Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Dan Gordon, Seymour Kneitel, Izzy Sparber, Sam Buchwald (uncredited)
Short Synopsis
Popeye, now in the Navy, has jumped out of a plane without a parachute, and as punishment he is put to cleaning and painting the ship. He turns the chores into stunts, tying mops to aircraft propellers to scrub the deck and painting camouflage on the hull. Then a "cloud" drifts overhead and starts dropping bombs. It is a disguise attached to a Japanese plane, marked "Made in Japan". Its pilot, drawn as a crude racist caricature with buck teeth and thick glasses, is pedalling the plane like a bicycle. Popeye takes to the air and shoots it down, and the pilot parachutes with a paper umbrella onto a Japanese "Scrap Repair Ship", whose identical sailors are all drawn the same way. Popeye lands on the ship too, and the sailors gang up on him. He eats his spinach, distracts them by throwing the empty can overboard, and they all jump in after it. Then a Japanese battleship opens fire on him, and Popeye takes it on alone.
Why It Matters
- The film is primarily important as a document of wartime propaganda, and of how far American studios went in dehumanising the enemy. The Japanese characters are drawn as interchangeable, grotesque racial caricatures, and Popeye uses ethnic slurs throughout. That racism is the reason the cartoon has been withheld from television in most countries.
- It was among the first Popeye cartoons from Famous Studios, the name Paramount gave the former Fleischer studio after taking it over in 1942. Its crude propaganda contrasts with the Fleischers' earlier work and shows how quickly the studio was pressed into wartime service.
Notes and Trivia
- The scene in which Popeye briefly becomes the Statue of Liberty after eating his spinach echoes a symbol used in other wartime cartoons, including Disney's Der Fuehrer's Face (1943).
- See also: Blitz Wolf (1942), Education for Death (1943).