Mickey's Christmas Carol
In the first nine months of 1983, Disney made $68.7 million in profits. I can’t find a 12-month total from 1983—and I’m tired of sifting through Google results and being asked to subscribe to websites for $59/month that have no doubt installed cookies in my browser that will feed me some hilariously misguided online ads for the next few months—so I’ll just have to guess, but let’s be super generous and assume that Disney made a cool $100 million in 1983.
For the year ending September 30, 2019, Disney had a net income of over $11 billion—which was, of course, down more than twelve percent from the previous year. Thus, even after adjusting for inflation, Disney was making in 1983 about two percent of what it now makes. Two percent! This thing that Disney has become, this dominating, vertically-integrated behemoth of a corporation to which we’ve ceded near monopolistic control of the cultural conversation—this thing is a whole other monster from what Disney was just a short lifetime ago. I’ve made my unease about such things known elsewhere, and will no doubt take up the case again and again—probably even in this Christmas Carol series, since Mickey’s is just the first of three (so far) stabs Disney has taken at the immortal classic. For now, though, I’m just pointing at the staggering disparity in profits to justify a perhaps slightly incredible claim: it used to be the case that Disney could tell a story about an evil rich dude learning the error of his ways and doing right by the common people, and it wouldn’t be met with guffaws and eye-rolling.
You can watch Mickey’s Christmas Carol on Disney Plus, or, curiously, on YouTube, if you can endure a version that is slightly sped up and looks like someone is shining a bright flashlight at the center of the projection.
In 1983, Disney really was kinda struggling. Mickey’s Christmas Carol wasn’t some big feature-length standalone production—in the United States, it was packaged to theaters around the Christmas season with a re-release of 1977’s The Rescuers, and in the United Kingdom, a re-release of 1967’s The Jungle Book. At just 23-post-credits-minutes, it’s not trying to do a complete adaptation of the Dickens novella, and it would be silly to hold it to that sort of standard.
What it is trying to do is take the most essential aspect of the story and convey it as efficiently as possible. Scrooge’s cruelty—portrayed, naturally enough, by Scrooge McDuck himself—is comically over-the-top, even by the standards of a character who, in the book, told his nephew he’d sooner see him dead than at the dinner table. Not only does Scrooge reject Fred’s invitation to Christmas dinner, not only does he send the charity-seekers off with contempt, not only does he berate and demean his employee—he does all this while also cackling maniacally to himself about how much he enjoys being a dick. Some illustrative dialogue, perhaps?
“[Jacob Marley] was a good ‘un. He robbed from the widows and swindled the poor. [Laughs.] In his will, he left me enough money to pay for his tombstone. Ha! [Turns to camera.] And I had him buried at sea!”
[…]
“Let’s see now, fifty pounds, ten shillings from McDuff. Plus his 80-percent interest, compounded daily—ha, ha, ha! Money, money money!”
But even that miserly and gleefully predatory behavior is just prologue to the most vicious, cold-hearted thing any cartoon duck has ever done, to my knowledge—and my knowledge of the malevolent depths to which cartoon duck behavior can plummet is renowned in blogging circles. When the Ghost of Christmas Past delivers Scrooge to his Counting House a few years earlier, we see that his fiancee is paying him a visit.
Isabelle: Ebenezer?
Scrooge: Yes, what is it?
Isabelle: For years I’ve had this honeymoon cottage, Ebenezer. I’ve been waiting for you to keep your promise to marry me. Now, I must know—have you made your decision?
Scrooge: I have. Your last payment on the cottage was an hour late—I’m foreclosing the mortgage!
He doesn’t even bother to walk around his giant pile of gold to issue the foreclosure notice.
Holy shit!
Scrooge is a terrible asshole, purely self-concerned, and most importantly for the purposes of Disney’s telling, he’s the absolute worst boss imaginable. He makes Bob Cratchit—Mickey Mouse, in fine form—do his laundry, doesn’t let him burn any coal even to unfreeze the ink necessary to do his work, and docks him half-a-day’s pay for the half-a-day he’s going to give him off for Christmas morning. The bad-boss angle is the one the movie plays up as much as possible—the first Past that Scrooge visits is the Christmas party thrown by his old boss. “Spirit, I believe I know this place!” he says, his voice rich with the first palpable joy he’s expressed that didn’t come as a direct result of someone else’s suffering. “Yes! It’s old Fezziwig’s! I couldn’t have worked for a kinder man.”
