Year: 1944
Director: Chuck Jones
Country: US
Language: English
Military slang for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, Private Snafu is a series of black-and-white instructional cartoon shorts made for American troops during World War Two. Created by Frank Capra, chairman of the US Army Force Motion Picture Unit, and written by Dr.Seuss, these films were designed to instruct service personnel about sanitation, security, the enemy and, of course, booby traps.
Pvt. Snafu (Mel Blanc) thinks he's too smart to get caught by an enemy booby trap, but he soon finds that the traps are alluring and that he is every bit the booby.
Walt Disney initially was given the go-ahead to make these cartoons, but they demanded exclusive ownership of the character and merchandising rights, thus the contract was given to Warner Bros. Originally a government secret - for the armed forces only, these cartoons were rated highest among polls of the soldiers' favourite films. It's not hard to see why; as the cartoons did not adhere to the Production code at the time.
As a result of not needing to adhere to censorship, Private Snafu had the freedom that civilian pictures did not. This is most apparent in Booby Traps, a short that is mainly about female breasts (albeit the breasts are replaced with bombs). Although the beginning is fairly tame; we see snafu getting milk from a camel, he eventually goes to a brothel full of booby...traps.
Though Booby Traps doesn't represent the most risque snafu cartoon, in A Lecture on Camoflauge we actually see naked women, it's still the funniest of the bunch and a neat look into the cartoons of the time. Hopefully we will never need cartoons like this again.
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