An American Tail: Deep Thoughts About Animated Mice, American Immigration in Pop Culture, and the Power of Storytelling Artwork

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

80s and 90s movies and early 2000s tv may be called stupid shit by some, but you know it matters. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, sister podcasters who love well-crafted fiction and one another. In this comedy podcast, we look at the classic movies of our Gen X childhood and adolescence, analyzing film tropes to uncover the cultural commentary on romance, money, religion, mental health, and more. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, comedy to drama to horror, we use feminism, our super smart brains, and each other to uncover the lessons lurking behind the nostalgia of pop culture. Come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

An American Tail: Deep Thoughts About Animated Mice, American Immigration in Pop Culture, and the Power of Storytelling

May 12, 2026 • Sister podcasters raised by 80s and 90s movies: Tracie Guy-Decker, lover of animation, Muppets, comedy, and feminism & Emily Guy Birken, storytelling nerd, mental health advocate, and pop culture aficionado • Episode 136

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We must have a wawwy. You know, a large gathering of mice for a reason.

This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to one of the classic movies of the animation storytelling boom of the 1980s: An American Tail. Animated by Don Bluth, the film follows young Fievel Mousekewitz, a Russian mouse immigrating to America to escape the pogroms (perpetrated by Cossack cats and humans in this world) who is separated from the rest of his family. But Fievel is smart, curious, and able to prevail through the power of storytelling--specifically because he recalls the story of Rapunzel (the Mouse with Really Long Hair) and the Mouse of Minsk (a golem allegory).

The film offers some interesting cultural commentary about populist politicians and the importance of the immigrant experience in American history, but Tracie points out that the newly arrived mice seem somewhat insular rather than integrating into American culture--although that is true to the lived reality of immigrants in the late 19th century. And while Fievel and his family are Jewish, it's also interesting from a storytelling perspective that cats represent oppressors in general (including the Mafia, gangs, and criminals) rather than anti-semitic oppressors in particular. Also, where are all the dogs?

If you are somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight--throw on your earbuds and take a listen to this episode!

Cold Open, Intro, And Follow Ask

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So there's like there are these calls from the top and the bottom of the class hierarchy to organize. And then Fival is the one who actually brings the mechanism for the organizing from stories that he heard. So the kind of underlying lesson is about organizing, but it's also about imagination and the power of story. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know what's worth talking and thinking about. And so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. I'm Tracy Guy Decker, and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'll be talking about the 1986 animated film An American Tale with my sister, Emily Guy Birken, and with you. Let's dive in. And listener, before I dive in with Emily, actually I'm going to ask you a favor. If you have not already, please navigate to the top of the show and follow in whatever you're listening to. On Apple Podcasts, it's a plus sign. On Spotify, it's actually a button that says follow. That will actually really help us out and cost you nothing. Thanks so much. Okay, I know you saw this film, but I have a feeling it was a long time ago. So what's in your head about an American tale?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

So I can remember what Fival looks like. Kind of. I remember he's got kind of big ears, and I remember he's wearing a cap. I remember somewhere out there, I could probably sing it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. Okay. I remember there's a sequel called Five Goes West. And I remember even as a child being like, no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

There are multiple sequels. We will not be talking about any of them. We are just talking about the original American Tales. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

I remember really

What We Remember And Why It’s Timely

SPEAKER_02 2:05

loving it. And that that's like I do recall, I'm sure I was told this. I know I didn't get this on my own, but I recall that this film was like mirrored the immigrant experience for Jews.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

You might have been able to figure it out. I mean, you were really little when we when we were watching it, but it'll become clear why in a moment. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

And then I it's most like that's about it. That's really like I remember Fivel singing the song, and that that's kind of it. That's like it's you've mentioned before that I really have a good memory for movies. This one, it's in there, it's like it's pleasant, and that's about it.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Yeah, that's how I usually am. I mean, you were seven when this one was released.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

So and this it was not one we had on VHS and watched over.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

