thedrifter
11-21-06, 07:58 AM
November 21, 2006
Historians Resurrect ‘Cartoon Medicine’ for a New Generation
By AMANDA SCHAFFER
”http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/11/21/science/snafu.600.2.jpg
In a film produced by the Army during World War II, a cartoon mosquito named Malaria Mike prepares to dive bomb a soldier named Private Snafu. When Snafu bathes at sundown and climbs out of the water, Malaria Mike clutches a bottle labeled “Old Malaria 999 proof” and draws the poison out with a device attached to his nose.
He rushes headlong at the soldier. But when Snafu leans down for his clothes, oblivious to danger, the mosquito sails past him in classic cartoon fashion and collides with a tree. The tree gasps and clutches itself, shakes and sweats with fever (the typical symptoms of malaria) and shrivels to the ground.
Later, when Snafu wakes up and leans out of his mosquito netting to kiss a picture of a sexy woman, Malaria Mike rushes in again, catching the soldier’s exposed buttocks high in the air. A bull’s-eye fills the screen.
“Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike” was among the animated films presented on Oct. 25 and 26 at the Cartoon Medicine Show at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
The show featured animated public health films from the 1920s to the ’60s — some well known, others rarely screened in the last 40 or 50 years — from the collection of the National Library of Medicine. The films cover such topics as personal hygiene, malaria prevention, cancer detection, tuberculosis screening and the safe use of X-rays.
The National Library of Medicine is also creating a series of DVDs of historical medical films, the first of which is likely to be released next fall.
“From early on, animated films were viewed as a uniquely convincing way to persuade and educate people,” said Michael Sappol, a historian at the library. Animation could get a message across while also entertaining an audience.
A film like “Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike,” he said, “takes a lot of pleasure in destruction, speed and sex, things we typically associate with 1940s Warner Brothers cartoons.”
In the film, Malaria Mike unveils a diagram of an American soldier’s body with parts of the back and buttocks labeled prime rib, filet mignon and tenderloin. Soon after, he lands on Snafu’s rear end and says, “Why, it’s Snafu — I never forget a face,” prodding the soldier’s uncovered flesh with his finger.
The film was produced in 1942 by the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit, which included top-flight artists and animators. Frank Capra, who went on to direct “It’s a Wonderful Life,” headed the group. Ted Geisel, also known as Doctor Seuss, led the animation division. Mel Blanc, who did the voices for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, did the voices of Malaria Mike and Private Snafu, as well.
The film was part of a series that used the character of Snafu to address topics like sexually transmitted diseases, mental health, censorship and black marketeering.
The series was probably shown to over a million troops, Dr. Sappol said. And it was only a small fraction of the government’s investment in filmmaking during World War II.
Donald Crafton, an animation historian at the University of Notre Dame, said that during the war, “the animation studios made the case to the government that they were an essential industry and that these propaganda and training films were crucial to the war effort.”
Many of the public health films made during that time drew a strong parallel between the physical body and the body politic, he said. The health of the individual was linked to the success of the war effort and to the advancement of democratic ideals.
But the films also frequently trafficked in racial and sexual stereotypes, reflecting social attitudes that were widespread at the time, he said. Japanese people, for instance, were often shown as caricatures with thick glasses and bad teeth or even portrayed as germ-carrying flies.
In a 1942 film titled “Use Your Head,” a marine in the South Pacific named Private McGillicuddy defecates in the woods instead of in a prescribed latrine. A fly with thick glasses and buck teeth spots the infraction and rings a triangle dinner bell, shouting “Come and get it” in a caricatured Japanese accent.
Soon flies swarm the area and then invade the marines’ food, cackling. Most of the unit ends up with dysentery. Over the radio, the marines hear a Japanese announcer declare that an “honorable Yankee” has aided the Japanese war effort, causing his buddies to get dysentery, which “make weak like a pussy cat.”
The film, which was produced by Hugh Harman Productions for the Navy, was part of a series called “Commandments for Health.”
Five episodes of the series are now held by the National Library of Medicine.
In the postwar period, professional organizations like the American Cancer Society, the National Tuberculosis Association and the American Dental Association produced a larger share of public health films, which were shown in schools, hospitals, churches and other settings.
The body was still seen as fragile and vulnerable, Dr. Crafton said. But it “was represented more as a site of attack from within,” he added.
In “The Traitor Within,” a 1947 film by the American Cancer Society, the interior of the body is depicted as an orderly series of factories, with cells represented as workers in overalls and white caps.
When a single cell goes bad, turning into a cancer cell — shown as a dark, four-legged abstraction that begins to multiply and spread — other cells are killed and the work of the factory is jeopardized.
If the cancer cells are not removed by surgery or destroyed before they spread throughout the body, “there is no hope for cure,” the narrator says.
Some films featured at the Cartoon Medicine Show move inside the body to depict the accumulation of pus, the march of bacteria and the threats of dental decay, mental illness and crippling stomach pain, among others.
“Humor is not something you expect” with some of these topics, said David Cantor a historian at the national library. But, he added, “the use of animation helps to lighten the tone and can make the subject matter less grim.”
Generally, public health cartoons oscillated between two messages, Dr. Sappol said.
They tended to provoke anxiety about the body and its susceptibility to illness, he said.
But they also sought to reassure people that with proper vigilance — as well as the help of an expert doctor and new medical technology — dread disease could be averted.
“The films are trying to scare people, but also to manage their fears,” Dr. Cantor said, adding that public health messages must always grapple with this balancing act, even today.
In other words, he said, the message is “Be afraid — but not too afraid.
