Mickey au Camp de Gurs - TV Tropes
- ️Sun Oct 13 2024
Mickey au Camp de Gurs (Mickey in the Gurs Camp) is a French comic booklet created in 1942 by German-born cartoonist Horst Rosenthal during his internment at the Gurs camp in France, being the most renowned of the three comics he produced during his time there.
True to Rosenthal's style, this comic is a darkly humorous, satirical commentary on life within the internment camp. Mickey Mouse serves as both the protagonist and the narrator, sent to Gurs under suspicion of being Jewish. The narrative follows him as he navigates the harsh, impoverished conditions of the camp, blending absurdity with sharp criticism of the circumstances faced by those interned.
The comic, like Rosenthal’s other works, remained unpublished until October 2014, when it was released as part of a collected edition titled Mickey à Gurs: Les Carnets de dessin de Horst Rosenthal (Mickey in Gurs: The Sketchbooks of Horst Rosenthal) by the French publishing house Calmann-Lévy, in collaboration with the Memorial de la Shoah (the French Holocaust Museum). Today, Mickey au Camp de Gurs is regarded as one of the earliest surviving examples of Holocaust-related comics and a precursor to Art Spiegelman's Maus.
Since all of Rosenthal's works are in the public domain, the complete panels can be viewed on Wikimedia Commons here
(albeit non-translated).
See also Mickey Mouse in Vietnam, another early non-authorized Mickey war-related work.
The comic has the following examples:
- Adapted Out: In "Mickey's Surprise Party", Mickey tells Minnie a bit of info. about his mother, although she's never given a name nor is even mentioned ever again during the rest of the episode or ever since. Here, he's motherless.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the last panel, Mickey says the police can look for him in "the land of liberty, equality and fraternity". He then clarifies in parenthesis: "I'm talking about America!".
- Not in Front of the Kid: In the seventh page, Mickey says that, as soon as he enters the camp, his co-inhabitants bombard him with various requests, asking things like if he wanted to sell them American cigarettes or if he wanted to buy white beans. Then he mentions a guy who offered to rent him his private cabin, and then says he prefers to remain silent about the rest of the offer, fearing there may be children reading the comic.
- Related in the Adaptation: While he's mentioned in official Mickey media, mostly as a Creator Cameo or a Running Gag, Walt Disney isn't hinted as having any biologic relation with Mickey (except, well... him being one of his creators alongside Ub Iwerks). Here, the Mouse says he's his father.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: In the ninth page, Mickey smells a foul odor coming from a small stove a man is preparing for himself. When he asks the man about what he's cooking, the latter, being suspicious, scrutinizes the mouse face before whispering in his right ear. Before he could finish telling all of the ingredients, the Mouse scampers away in discomfort.
- Subverted Kids' Show: As much as how Mickey tells the viewers this is a children's book, it's more than clear this comic is anything but. There's a reason why this comic's considered a precursor to Maus in the first place.
- Toon Physics: Mickey mentions he uses this tactic to escape the camp in the final panel, as he erases himself with a stroke of an eraser and redraws himself again since he's "just a cartoon".
- Truly Single Parent: Mickey tells the judge he has no mother, to the latter's confusion, as he says he's known guys who were fatherless, but not motherless.