The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet Read Free

experiments with the concept.
    On October 23, 1930, Disney releases “The Picnic,” featuring a bloodhound character, but with the name Rover, who in this cartoon belongs to Minnie Mouse. Both Rover and Minnie join ex-convict Mickey for a picnic. Minnie wants to eat. Rover wants to play. And Mickey, having spent so much time in jail, is horny. But Rover keeps preventing amorous encounters between Mickey and Minnie, angering Mickey. Rover makes amends by using his tail as a windshield wiper when Mickey and Minnie drive home in a rainstorm.
    At last, on May 3, 1931, Disney releases “The Mouse Hunt,” in which the playful bloodhound first appears as Pluto, Mickey’s dog. In a press release issued by Mickey Mouse, the rodent recalls Walt Disney suggesting the alliterative Pluto the Pup:
    Walt decided that I should have a pet and we decided on a dog. All the writers at Disney tried to come up with a name. We tried the “Rovers” and the “Pals”, but none seemed to fit. Then one day, Walt came by and said, how about Pluto the Pup? And that’s what it’s been ever since. 4
    After twenty or so cartoon appearances, Pluto finally stars in his own production. On November 26, 1937, Disney releases “Pluto’s Quin-Puplets,” in which Pluto is left in charge of five puppies as his Pekingese wife, Fifi, goes out for food. The puppies wreak puppy-havoc at home while Pluto gets drunk on moonshine. When Fifi returns, they all get kicked out of the doghouse.
    Such are the humble beginnings of a cartoon icon.
     
    While there is no unambiguous link between Pluto the Disney character and Pluto the planet, the connection has always been assumed. 5 We can bet that Walt Disney was not thinking about constipation when he suggested the name for Mickey’s dog; before the release of “Mouse Hunt,” Pluto the planet had already spent a full year wooing the hearts and minds of the American public. Whether or not Walt Disney was thinking about the cosmos when he named his dog is not important here. What matters is that the seeds were sown for planet Pluto to receive a level of attention from the American public that far exceeds its astrophysical significance in the solar system. The New York Times science writer Malcolm W. Brown, in a February 9, 1999, article on Pluto, quoted an unnamed astronomer who made a similar observation:
    If Pluto had been discovered by a Spaniard or Austrian, I doubt whether American astronomers would object to reclassifying it as a minor planet.
    Over the decades to follow, as the size, influence, and wealth of the Walt Disney conglomerate grew, now a $30 billion company, so, too, did the name Pluto in the collective sentiment of Americans. Indeed, the corporation had achieved a kind of control over our Plutonic emotions, leaving me with no choice but to label the Disney empire what it is:
    Plutocracy |pl-tä-kr-s| (noun) Government by the wealthy.
    1) a country or society governed in this way.
    2) an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth. 6
    As a scientist at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, I sustain an osmotic link with colleagues whose expertise draws from the entire animal kingdom. We’ve got herpetologists, paleontologists, entomologists, and mammalogists, to name a few. So while I cannot claim fluency on all subjects of natural history, I do claim sensitivity. This leads me to ask how it came to be that Pluto is Mickey’s dog, but Mickey is not Pluto’s mouse.
    Something is awry in the taxonomic class of mammals in the Disney universe.
    I would later learn that if you are a Disney character who wears clothes, no matter what your species, you can then own pets, who themselves wear no clothes at all, except perhaps for a collar. Pluto runs around naked except for a collar that says “Pluto.” Mickey runs around with yellow shoes, pants, white gloves, and the occasional bow tie; The haberdasheral hierarchy is clear.
     
    One never knows fully how and