When the Ghost of Christmas Present shows up, it’s just to bring Scrooge to the Cratchit’s, where we witness a pot of Scrooge’s laundry dominating the fire while the family dines on a Christmas dinner not fit for a—ahem—not fit for a mouse, nevermind a family of them. Tiny Tim insists, despite the meager offering, that the family must be sure to thank Mr. Scrooge. Poor Mrs. Cratchit can only swallow her heartbroken, sarcastic reply, probably because the producers didn’t want to pay Minnie the full salary that would have come with a speaking part. Just the unsalaried extra’s per diem for you, Minnie!
Only the finest Christmas sparrow.
A quick jump to Christmas Yet to Come shows the Cratchit family mourning the death of Tiny Tim before the Ghost—ol’ Pete, of course—knocks Scrooge into his own lonely grave, mocking him as “the richest man in the cemetery” as he does so. Beneath his casket, the fires of hell begin to lap at his little webbed duck feet. It’s pretty dark!
Upon finding himself alive on Christmas morning, Scrooge’s primary concern is going to the Cratchits with gifts and a giant goose. While he does toss some money at the charity guys, and he does assure Fred that he’ll see him for dinner, his priority is to get to the Cratchits, where he tells Bob that he’s giving him a raise and making him a partner.
Despite having just over twenty minutes to do it, Mickey’s Christmas Carol succeeds by going directly to the heart of the story Dickens was trying to tell. Scrooge learns to treat his lower-status employee as a “fellow-passenger to the grave” by being reminded of his former boss’s kindness, by being shown just how cruelly he himself has behaved, and by witnessing the inevitable, terrible wages of his own inhumanity. Is it too pat and easy? Of course! It’s a short cartoon! But when I asked my five-year-old what she liked about it, she said, “First, Scrooge was mean about money. He starts as bad but then he turns to nice and gives them presents, so it’s good.” Disney gets the job done!
I mentioned above that it might be harder today for Disney to tell a story about an overbearing, plainly evil boss coming ‘round to the spirit of Christmas and granting his employee a meaningful ownership stake in the business without catching some justifiable side-eye. And while Disney wasn’t exactly a scrappy underdog artists’ collective 40 years ago, it is easier to imagine that Disney expressing an ethos of benevolent corporate stewardship. As anyone who has ever worked anywhere for any amount of time can testify, a good boss really can be the difference between abject misery and happiness at work, regardless of the job itself. Taken as broader metaphor, it’s nice to see the first Disney adaptation of A Christmas Carol pushing the idea that industry should exist in harmony with the lives of the people who power it, rather than grind them down as exploitable, expendable, and eminently replaceable cogs.
But let’s not just skate on by the weirder parts of this short film, either. Exhibit A:
There you see Scrooge exiting a shop with a sackful of goodies. He proceeds to the Cratchit’s house, wherein the sack is opened and out come the goodies. Exhibit B:
We’ll just ignore, for now, the horrifying food safety implications of carrying a giant goose around town in a burlap sack of toys. Tune in to the Brain Iron podcast network next month for a seven-part series on food-borne illness in the Victorian era, brought to you by Casper Mattresses and Me Undies.
At this time, I’d like to direct your attention back to Exhibit A, with a focus on the sort of shop from which Scrooge is emerging.
So Scrooge went to a Toys and Pets shop and left with a sack. A sack that would soon be revealed to contain both Toys and One Fully Cooked Goose, a goose which came from a Toys and Pets Shop. I don’t feel comfortable being any clearer than that—and that’s even setting aside the issue of McDuck-on-goose feasting that’s about to occur.
Also—and not to put too fine a woke point* on it—but Scrooge sure has a curious way—a curious right-to-left way—of writing in his ledger, for a gentile. Things that make you go (((HMMMMM))).
*Wherein pointing out potential instances of clear antisemitism is now considered too woke. See also the footnote at the end of this page.
How It Ranks, Because That’s What’s Important
I didn’t grow up watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol. I think I only first saw it within the last couple of years, upon showing it to my kids, so this review is not tainted by irrational feelings I had as a young child, just by irrational feelings I have now. That said, this adaptation gets 4 Bah!(s) Humbug!