I don't think so either.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Yeah. Tell me why why we're talking about this today. Well, it's funny because when we did what I did land before time, I was like, oh, I should have done an American Tale because it was like the obvious one for us, since it was like this Jewish story. It actually is later than Land Before Time was first. So chronologically it made sense that I did Land Before Time. And I saw Land Before Time a lot more because the some kids I babysat for watched it on repeat. But American Tale we saw contemporaneously, and so it's in there. I've been thinking about it since I did our episode about Land Before Time, which we'll link to in the show notes in case you haven't listened to it. So that's why it's been on my mind right now. And it actually, in some ways, is timely to be thinking and talking about immigrants right now, which is not intentionally why I did it right now, but we are gonna end up talking about that a bit. So there's not a ton at stake for me, like you. I remember it fondly, but it's not a huge amount at stake, but it was one of the ones where I was like, oh, Don Bluth, I should have done the Jewish one. So is not Don Bluth Jewish? I don't know the answer to that. Steven Spielberg was the yes, actually, I think Don Bluth was. Spielberg was the producer for this, and he brought it to Bluth. And apparently Bluth was like, I can't get away from mice because he had also done Mrs. Frisbee. Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats into of them. That was Bluth, and he also did The Rescuers, which is mice. So, but I believe Fival was Bluth's grandfather's name, though it may have been Spielberg's grandfather's name. I could be wrong about that. Okay. But but the name like came from one of the two key men who were involved in creating this from their family. So it was a personal story for Spielberg, and I think maybe Bluth as well. So that's why we're talking about it. Let me give you a few postcards from the destination before I remind you of what happens in this film. So I do I want to talk about sort of the immigrant story and specifically the Jewish immigrant story, but not exclusively, because it's not like Fivel and his family are Jewish, but we meet many mice who are immigrants from all over. And while talking about the immigrant story as an American story,

The Lens: Immigrants, Metaphor, Comedy

SPEAKER_03 5:15

I want to sort of unpack what I think the movie makers were going for and ask ourselves, did they succeed? I want to look at the way that animals are used as metaphors here. As the movie started for my rewatch, I was thinking, like, oh, is this like Art Spiegelman's mouse, where the mice will be Jews and then the sort of powerful anti-Semites are other animals. But no, that's not the case because we meet mice from Italy and from Ireland who are clearly not Jewish, who also had cat oppressors. So I'll get into that. I want to talk about that a little bit though, with the animals as metaphors and the difference of this version versus Spiegelman. I want to talk about the importance of story within story. Fivel succeeds in many ways because of the stories he's got in his head. And that's really interesting, I think, in this kind of storytelling for children. I want to talk about the comedy in this film. Madeline Kahn and Dom Deloise play two characters, a mouse and a cat, respectively. And they are hilarious and like, in many ways, in my opinion, make the movie. Like if you took their parts out or changed the actors, I don't know if it would have succeeded the way that it did. And I want to unpack a little bit like, what does that say about the film and its merits? If so much rides on these two performances. We also learn there's like a bad guy who's a rat, and it turns out he's not a rat. He's a cat pretending to be a rat. And we learn this at the end. And I want to unpack that a little bit, especially after our earlier conversation about like the earlier postcard I sent about metaphor, the metaphor of the animals. And then finally, we'll talk a little bit about very briefly about gender representation and a little about sexual orientation. I think. I think that Dom Delaware's character, Tiger, is coded as gay. Although in a future movie, they put the kibosh on that because apparently Tiger ends up with Miss Kitty. I did not re-watch just what the interwebs told me. So let me try to remind you of the story. I made some notes for myself. It's been, I watched it. We were supposed to record a couple days ago and then we had to postpone. So it's been about a week since I re-watched it. So I'm I'm gonna sort of talk about the scenes that matter to my analysis. I'm not gonna try and give like a full chronology. The movie opens. This is not a sort of replacement,

Plot Recap With Key Scenes

SPEAKER_03 7:52

like a zootopia where there are no humans. This is a human world where mice also live. So the camera, I'm putting quotes around that, first pans over the home of the Moskowitzes, human beings who live in Tchotska, Russia, which is now part of Ukraine. It's meant to be the 1880s. And then the camera pans down to a little mouse hole over which the name is the Mauskowitzes. So the Mauskowitzes live in the Moskowitzes home. And it's Hanukkah. We know it's Hanukkah because they say happy Hanukkah. And which is why I think maybe you could have picked up one switch. Even when you were seven.

unknown 8:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

So they say happy Hanukkah, and then Fivel's like, what about gifts? And there are three kids. There's the older sister, her name is Tanya, and then Fivel, and then there's a babe in arms, like a little tiny baby, whose name we don't get. And Papa plays the violin. This is important. Plot point for later. We get the gifts. So Tanya gets a babushka, which is like a headscarf, which would not have been called that by Yiddish speakers in the 1880s. But hey, they're mice celebrating Hanukkah. And so I'm gonna just let that fly. It's a 1986 cartoon. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just gonna let that fly. Also, gift giving for Hanukkah was not a thing. It's not a thing in the 1880s. Yeah. Especially not in Europe or in the Ukraine.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

What would be the Ukraine? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

Yeah. So again, gonna let it pass because it was made for 1986 Americans. But I had to mention it. But I had to mention it.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Sources and triceratops didn't live at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

