Chipping Some Goodness Off the Old Entertainment Block

In Disney+’s Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, we hear that our titular rodents have been best pals since 1982.

Ah, but celebrities are notorious for lying about their ages.

Chip ‘n Dale’s first screen appearance actually took place in 1943, in the short “Private Pluto.” The chipmunks wanted to store their nuts in a military cannon, and Pluto—a military guard dog—wasn’t having it.

That makes the world’s most famous chipmunks (sorry, Alvin) nearly 80 years old. And their very longevity tells us something about entertainment—and, more importantly, something about those of us who consume it.

“Private Pluto” was one of Disney’s wartime propaganda films—cartoons designed to boost patriotism and encourage Americans during World War II. The short was released during heavy fighting in Tunisia, as American Gen. George Patton and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery traded punches with Nazi Germany. The beginning of Operation Mincemeat (recently dramatized by Netflix) was just weeks away. Back home, everything from tires to sugar was being rationed: A pound of bacon cost just 30 cents, but you’d also need to turn in seven ration points to bring it home.

It’s staggering to think of how different our world was back in 1943. The only screens most people had were on their screen doors. Telephones (one per family, please) were firmly connected to the wall, and often had their own dedicated table. Unless you were lucky enough to have a new-fangled refrigerator, most folks kept their food cold via literal ice boxes—blocks of ice delivered each day by the ice man. Most homes were heated by burning coal.

Today’s 12-year-olds would find the world almost unrecognizable from the one today. Except for … Chip ‘n Dale?

Oh, Mickey Mouse was around. Donald Duck, of course. Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry. And even if most kids have never watched Gone With the Wind or Casablanca, they might recognize Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart. Louis Armstrong was already hard at work redefining jazz. Frank Sinatra was crooning, and his fans were swooning. These names (if not their work) are still familiar to most of us today.

Yep, 1943 might look wholly unfamiliar to us … if not for entertainment.

Entertainment—from movies and music to books and TV shows—has always acted as a bit of a time machine. Flip on an old flick (from the 1930s or 1980s or, hey, even from 2005), and you’re transported not to just another place, but another era. Even movies made today can pull you back to when your grandmother or great-grandmother or great-great-great-great grandmother was a young girl. You need not look any further than the upcoming Downton Abbey: A New Era to feel that period-piece pull.

But if entertainment can be a time machine, entertainment’s cartoon characters are its frequent fliers—changing with the generations, yet remaining curiously untouched.

Bogart and Gable, Armstrong and Sinatra are all gone now. Most folks who plunked down a quarter to see “Private Pluto” (along with the main movie feature, of course) are gone now, too. But the cartoon stars themselves are still around, morphing with the age but still recognizable. Dale may have undergone “CGI surgery” (as he tells us in the Disney+ movie), but any 90-year-old Disney fan who remembers the chipmunk from her childhood would still recognize him.

If entertainment can be a time machine, cartoon characters serve as a bridge across time—connecting generations to one another via goofy works of fiction. That’s pretty amazing and, I think, kind of cool.

Plugged In can be deservedly critical of various entertainment products. But when entertainment’s on its game, it can serve as a shared connection point for families—sometimes through several generations.

Disney knows it better than anyone. It counts on nostalgia-loving parents to flip on the new Rescue Rangers movie because of their love of the TV show (even the two are very, very different). And when the 7-year-olds of today have kids of their own, Disney will surely trot out a new Chip ‘n Dale movie or show or game or hologram, counting on a new wave of nostalgia for the 2022 movie. We may be critical of some new directions Disney is taking, but let’s give the Mouse House credit: It knows the power of the old. Its theme parks are built on characters that have outlived their original fans and, somehow, still are relevance. Peter Pan and Pinocchio are as familiar to 80-year-olds being pushed around in wheelchairs as they are to the 8-year-olds running ahead.

I remember Cinderella, Grandma might say. I do, too, her granddaughter answers.

You could argue that these heirloom cartoon characters can serve as something of a Trojan horse—nosing the door open for new content concerns. Certainly, the new Rescue Rangers film isn’t as innocent as the original TV show. And it has different problems than the old shorts had, too.

Still, those cross-generational connection points—those bridges—are rare. And in an age when we sometimes seem to have so little in common with those older or younger than us, we should make use of those bridges when we can. After all, the root word of familiar is family. And sometimes a familiar face—even an animated one—is what we can use to bring a family a bit closer together.