Adult Issues in the Disneyverse

In This tidbit about Sulfa Drugs:
retroist on X: “Walt Disney Presents…The Sulfa Drugs. https://t.co/2ri36nwEoq” / X
There is a panel regarding the treatment of gonhorrea, so in the world of Mickey, Goofy, and Donald…there is venereal disease. :smirk:

Aside from the saccharine, antiseptic, rated G world children watch on the small and big screen, what other social issues do animated people deal with?

Drug Abuse?
Abortion?

I’m sure I’m describing plots found in fan-fiction stories.

You are describing plots found in many actual animated series/movies. Adult stuff isn’t exactly uncommon.

Look up the Wikipedia pages for just about any Ralph Bakshi film
Fritz the Cat
Heavy Traffic
Hey, Good Lookin’
Coonskin
American Pop

Sex, drugs, gangs, racism, terrorism.
Corrupt cops, corrupt politicians, corrupt preachers, corrupt revolutionaries.

When The Wind Blows(1986), award winning British animation about the unavoidable aftermath of nuclear war.

There was that time that Mickey attempted suicide.

Your title talks about the Disneyverse, but this question appears to be about any cartoon character from any source.

Certainly the Flintstones was more ground breaking as a prime-time adult sitcom that happened to be animated than for any child-appeal the bright colors and silly setting had.

Everything they talked about and did was adult. Not adult in the XXX nudge-nudge wink-wink [all vice all the time] sense of “adult”. But certainly “adult” in the sense that 20-somethings now talk about “adulting” with a resigned eyeroll.

My gf’s nephew, a dude in his early thirties recently got married. They honeymooned in Florida at Disneyland!!

I’ve never been there. I can’t imagine going as an adult.

Nitpick - Disneyland is in California. Disney World is in Florida.
I go to the Florida one a few times a year. Lots of delicious specialty cocktails all over the resorts (hotels) and most of the parks. I even occasionally go on a ride or two :rofl:

It’s really much more than the “kids running around going on It’s A Small World” place that many people imagine.

Heh, I figured I had a 50:50 chance. They were in Florida.

Different strokes, I guess.

Absolutely. And it’s definitely not for everyone. Many of my friends are pleasantly surprised when they join us for a trip. And some aren’t.

…don’t even get into the “most magical place on earth” vs “happiest place on earth”…

The one in California is just one Land. The one in Florida is a whole World, with many different Lands, also including Epcot, Wild Kingdom, etc.

We all know that in WW2 a lot of popular characters from Disney, Warner, etc. animation and from the Sunday comics were used to help instruct the recruits and the homefront public on various issues. Before that in the 30s many of these were also recruited in various New Deal era projects to educate the general public on things like this, for example.

The key part of this is that in the 30s and 40s the characters in the “shorts” were not viewed as exclusively for-children-only. The film shorts ran as leads to regular dramas, comedies, westerns, etc. so they were not “sanitized”.

I mean sure, Snow White was “family friendly” once you set aside the repeated attempts at murder, but Mickey and Donald and Bugs and Tex Avery’s characters were not all sweet-and-nice even in their normal clips.

And then there were the words from their sponsors… Winston cigarettes
THE FLINTSTONES (Winston Cigarette Commercials) (1961) (HD 1080p) (youtube.com)

Yeah, if we’re talking outside the Disney-verse, the OP should check out Bojack Horseman on Netflix. Sexual issues, drug and alcohol abuse, dysfunctional personal and family relationships, I’m pretty sure there was an abortion in there somewhere (I know there was an arc where a character had a miscarriage)… it pretty much runs the gamut.

As I mentioned, there are many, many animated series/movies that cover adult issues. The first that came to mind in the thread for some reason was Drawn Together, a parody of Big Brother-type shows fraturing animated characters from various genres.

Disneyland is, in fact, eight different lands.

Plus California Adventure.

And economically it’s one of the top 50 nations on earth, with a massive corporate reach:

I went to Disney World as an adult back in 2000 and I had a good time.

I actually know several adults who are huge fans of Disneyland, such that they go there several times a year. I’m not one, although the few times I’ve been I had fun.

My mom (pushing 100) wanted to go to DisneyWorld. “But not go into the parks. I just want to lounge around the pool with a good book, then take the monorail to that little jazz bar in the Grand Floridian Hotel, then have a 4-course prix fixe dinner.”

We were having such a good time that, by the end of the trip, we had three generations of family cavorting together.
I found that my cynicism just melted away, partly due to an appreciation of how efficient and customer-friendly everything was.