I just had to mention it. Okay. All right. Their Hanukkah celebration gets interrupted by like shouts and screams from outside. It is a pogrom, and the Cossacks have come and they are like killing people and torturing the village. And the human Cossacks bring with them like saliva dripping fang Cossack cats. So that's like the first scene of the movie. So the Moskowitzes, no, excuse me, the Mauskowitzes. I don't know what happens to the Moskowitzes, but the Mauskowitzes decide to emigrate. So we see them getting on a boat in Hamburg, Germany, with a whole bunch of other mice. They're like walking up the rope as the humans are walking up the gangway. So on the voyage, we see Fivel from the very beginning from the Cossacks, we see him as like very curious and like this sort of child. I mean, it's not childlike because he's a child, but the a child's wonder and kind of curiosity. He asks Papa to tell the story about the mouse of Minsk, which is this fictional that I don't think is real, but like this giant mouse that was huge, like as big as a tree, and like protected the normal size mice from cats in Minsk. We also learn, sort of in and aside, that Rapunzel is a story that they tell because he asks about the mouse with the really long hair that people can climb up.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Is the mouse of Minsk supposed to be like a golem story?

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Maybe. Okay. Maybe, but it's like really big. Okay. I mean, so like I mean the golem is meant to be large, but I don't know that he's meant to be like bigger than a house. Because like proportionally. But yes, it's a similar sort of story to the golem, yes. And so on the boat, we see Fival continuing to have that sort of curiosity. We meet other mice who are talking about why they're immigrating. So there's an Italian mice who talks about losing his mama Mia to the Don cat, who presumably was a mafioso. They were Catholic because he says the only thing we found of her was a rosary. And then we meet an Irish mouse who lost his girlfriend to a cat who was just some sort of murderer, who all he was left with was her tail to bury her. So we, and then we get the song There Are No Cats in America, which you might remember now that I've said it or not. I don't. They well they sing this song about how there are no cats in America and the streets are lined with cheese. Okay. Yeah. That happens on the boat. Because of a huge storm and Fival's natural curiosity, he gets like swept off the boat, and his family believe him dead. So they make it to Castle Garden, and there's this sad moment where the immigration officer is like, How many are you? And he says, Five, and he says, Oh, I mean four, like Papa remembering that Five's gone. But Fival makes it. He like ends up in a bottle and washes up basically on Statue of Liberty Islands, and this French pigeon, Henri, played by Chris or voiced by Christopher Plummer, like welcomes him, like, oh, my little immigrant, and like tells him all about the statue that he's building, which is how we know when it is, because the Statue of Liberty is being built. And Henri flies him over to the island of Manhattan. So now Fival and his family are there in New York, but they're separated. His family believes him to be dead. Fival has all kinds of adventures. He meets this guy, Warranty Rat, who says he's gonna help him, but actually sells him into servitude in like a sweatshop. But Fival uses his stories to get himself out. He remembers Rapunzel, he ties bedsheets together, he escapes. So does another mouse named Tony Spamoni. They have all kinds of adventures. They end up going up against the Mob Street Maulers, who is a gang of cats. And Madeline Kahn's Gussie Mouseheimer is super rich. And she is wants to do something about these cats. And so she comes to like the meeting hall, like the union hall. She says, We need to have a wowie. And Honest John's like, a wowie? And she says, Yes, you know, where we gather lots of people together and we fight for what we want. He says, Oh, a rally. It is so funny. Like, I like, especially because I was watching it with subtitles on, because I was watching with my partner who has a little hard of hearing. And it actually said, Wowie, W-A-W-W-Y. We have to have a wowie. So they're gathering people together. We meet mice of all different stripe, and Madeline Conn's Gussie's like, we need to do something. Everybody's like, yeah. And she's like, what do we do? Crickets. Any ideas? Nothing. Well, Fival comes and he whispers in her ear. We don't know what he whispers. But basically, he says we should make a mouse of Minsk, like a mechanical mouse of Minsk, which they end up doing. And through that plan, they actually are able to basically like scare all of the cats of the Mob Street Maulers onto a boat, which is headed for Hong Kong. And so then they sing, There are no more cats in America. Except for one, which is Tiger. So at one point, Fivel is sort of captured by the Maulers, and he's like in a birdcage, and I don't know why they don't just eat him, but they don't. But he makes friends with cats. Yeah. Because plot, but he makes friends with Tiger, who like isn't like the other cats. I mean, even the way he's drawn, he's not like the other cats, because they're all like greys and browns and stuff, and he is uh orange. He's played by Dom Deloise, and totally to me, codes is gay. And Tiger actually helps him get out from the captivity with the maulers. And so at the end, after the giant mouse of Minsk has worked and the cats, the Mob Street Maulers are on this boat and the mice are all celebrating, they don't know where Fival is. Now, meanwhile, Tony has changed Fivel's name. He's like, Five, that's got to go. So he calls him Philly. So he's calling, Tony's calling for Philly Mauskowitz. And the family hears them calling and are like, Philly Mauskowitz, maybe that's and the Papa's like, no, there are lots of Mauskowitzes. It's not him. And so they find Tony who's saying it. And he's, and well, and Tanya says, Well, they changed my name to Tilly. Maybe they changed Fival's name to Philly. And they learned it is, in fact, Fival, and they go on a search. Tiger helps, all the mice help, and then they're reunited, and everything's really happy. And in the final scene, we meet Henri again. The statue is finished, and the pigeons, Henri and his pigeon friends, all female pigeons, are flying the mice and tiger around to see the statue. And Henri refers to them as my little Americans. In the beginning, it was an immigrant. And the Statue of Liberty winks at them. So, oh, and I didn't even put it in context, but the reveal where Warranty Rat turns out to also actually be a cat happens right before all the cats are put on the boat because of the they're scared of them. Yes. Okay. He's the leader. He's actually the leader of the Mob Street Mall. The Maulers. Okay. Yeah. And so he uses as a rat, like the mice sort of trust him and they pay him for protection from the cats. So it's like he's but he's a cat himself. Yeah. And he doesn't actually protect, like, they're not actually protected. So that's sort of what happens. So let me start where I started with the postcards, which is this story of the immigrant slash American story. And I think the movie makers definitely wanted to, as you were told and or figured out, like wanted to sort of tell this Jewish American immigrant story, which many American Jews have. Like it's actually not our family's story, but many American Jews have a similar story

