“Sleepy Time Donald”

Daisy Duck was always considerably more likely to be the subject of a cartoon where she did things than Minnie was, which is what’s so frustrating about her current personality. Gold Age Minnie was bland, but Golden Age Daisy was often smart, determined, and independent. She solved problems. Oh, mostly problems with Donald, it’s true. But she was also fully capable of telling him where to get off, which Donald needs and never gets anymore. In Disney Dreamlight Valley, she barely seems to notice that one of his actions if you’re just kind of standing near him in game is to have a tantrum out of nowhere.

In this cartoon, he comes to her house. She realizes right away that he’s sleepwalking. She believes that you should never wake up or, it seems, even contradict a sleepwalker, so she follows him around to keep him out of danger. This involves wandering through a zoo, keeping him from being hit by all sorts of cars and things, and literally climbing around buildings. She saves his life easily a dozen times over the course of the short, and is he grateful? No. He’s Donald Duck.

Not only is this cartoon funny, it’s surprisingly inventive. Donald apparently becomes Spider-Man when he sleeps, and Daisy is stuck pursuing him. She holds his hand as he walks on the sides of buildings and fences, but then he goes into a building and she loses him. Eventually, there’s a scene wherein he’s on the underside of a ledge she’s on top of, after his walking across the ceiling of an apartment as she walks across the floor of the one above. It’s really well done, and it’s not the sort of thing I would have expected from a Donald Duck cartoon. Some of the Silly Symphonies are creative, but fewer of the main character cartoons.

Honestly, this short has made me decide to add its director, Jack King, to the schedule. Yes, he directed my all-time least-favourite Donald Duck cartoon, “Drip Dippy Donald.” (My entire family would complain when it played on The Disney Channel.) But his career was legitimately fascinating and also includes several I love, including “The Plastics Inventor.” And “Donald’s Nephews,” the first short with Huey, Dewey, and Louie. We will definitely have to talk about him at great length later, because there’s a lot to discuss.

This incarnation of Daisy deserves better. She goes to great lengths, including endangering herself, to keep Donald safe. Now, as it happens, the best thing you can do for a sleepwalker is gently awaken them and get them back into bed, and if Donald’s sleepwalking is this serious, he needs to be under care at night. But she is working with what she believes to be the facts on the subject and nearly dies herself keeping Donald from harm, and he laughs at her. Christ, what a sociopath.