changes in these depictions of the conflict with time. Before America joined, the cartoons showed the conflict as a setting for adventure and larger-than-life characters. After the US joined, cartoons attempted to present sanitized views of the war, often going without references to actual events at all, or instead acted as documentaries aimed at adult audiences. It was after the war, however, when animation provided the perfect medium for "recasting" the events of the war in imaginative ways which stretched reality. These changes from a real to fantastical and magical view of the world are what fueled the view, and eventual marketing, of cartoons as entertainment specifically for children.

Many of Warner Brothers' series launched around the time of the Silly Symphonies, possibly to compete with the series' success, were among the realistic depictions of the war. They included Felix Turns the Tide and Bosko the Doughboy. In the former, grim battle scenes and relatively graphic imagery conveyed the "damage, confusion, and carnage" of the conflict. In the latter, while Bosko has a relatively elastic body, this fantasy element cannot save him from injury, as compared to other, earlier cartoons that show war as "consequence-free.

This article could be useful in my thesis in supporting the view of the Silly Symphonies as moral, simple, and dream-like, as compared to the brashness of Warner Brothers animated shorts where the humor lay in obviousness and reality. It also provides extensive fuel for comparison of the Disney works of the time to those of Warner Brothers and other studios, and puts all of these films in the context of wartime media, examining the differing morals and tones with which these underlying messages were presented.

This journal article deals mainly with the series of films entitled Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, and aims to address the cliche that when portions of the plays are removed in order to make the films, the works are simplified or "dumbed down" to the point where the quality is almost completely sacrificed. It suggests that a better way to analyze the films is to examine them as films, and not as literature, and therefore acknowledge the omissions but still treat the work as a whole. In addition, this reading sees these cuts as necessary to enhance the cinematographic needs of the medium, and the choice of animation brings these valuable and culturally significant stories to a new generation.

The article goes on to cite Walter Benjamin and Sergei Eisenstein's early writings that see animation as significant and important, and claim that it serves as the experimentation necessary for the progress of cinema as a whole. A primary example of Disney's experimentation with anti-realism, according to the article, is the "Silly Symphonies" series of short animated films. The author sees experimentation in various aspects of the film, including "self-reflexivity, technical innovativeness, violation of natural spatial-temporal rules, and violence," and cites other writings which claim that part of the influence of the films lay in their ambiguous target audiences. The films were "not just children's stuff, and certainly not sugar-sweet. Whether they were for adults or children was indeterminate." It was the animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that ended this era of experimentation for Disney, and proved that cartoons could be respectable, even "antiseptic." While Warner Brothers continued to be edgy, Disney was now mainstream and accepted by the Production Code.

This article helps me prove the foundation of my thesis, that the Silly Symphonies began as experimental works that allowed Disney and its animators to try new technologies and new forms. It also helps me show that this experimentation led directly to the development of elements, like narrative, character differentiation, and others, whose perfection made the production of an animated feature-length film possible.

This is the original Three Little Pigs Silly Symphony; its duration is 8:23. It features the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, as well as the famous song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" According to a few sources, the heavily Jewish image and accent of the Wolf knocking on the brick house's door was removed for the DVD release, but it seems that this revised voice was applied to the YouTube video, even though the visual was not adjusted.

Having easy, unlimited access to the film which is the subject of my research is essential, not only for being able to form a thesis but for being able to interpret and synthesize the various resources I'll find on the subject. I can draw direct evidence as to the narrative structure, characterization, and use of color, music, and sound, and hear the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" whenever I please.

This article focuses on the animated depictions of the First World War, and examines the changes in these depictions of the conflict with time. Before America joined, the cartoons showed the conflict as a setting for adventure and larger-than-life characters. After the US joined, cartoons attempted to present sanitized views of the war, often going without references to actual events at all, or instead acted as documentaries aimed at adult audiences. It was after the war, however, when animation provided the perfect medium for "recasting" the events of the war in imaginative ways which stretched reality. These changes from a real to fantastical and magical view of the world are what fueled the view, and eventual marketing, of cartoons as entertainment specifically for children.

Many of Warner Brothers' series launched around the time of the Silly Symphonies, possibly to compete with the series' success, were among the realistic depictions of the war. They included Felix Turns the Tide and Bosko the Doughboy. In the former, grim battle scenes and relatively graphic imagery conveyed the "damage, confusion, and carnage" of the conflict. In the latter, while Bosko has a relatively elastic body, this fantasy element cannot save him from injury, as compared to other, earlier cartoons that show war as "consequence-free.

This article could be useful in my thesis in supporting the view of the Silly Symphonies as moral, simple, and dream-like, as compared to the brashness of Warner Brothers animated shorts where the humor lay in obviousness and reality. It also provides extensive fuel for comparison of the Disney works of the time to those of Warner Brothers and other studios, and puts all of these films in the context of wartime media, examining the differing morals and tones with which these underlying messages were presented.

Kemnitz, Thomas M. "The Cartoon as a Historical Source." Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 4, No. 1 (1973): 81-93.

Cartoons often capture the seriously formed judgment, usually representative of the prevailing national sentiment, of a prominent idea, situation, or event, though in humorous terms. The key of these sources is how the current national opinion of that time differs (or not) from the current opinion of the viewer. The power of cartoons lies in how it conveys its message quickly and pungently. The rest of the article describes the six specific interrelated areas for investigation, which include artists and method by which cartoon reaches people, but this is less relevant to my thesis.

This is a guiding framework for this paper. It is crucial in watching the propagandistic animation to consider how the expressed views reflected public opinion and how the views tried to shape public opinion. It suggests that there are two types of cartoons: the joke cartoon and the cartoon of opinion. The propaganda falls under the second type, which are cartoons that try to advance a particular agenda of sentiment, as opposed to the joke cartoon, which tries to capture a sentiment in one moment. In particular, I tried to look at the medium, in this case film, to transmit the opinion to the target audience, the soldiers. In Spies (1943, Private Snafu series), there are the buck-teeth Japanese spies and objectification of the German female spy, which is funny as an animation, but underscores the point that no one is to be trusted. I propose that the blend of joke cartoon (such as the objectification of the Nazi woman's breasts as a transmitter) and the cartoon of opinion ( the point that everyone can be a spy) associates a serious message with humor and makes acceptance easier, leading to desensitization.