What The Film Shows About Power

SPEAKER_03 17:40

to this kind of immigration in the late 19th century and like very poor tenements in New York and that sort of thing. And sort of like what I used to say when I worked at a Jewish museum, which is that like Jewish American history is American history, which a standby. And I think that's what they were going for, and about the importance of immigrants to the fabric of this country. The question as to whether they succeeded, I think is an interesting one. Like I watched this with my partner Gary, and he was like, how like the immigrants helped one another by banishing the cats. Did they actually help like society writ large? And I think that's actually a fair question. I mean, presumably all of the American born mice now also don't have the mob street maulers bothering them, of which Gussie, Madeline Kahn's character, is, I believe, meant to be. She's German kind of heritage, but I think we're meant to see that she was born in America. She also, I think, is meant to be Jewish. Mausheimer is her name. And she's super duper rich. And she says shit like people say that being rich isn't everything. Being rich is everything is everything. And that's not true. I know because I'm rich and I have everything. Like such a bizarre, and with that like R and L um speech impediment that Khan does sometimes. And like it's just hilarious. Like it should be offensive the way she says it, but just funny. Anyway, I think there's something like they tell us that this is an American story with the name of the movie with its pun, with its mouse pun, and with the frame of Henri, the French pigeon, who calls Fival an immigrant in the first scene and or first American scene, and calls Fival an American in the final American scene. And so they tell us that. But that said the power of organizing is shown very clearly. And I think that's sort of interesting. I don't know if that was intentional or just sort of necessary to tell that 1880s story. But I think that's really interesting, especially now if I go to the other thing that I wanted to talk about, about the metaphor of the animals, right? Art Spiegelman in his graphic novels Mouse and the Second There Two, he just makes the Jews or mice. The Germans, the Nazis are cats, right? The Poles are the non-Jewish Poles are pigs, I think. And so like there's a different species for each of these human identities. And Spiegelman did that very intentionally to sort of help portray the power differential.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

