“The Riveter”

At least the guy in Fantasia 2000 has a better experience being a riveter than Donald. But it is interesting that twice now Disney has featured someone who just walks onto a job site and is accepted as being a riveter right away. They’re both set in similar eras, inasmuch as the was set in the era in which it was made and the Fantasia 2000 segment is a period piece. So it’s not surprising there aren’t, say, background checks or what have you. It’s more surprising that both are just assumed to be able to do the job without any questions.

Pete (Billy Bletcher) is the foreman at a construction site. He hurls Donald’s old friend Peter Pig off the site and hammers, with his fist, a sign into the sidewalk saying that a riveter was wanted. Donald sees the sign and decides that he’s the sentient being for the job. He informs Pete of this, and Pete hires him on the spot. And sends him to the top of a skyscraper under construction, triggering Donald’s acrophobia. Donald manages to handle it, but he’s too small to work the riveting machine and ends up being seriously joggled by it. Hijinks ensue.

I’m aware I’m looking at this through a modern lens where Donald could theoretically sue, but what’s Pete thinking? Surely even in 1940 he would’ve been liable for the damages Donald could have done to the building. Pete twists an I-beam, which I grant you is cartoon whimsy, but still. If I were hiring Pete to put up my building, I’d want assurances that the people he hired to do the work were capable of doing it, and “I have hired some random guy off the street with no test or referrals to be sure he can do the work” is not what I’d be looking for.

As for Donald, what’s he thinking? He’s got to know he’s not a riveter. We know he doesn’t know how the machine works, because we see him trying to figure it out. But he’s matter-of-fact that he can do the job, both by entering the construction site in the first place and by demanding to be hired. He is, it’s true, shown as being gormless enough to not be suspicious of the Peter Pig-shaped hole in the fence, but there we are. That’s Donald for you. That part, at least, is believable of him.

Frankly, the whole thing feels like an exercise to get Pete and Donald in a chase on a construction site. They’re popular enough that, when Animaniacs sent Mindy and Buttons up there, they parodied the conceit by having other chases go past at the same time. It’s one of the stranger tropes in cartoons. At least in this one, they gave the characters a real reason for being there instead of just wandering onto the site, surely something that shouldn’t be as easy as cartoons make it seem. Even, when you get right down to it, this one.