Ellie
Historians Resurrect ‘Cartoon Medicine’ for a New Generation
By AMANDA SCHAFFER
”http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/11/21/science/snafu.600.2.jpg
In a film produced by the Army during World War II, a cartoon mosquito named Malaria Mike prepares to dive bomb a soldier named Private Snafu. When Snafu bathes at sundown and climbs out of the water, Malaria Mike clutches a bottle labeled “Old Malaria 999 proof” and draws the poison out with a device attached to his nose.
He rushes headlong at the soldier. But when Snafu leans down for his clothes, oblivious to danger, the mosquito sails past him in classic cartoon fashion and collides with a tree. The tree gasps and clutches itself, shakes and sweats with fever (the typical symptoms of malaria) and shrivels to the ground.
Later, when Snafu wakes up and leans out of his mosquito netting to kiss a picture of a sexy woman, Malaria Mike rushes in again, catching the soldier’s exposed buttocks high in the air. A bull’s-eye fills the screen.
“Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike” was among the animated films presented on Oct. 25 and 26 at the Cartoon Medicine Show at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
The show featured animated public health films from the 1920s to the ’60s — some well known, others rarely screened in the last 40 or 50 years — from the collection of the National Library of Medicine. The films cover such topics as personal hygiene, malaria prevention, cancer detection, tuberculosis screening and the safe use of X-rays.
The National Library of Medicine is also creating a series of DVDs of historical medical films, the first of which is likely to be released next fall.
“From early on, animated films were viewed as a uniquely convincing way to persuade and educate people,” said Michael Sappol, a historian at the library. Animation could get a message across while also entertaining an audience.
A film like “Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike,” he said, “takes a lot of pleasure in destruction, speed and sex, things we typically associate with 1940s Warner Brothers cartoons.”
In the film, Malaria Mike unveils a diagram of an American soldier’s body with parts of the back and buttocks labeled prime rib, filet mignon and tenderloin. Soon after, he lands on Snafu’s rear end and says, “Why, it’s Snafu — I never forget a face,” prodding the soldier’s uncovered flesh with his finger.
The film was produced in 1942 by the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit, which included top-flight artists and animators. Frank Capra, who went on to direct “It’s a Wonderful Life,” headed the group. Ted Geisel, also known as Doctor Seuss, led the animation division. Mel Blanc, who did the voices for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, did the voices of Malaria Mike and Private Snafu, as well.
The film was part of a series that used the character of Snafu to address topics like sexually transmitted diseases, mental health, censorship and black marketeering.
The series was probably shown to over a million troops, Dr. Sappol said. And it was only a small fraction of the government’s investment in filmmaking during World War II.
Donald Crafton, an animation historian at the University of Notre Dame, said that during the war, “the animation studios made the case to the government that they were an essential industry and that these propaganda and training films were crucial to the war effort.”
Many of the public health films made during that time drew a strong parallel between the physical body and the body politic, he said. The health of the individual was linked to the success of the war effort and to the advancement of democratic ideals.
But the films also frequently trafficked in racial and sexual stereotypes, reflecting social attitudes that were widespread at the time, he said. Japanese people, for instance, were often shown as caricatures with thick glasses and bad teeth or even portrayed as germ-carrying flies.
In a 1942 film titled “Use Your Head,” a marine in the South Pacific named Private McGillicuddy defecates in the woods instead of in a prescribed latrine. A fly with thick glasses and buck teeth spots the infraction and rings a triangle dinner bell, shouting “Come and get it” in a caricatured Japanese accent.
Soon flies swarm the area and then invade the marines’ food, cackling. Most of the unit ends up with dysentery. Over the radio, the marines hear a Japanese announcer declare that an “honorable Yankee” has aided the Japanese war effort, causing his buddies to get dysentery, which “make weak like a pussy cat.”
The film, which was produced by Hugh Harman Productions for the Navy, was part of a series called “Commandments for Health.”
Five episodes of the series are now held by the National Library of Medicine.
In the postwar period, professional organizations like the American Cancer Society, the National Tuberculosis Association and the American Dental Association produced a larger share of public health films, which were shown in schools, hospitals, churches and other settings.
The body was still seen as fragile and vulnerable, Dr. Crafton said. But it “was represented more as a site of attack from within,” he added.
In “The Traitor Within,” a 1947 film by the American Cancer Society, the interior of the body is depicted as an orderly series of factories, with cells represented as workers in overalls and white caps.
When a single cell goes bad, turning into a cancer cell — shown as a dark, four-legged abstraction that begins to multiply and spread — other cells are killed and the work of the factory is jeopardized.
If the cancer cells are not removed by surgery or destroyed before they spread throughout the body, “there is no hope for cure,” the narrator says.
Some films featured at the Cartoon Medicine Show move inside the body to depict the accumulation of pus, the march of bacteria and the threats of dental decay, mental illness and crippling stomach pain, among others.
“Humor is not something you expect” with some of these topics, said David Cantor a historian at the national library. But, he added, “the use of animation helps to lighten the tone and can make the subject matter less grim.”
Generally, public health cartoons oscillated between two messages, Dr. Sappol said.
They tended to provoke anxiety about the body and its susceptibility to illness, he said.
But they also sought to reassure people that with proper vigilance — as well as the help of an expert doctor and new medical technology — dread disease could be averted.
“The films are trying to scare people, but also to manage their fears,” Dr. Cantor said, adding that public health messages must always grapple with this balancing act, even today.
In other words, he said, the message is “Be afraid — but not too afraid.
Ellie