I remember there's a point in Mouse where because Spiegelman is married to a French woman and she asks, What will I be? Because she is not Jewish. And he says, A mouse, of course. And this is part of like the It's in the book, yeah, in the graphic novel. Yeah. Because once you start doing this, like you do have these questions.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Right, right. And I think Spiegelman was telling a very specific story with his father's shoah survival story. Blut and Spielberg were also telling a specific story, but it wasn't that story. No. And to a certain extent, part of what they wanted to tell was the ways in which it was not singular. The ways in which the experience of the Mauskowitzes was not singular because they were Jewish. Right. And so and so the metaphor is different. The cats are Not Nazis, they're oppressors, they are Cossacks, but they're also corruption in Italy, and then they're just crime in Ireland. And I think that's really interesting to compare and contrast in that way. It's anti-Semites will compare Jews to rodents, right? And so choosing like Spiegelman choosing to make Jews mice in mouse. And then here Spielberg and Bluth choosing to make these protagonists mice are sort of an interesting choice that works to push back against it, against that insult while still using the metaphor, which I, you know, I find it all really interesting. And like some of the things then that like the questions as you start to iterate it through and like extrapolate, like apparently there are no dogs in an American tale in Manhattan. Yeah. Yeah. Because they don't fit the metaphor. And so we there literally we don't see any dogs at all in the entire movie. Which is, you know, makes sense based on the way the metaphor is laid out. Like, who are dogs in the metaphor? It doesn't, they don't fit. But then there's also, you know, now that we're looking at the metaphor, like there are no more cats in America, they sing, because they got rid of like seven, but except Tiger. Tiger's safe because he's like tamed to a certain extent. He has friends who are mice. And like even the way they draw him, like he does, he doesn't have the sort of big sharp teeth that the other cats are given. He's like got this bright color, and he's this like flamboyance, both to the way that he is drawn with this big bushy tail and the way he behaves, the way Dom Deloise plays him. This there's this flamboyance, which is why I say I read him as gay, but also a simpleness that it's not flattering, I don't think, to the gay coding. It's sort of like in the movie Airplane, which we talked about on one episode. There's like that one character who's meant to be gay, who's like doing goofy shit in the background. And that allows him to be the butt of the joke for multiple reasons. There's some of that going on with this Dom Deluisa's tiger, which is another reason why I clocked him as maybe gay. Because in in 86, like that was sort of shorthand, that that kind of goofiness. In addition to the flamboyance. It's a goofy flamboyance.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

So I want to stick with this for a second, with the metaphor that, okay, so cats are the oppressors, and there's one who's safe. And I'm thinking about, I had this experience, it was, and you know about this, but the audience doesn't. It was in 2017, not long after I saw Nope by Jordan Peel, where uh sorry, get out, not long after I saw Get Out, which is what helped me truly understand that I am not safe for black folks. Because at the end of Get Out, there's a

Safety, Coding, And The One Cat

SPEAKER_02 25:21

moment where the character Rose, who is white, hears police sirens, what she thinks are police sirens, and she gets this grin on her face because she knows that she will win in any situation. And in this moment, what happened was I was it's a local political group that I was part of. It was a like a mom's group. We were connecting with a local Black Panthers group to put together a spaghetti dinner. I had volunteered to help courier the food to our liaison with another member of my group who knew where we were going. I got lost and I ended up there, like had the GPS, but I was not with the person I knew. So the house that I was going to was like a duplex and I knocked on the wrong door. The woman who answered was terrified of me. And like immediately was like, I don't know who you're looking for and close the door. And I realized like a white woman knocking on her door is never good news. So, reason I'm bringing this up is like this metaphor, this idea that there is a cat who is safe when the cats are the oppressors, you have to make them like flamboyantly different. And there's there will always be a separation, otherwise. And um, gay coding in a children's movie is interesting as that being like what makes them safe. Although, if you know what you're worried about is like literal like predation and death, but I just I find this like fascinating because if you iterate it out, because like what makes someone a cat is corruption and abuse of power and violence, straight up violence, uh-huh. Yeah. Tiger is a vegetarian, we learn. And that's like right there, that is an American tale, is the abuse of power, violence, corruption punching down.

SPEAKER_03 27:19

Yeah. And the movie makers actually sort of know that. Like we meet honest John at a union hall. Well, it's a at a pub, but it's like a union hall kind of a thing. And there's they're having a wake for a mouse who's been killed by cats. And John says, you know, he died before he even had a chance to vote. I'ma fix that. And he like, we see him write down the dead mouse's name in a book of like ghost voters. So this, you know, the corruption as part and parcel to America. Like it's in this, yeah, it's actually in this movie. Yeah. The metaphor of the cats as the as a as oppressors, all different kinds of oppressors, leading to this story about organizing, about coming together. And that story, like, we hear multiple mice call for that, not just Gussie, the sort of rich woman from uptown, but also Bridget, who is another immigrant who Tony Spamoni falls in love with at first sight, is also saying, like, if we just got together, so there's like there are these calls from the top and the bottom of the class hierarchy to organize. And then Fival is the one who actually brings the mechanism for the organizing from stories that he heard. So the kind of underlying lesson is about organizing, but it's also about imagination and the power of story. So we saw Fival escape. He was sold into servitude in this sweatshop. He doesn't even spend one night there because the very first night he's like, We need the mouse with the really long hair. And he starts tying bed sheets together and like slips out the window. And then it is his idea to like make a mouse of Minsk. And so it's imagination, but it's imagination fed by stories. So this story about, you know, that chooses to make the oppressors and the oppressed visibly different species, is also teaching us about the oppressed coming together and using their imagination and the stories that they've collected to make something bigger than themselves. Which I think is maybe part of why we loved it when we were kids. Like, because that's the kind of a story, the kind of a lesson that like really appealed, still does, to I think you are and my both of our like story-loving hearts. And it's a different, like there are lessons in there, like that you're pointing to about safety and like signaling safety. And it has to be flamboyantly different than the danger, especially for children. But there are also lessons about the power of story, the power of the imagination, the power of working together. Like shit goes wrong while they're actually like doing the plan. Like the mouse gets like they release it too soon, and the cats aren't where they're supposed to be. So they stop it and then it's time to release it and they can't get it moving again. And like, you know, all kinds of stuff. Five alt is the one who in the end gets it moving again because he brings a candle underneath a rope that's holding it when they're trying to untie it and can't get it on tied. So there's like, there are lessons about innovation and imagination and story that like just kind of gel together in a way that is satisfying to story consumers like you and me. So I want to talk, since we just talked about flamboyantly different, let's talk about Zom Zeloise and Madeline Kahn's characters for a moment. Like, despite what I just said about the sort of satisfying kind of lesson, I actually think this movie would have been kind of boring. I don't know how satisfying it would have been without those comic relief pockets

