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Mickey Mouse's white gloves

marksiegel
Sat, 09 May 2020 04:24:42 GMT

In Episode 3 of Six Degrees of Song of the South, Carina cites a number of cases when Disney used elements derived from the minstrel show tradition. Many of her references seem justified, but sometimes she seems to be stretching, just to make her point. (See my post about the crows in "Dumbo".) One thing she points out is that Mickey and Minnie Mouse wear white gloves, which she interprets as being a reference to minstrel shows, in which white gloves were part of some costumes that helped define certain characters in derogatory ways. But that has nothing to do with the reason Mickey and Minnie wear them. It was purely a technical/artistic decision: In Mickey's first 4 films, he wore no gloves at all. This proved to be a problem for animator Ub Iwerks. Whenever Mickey would gesture or otherwise move his black hands across his black body, they would disappear. The solution: give him gloves. (He first wore gloves in his fifth film, "The Opry House", 1929.) Cartoons at that time were not in color, so the only choices for gloves would be white or some shade of gray . Gray simply did not look good -- it didn't go with the simple black & white design of the character. Shades of gray were used only in backgrounds. So the obvious choice was to give him white gloves, which worked perfectly to make his hand gestures visible. Simple as that.