Discussion Main / BadPeopleAbuseAnimals

"An ad for safe sex featured a criminal who was born because his parents didn’t use a condom. At the age of four, he cooks a live kitten in an oven. Hearing the poor animal meow as it dies is heartbreaking."

Where is this ad?

Edited by TheRedRipper Chris Hide / Show Replies

Anyone mind if the intro notes abused children do sometimes abuse animals, but unlike in fiction is seen as seen as a indication that the child needs emotional support.

No specific names or cases would be mentioned.

• One episode of Astro Boy has Astro's younger sister acting rough towards their dog. Uran treats Jump harshly during training, calls him "stupid" repeatedly, and hits him for getting mud-tracks in the house. When Jump gets seriously injured due to a Villain of the Week, she falls for their new Robot Dog and says that he's better than Jump. Uran still starts crying when it looks like Jump will die.
• Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie mistreats some of the animals aboard the steamship. Mickey hoists a cow aboard using a cinch around its midsection. Mickey also swings a cat overhead by its tail, uses a goose as makeshift bagpipes, and hurls a potato at the captain's parrot, knocking it into the river. Was Mickey a bad person?

Removed these two examples because I don't think either fit: the person mistreating the animals is mischievous and immature but not intended to be regarded by the audience as a Bad Person.

Someone appended "Was Mickey a bad person?" to the Mickey Mouse example under Western Animation. In Steamboat Willie, there's no real villain. The captain, an early incarnation of Characters.Peg Leg Pete, is certainly grouchy and bullyish, but not really evil per se. In his earliest cartoons, Characters.Mickey Mouse was modeled approximately after Characters.Tom Sawyer: a gadabout, a showoff, a troubadour and a Karmic Trickster. It wasn't until Walt Disney Studios cemented itself as an animation stalwart that Mickey Mouse was "reformed" into a genial, pacifist everyman. Other characters such as Donald Duck, and Chip and Dale absorbed Mickey's lesser attributes.

Thus, to answer the question: yes, early Mickey was a bad person, only made sympathetic by being bossed by Peg Leg Pete. In fact, in Mickey's cartoon Plane Crazy, Mickey gets just as frisky with Minnie as some villains later would!