Laughs, Grifters, And A Fake Rat

SPEAKER_03 31:25

afforded by Zom Zeloise and Madeline Kahn's characters. And I wanna at least ask the question, even if we don't come up with an answer of like, what does that say about the story that I just named as being satisfied? But I'm also saying, like, yeah, but it would have been pretty forgettable without those two characters. Like, do we actually need these like silly, flamboyant vehicles as a part of these lessons in order for us to receive them? Like, or does that indicate that maybe the rest of the storytelling was only so so that I'm suggesting that I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie nearly as much without those two characters? Because we still could have gotten 80% of the story and the things I just named as being satisfying without those two.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 32:17

So I don't have an answer, but the question arises for me when I'm like looking at the movie as a whole and sort of saying, like, yeah, I really enjoyed it. And also, like, without the wowie and Dom Zeloise's like cat dancing, like it's all right. So was Fival voiced by a child actor? Yeah, I believe so. Fivel's voice actor was a man named Philip Glasser. I don't know that person. Okay. I believe he was a child actor.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

So, like, my just off the cuff here theory is because child actors are child actors. This might just be the difference between someone who's a professional. And so, like, you know, much of the film is like you're getting the best performance you can out of someone who is very new to acting versus two people who are professionals and professional comedians at the top of their game.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

Yeah, that's a fair point.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

That is a fair point.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

And which is part of the reason why they included Madeleine Kahn and Dom Deluise, and then like Christopher Plummer. This was back when it's now much more common to get known actors to voice animated films. But back then it was less, less common.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. I actually I'll accept that. That it's not a doesn't invalidate the power of the storytelling, but just points to perhaps the immaturity and inexperience of the protagonist actors. Yeah. I'll buy that. I'll buy that. Yeah, thank you. So the last two things on my list that I wanted to talk about in this main episode, there's a big reveal that Fival discovers first. So Fivil's papa plays the violin. And so there are several moments in New York where he hears the violin and he's like, Papa, Papa, and he follows the sound of the violin. One of those times, he follows it into the den of the Mob Street Maulers because Warren T. Rat also plays the violin. But while he's playing, he keeps making a mistake and he says, Oh, it's this stupid nose. And he pulls off the cone nose of the rat and reveals a cat face. And then once he's taken the nose off, he like does something to his ears too, and cat ears sort of unfurl underneath uh like fake mouse ears or rat ears. And so Fival has seen it. That's when he gets captured. So he can't warn the other mice. But it becomes clear to all of the other mice later, and like Gussie is leading the charge with the Mouse of Minsk automaton, and she says, You'll never get another penny out of a mouse, Warren. Anyway, I wanted to sort of unpack with you a little bit. Like, we've talked about the metaphor of these animals quite a bit. Like, what is the metaphor of a cat in rat's clothing? Like, that feels really ripe. Like, in fact, initially I was I was a little uncomfortable as I started to ask myself that question, because we've got him as this middleman. I'm like, is that a Jewish spot as the middleman? I don't think it is, in fact, because we've got these sort of violent criminals, and then this guy sort of as painting himself as the middleman, like, you pay me and we make sure that you're protected. It's much more sort of mafioso kind of coding than like Jewish merchant middleman. Mm-hmm. But there's like I'm still unpacking it. He is the only rat that we meet, and he's not actually a rat. And there's something, there is something like just in the language that we in English, the way we talk about it. Like a rat. Exactly. And like, or like a rat fink, like a double cross, someone who double crosses is a rat. And so to have this fake rat who is actually one of the oppressors, like pretending to be a rat, like there's a certain like truthiness almost to that like visual metaphor of a cat in rat's clothing. But I'm not sure, like, when I look at it as the bigger piece of the literary metaphor that gives us the power of organizing, I'm not quite sure what to do with him.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Well, I mean, I one thing I'm thinking about, because you are talking you were saying like it's cognizant of the corruption in America.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