The cast in Mickey’s Christmas Carol consists entirely of Disney intellectual property, and it marked the first time in thirty years that Mickey himself appeared in new material on the big screen. Watching it, and hearing Mickey called “Bob,” Donald Duck called “Fred,” and Goofy called “Jacob,” it was easy to imagine the classic Disney characters as employees of the Disney studio, just showing up for work and putting on A Christmas Carol. As silly as that is, it works, too, creating a magical sort of meta-story in my own head about the “making” of the film. It’s easy to imagine Minnie bitching over at the craft services table about not having any lines while Mickey tells her to relax, the Weasels going full method for their cameo as the Gravediggers, and Scrooge just showing up half-drunk and cranky, ready to do his Scrooge thing again, but turned all the way up to eleven. Also, at under 25 minutes, it never feels like it’s overstaying its welcome, like the very best sort of holiday guest.
That gives us a current ranking of the Carols that looks like this:
Mickey’s Christmas Carol
Various Carols Character Representations — Power Rankings
Ebenezer Scrooge
Mickey’s Scrooge’s sheer viciousness here launches him into the top spot.
Scrooge (1935)
Bob Cratchit
Mickey’s Mickey brings the humor, warmth, and optimism to the Cratchit patriarch that the character needs to avoid seeming like a pathetic doormat.
Scrooge (1935)
Nephew Fred
Scrooge (1935)
Donald Duck in Mickey’s doesn’t get much to work with, and delivers a mostly unintelligible performance, much in keeping with his long career.
The Ghosts
Marley
Goofy, as Jacob Marley, brings his Cosmo Kramer-energy to the role, and even slips in a classic Goofy pratfall yell on his way out of scene.
Scrooge (1935)
Classic Kramer. Doesn’t even knock.
Past
Jiminy Cricket, Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Jiminy plays the Spirit Past with all the scolding, reproachful cheeriness you’d expect. A total pro who knows his lane.
Scrooge (1935)
That’s a mighty high horse for such a little fella.
Present
Willie the Giant, Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Willie—making his first appearance since debuting as the Giant in Mickey and the Beanstalk in 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free—steals the show as the Ghost of Christmas Present, generating more laughs/second of screen time among polled five-year-olds. His clearly ad-libbed decision to grab a lamp-post and use it as a flashlight is inspired.
Scrooge (1935)
Future
Pete, Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Pete gives an unsurprisingly mirthfully wicked cigar-chomping turn as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, not a Grim Reaper so much as a Really Quite Enjoying This Reaper.
Scrooge (1935)
Tiny Tim
Scrooge (1935)
Morty—or possibly his twin Ferdie—Fieldmouse, Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Morty/Ferdie doesn’t distinguish himself, and the crutchwork is clearly phoned in. Sad.
~ ~ ~
A brief aside on the, ahh, Jewish Question—
I suspect, before this series is over, I’ll have to reckon with some clear examples of Scrooge-as-Jewish-stereotype. And I’ll admit to being skeptical of the notion, as the Googling I’ve done has revealed the, ahh, scholarship in this area to be less than convincing. But it’s worth keeping an eye out for it. I don’t have any idea if the example above is anything of the sort, and I’m even more convinced that just by pointing it out I’m likely doing more potential “harm” than could ever be achieved by the subtle implication, even if intentional by the artist. Also, while I get the inherent harm of trafficking in stereotypes because they are reductive and dehumanizing, I don’t see how interpreting Scrooge as a Jew is in keeping with an antisemitic worldview. The sort of people likely to have such a worldview are unlikely to imagine The Jew as redeemable at all, to say nothing of Scrooge becoming the hero of the story. Nazis and their ilk are eliminationists, not conversionists. To the extent that the Scrooge character might evince negative Jewish stereotypes held by anti-semites, is the absurdity of that bigotry not in fact revealed by Scrooge’s humanitarian transformation? A transformation that is entirely secular and humanist, by the way—to say nothing of the ways his whole journey prefigures Freud’s—one of history’s most revered Jews, after Adam Sandler and Jesus—psychoanalytical method in some pretty obvious ways. If Scrooge is a Jew, and it turns out that none of his worst characteristics are essential to who he is, where’s the antisemitism? If anything, it can be read in just the opposite way. If the sin is simply accidentally reinforcing negative stereotypes that people bring with them to the art, I don’t think that’s on the artist—that’s on the public. It’s like accusing someone of racism for using the phrase “slippery slope”—wait, who’s the racist, now?
Join us next time when we jump back into the black and white era for the 1930s’ second take on Dickens, 1938’s A Christmas Carol, which is available to rent on most streaming platforms, including iTunes and Google, but also probably on demand and free if your cable/tv provider has TCM in its library.
