Felix the Cat - Doubles for Darwin (1923)

★★★ · Fun, but not Felix's best. · Laemeur · 2009-12-21

I want to first address another reviewer's comments regarding the racist nature of the short: while we might very well "easily guess how they choose to animate black people", there aren't any black people in the cartoon. Exploitation of racial stereotypes certainly isn't absent from the Felix oeuvre, but it is (surprisingly) absent from this short as I see it. The "missing link" Felix finds in S. Africa is, firstly, tailed, furry, and clearly simian -- NOT, in my opinion, resembling the popular black caricature of the day, and more specifically, not resembling the "Sambo" caricatures that Pat…