And in the late 19th century, that's when you had like the bosses. And so you have, and I mean, hell, like we don't have to go back that far. Populism is so often someone saying, like, I'm here for the little man. And meanwhile, I'm lining my own pockets, and I'm actually like a crony of the big bosses.

SPEAKER_03 37:29

I mean, actually, that's interesting. The way you just said, like, the little man, like in literally this the mice, the smaller creature. Yeah. That's an interesting point.

SPEAKER_02 37:41

So, like, there's, I mean, we have a long history of that, of populist political figures who claim that they are there to protect the people who are just trying to live their lives, just trying to get by, and who are just grifters. Yeah. And are selling them out, literally. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing that right now.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

Yeah. Yeah. So the cat in rat's clothing is a politician to a certain extent, in this extended metaphor of American tale. Yeah, I like that. That works for me. One thing you said about like, so at one point, Gussie says, I always try to look out for those less fortunate than me, which is everyone. She's so and like you should hate her, right? But somehow she manages to be like Madeline Khan is such a such an actress. Like, she manages to walk that line to actually make it like somehow charming. Anyway, yeah. All right. So then the last thing, this film, I don't think it passes Beckdell. There are multiple named female characters. There's there are many. And they even talk to each other a couple of them. Like Mama Mauskowitz and Tanya slash Tilly talk to one another, but they talk about five of them. So, and I don't think like Bridget, who is the

Representation Checks And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 39:03

working class immigrant like organizer, and Gussie, the rich uptown organizer, like they don't talk to one another. That may be all of them. That may be all of all of the named female characters. Like most of the mice we meet are male. So it does not pass Bechtel, unfortunately. Which is not surprising for a 1986 movie about immigrants made by two men. Because that is, we talked about it a little bit when we talked about Avalon. That's like especially in a sort of, it's not exactly self-insert, but it's a little bit by telling my grandpa's story kind of a thing. But it makes a certain amount of sense that he was they, these two men thinking about their own grandfathers, not their grandmothers.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

And I think that I also like we've talked about it to some extent, and you pointed out the sort of gay coding this cat as tiger as gay to make him safe in a kid's movie in the 80s, you know, and some of the like the irony in that or the tension in that, although it was all about the kind of forward presentation as opposed to actual sex, right? There's, I mean, none of these. Well, Tony Spumoni, who falls in love immediately with Bridget, like there is the hint of romance and sex between him and Bridget, but that's it in the whole movie. So, but I I think that is sort of worth naming this in addition to the gender dynamic, the sexual orientation dynamic, and the kind of shorthand of non-toxic masculinity. Maybe, and maybe this is about me as much as about the movie makers. I will own that. But like the fact that I read that Dom Deloise's non-toxic masculinity and tiger, I read that as gay coding.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

I don't think I'm alone, but you know, that's worth I just felt that's worth naming.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

Just as oh, so he's a vegetarian, which okay, that goes against like cats biology, but right this is also this is in the 1980s where eating quiche was considered queer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:17

So, like that that's he's wearing this like like two small little t-shirt. Like they all wear clothes, but like all Tiger wears is this little t-shirt that's like a baby's all tea sort of thing on him because he's a big floofy cat.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

So I that I read also as sort of gay coding in terms of what he was wearing. It's also like Dom Delouise did this, it is not the only part where he was queer-coated. Right, right. There are other places where I know he was intentionally queer-coated. Blazing saddles, for example. He's a very small part, but it is very much queer-coated.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Yeah, yeah. So that's something that shows up in this movie. So before I just I do my quick like synopsis of what we talked about, I'll just say like it was enjoyable. I wouldn't put it at the top of your list, but like if it's on, watch it.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Somewhere out there's still a great song.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

