“There was something that was lost once all of this ‘Let’s clean it up for the family’ came in,” Chad Moldenhauer, of Studio MDHR, told me. In animation, this meant a lot of animals were now wearing pants, and it meant cows no longer had udders. In live-action film, this meant thirty-some years of repressed sexuality and of good guys blandly triumphing over evil. And then they were gone: the puritanical Hays Code swept through Hollywood, “cleaning it up” by removing all traces of sexuality, heteronormative or otherwise, from American movies. If you want to know where Studio MDHR’s Cuphead came from, look at the cow udders, which were everywhere in the early days of animation, as if they were the cultural muse that sparked the whole movement. We are practically inside the cow udders for a second there, and then they’re gone. Watch the Minny’s-eye-view of an airplane chasing a cow, its udders the unadulterated focus of our attention, flopping back and forth as the cow gallops away from us, and then watch as we soar beneath the cow udders, the udders stretching and draping to the side of the screen. Watch “ Plane Crazy ,” which was Mickey Mouse’s first-ever appearance and actually predates the famous “Steamboat Willy” by a few years. Watch the cow stand upright and go for a run watch the udders flop gently downward, gravity doing its ineffable work. Look at them lolling over tree branches, dangling in the wind. If you want to know, here’s what you should do: Look at the cow udders. Then you think: Where on earth did that come from? When you first see Cuphead, you think: Wow, that looks good.
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