Yeah, that's actually really interesting. In The Shit We Forgot to Say, which listeners, that is a patron bonus. I want to talk more about that song because I think that it was Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram produced the radio hit. And I want to talk about the song a little bit. Okay, okay. But yeah. No cats in America is a great song, too. Okay. I do not remember that one. So and Tiger and Five will sing a song about the fact that they won't need to be lonely anymore because they have a friend, which is also pretty sweet. Aww. So, yeah. So let me just remind you here's what we talked about. We talked at some length about this movie as portraying an immigrant story, specifically a Jewish immigrant story that is not universal, but is fairly typical of a lot a number of American Jewish families. And what the movie makers, I think, were going for, which was really to sort of show these immigrants are Americans. I think they told us that to a certain extent. What they showed us was the power of organizing, the power of people, even with less power, even those in the oppressed category, when working together to achieve great things and sort of prevail over the oppressors. That's what they showed us. They told us that these immigrants are part of the American story, in my opinion. We talked at great length about the metaphor of making these characters animals and the extended metaphor there. We put it in contrast to Art Spiegelman's mouse graphic novels, where he sort of has somewhat rigid kind of species and ethnicity or nationality connections. This film does not do that. So there are Jewish mice, but there are also Catholic mice. And the cats, therefore, there are Cossack mice, but there are also mafioso mice, and there are also just You mean cats. Oh, yeah, thank you. There are Cossack cats. Thank you. And there are mafioso cats, and there are also just violent murderer cats, and there are organized crime cats here in America, even though the song said there are no cats in America. So that's working differently than what Spiegelman was doing, and also doing some of the same things by making the oppressor literally stronger and more powerful than the oppressed, which only makes the story that I think that they showed us about organizing more compelling. We also talked about that organizing lesson. It's not just about like getting together. There also is an element of imagination and of like pulling from our stories and making them serve us in the organizing. Through we see Fivul escaping servitude through his knowledge of the Rapunzel story, we see Fivul actually like giving the mechanism through the Mouse of Minsk this kind of fictionalized golem version or version of the Golem story as the means by which the mice are able to prevail against the cats and send them off to Hong Kong. There's a little bit about class in this film, though not a great deal of critique, especially since we have the person of Gussie Mausheimer, who is filthy rich and sort of one, very much one of the mice. Even though she keeps reminding us how she's different, she's an uptown mouse. She knows that being rich isn't everything because she is rich and she has everything. So she constantly reminds us of the difference between her and these downtown mice. And yet she's one of them. She gets to be the leader, but she's one of them. And so there is definitely an understanding of class distinction in this film, very much so. And yet, very little critique. I didn't even talk about that at all that much, but having like Gussie there, I think is you can't help but see the. I mean, she names it all the time, and we see it in what she's wearing and the way she talks, all of that. We talked at some length about the comedy brought by Madeline Kahn and by Dom Delawise. I laughed out loud and made you laugh out loud at Madeline Kahn's, we need a wowie. I wondered if the fact that they carried so much of my enjoyment of the film invalidated the storytelling of the film. You offered maybe actually what I was reacting to was the inexperience and immaturity of the lead actor who was a child actor. I think that you're probably right about that. We talked a little bit about the power of the metaphor of a cat in rat's clothing. And not at that point, but as a part of the metaphor of the cats and like the one safe cat, who was not the one in rat's clothing, but he wanted us to believe it was him. You told a story about sort of realizing that, you know, even though you know you're one of the good ones, you still look like a cat to someone who has lived life kind of as a mouse in American culture. And so that was like an interesting kind of personal aside that this movie brought up for us. And then I landed on the Beck Del Test, this movie does not pass, which is not a surprise for a 1986 movie made primitive primarily by two men about late 19th century, where we just weren't telling women's stories much. And so the fact that though we have at least four named female characters, they don't talk to each other about anything other than five is not really a surprise. What did I forget?

SPEAKER_02 48:19

Anything? No, we just we spent a little time talking about how Dom Deloise's character seems coded as gay. Yeah. And yeah, how that feels a little ironic for a children's movie in the 80s that he's safe.

SPEAKER_03 48:32

Yeah, there's some tension in that. Although it also makes a certain amount of sense because sort of masculinity, traditional slash toxic masculinity is what's not violent, yeah. Yeah, is what's not safe, is what's dangerous about these cats. Especially, I don't think there's a single female cat that we see. In future movies, there will be because a tiger ends up with Miss Kitty, but in this movie, there's not a single female cat. And so the danger is definitely associated with the masculinity, you know, through correlation. And so to take that danger away, you sort of dial back the masculinity, but it's still a male cat, you end up with a queer coating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

What are you gonna bring me next week? So I'm bringing you my deep thoughts on the movie Highlander. Oh my god. There can be only one. There can be only one. Our stepfather loved that movie so much. Yes. And the TV show, but we're just doing the movie. Okay. Go on to live forever. Anyway. So I will look forward to it.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

We'll see you then. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening.

How To Support The Show

SPEAKER_03 50:17

Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompitech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?