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United in Times of War: Reading Mickey in 1940-1944 France

Unis en temps de guerre : lire Mickey dans la France de 1940-1944
Eva Van De Wiele

Résumés

Les bandes dessinées ont construit et maintenu des relations avec leurs lecteurs au fil du temps, menant à ce que Martin Barker a appelé un « contrat ». Roger Sabin, par exemple, a montré comment le journal Ally Sloper’s Half Holliday, publié au xixe siècle, favorisait un sentiment d’amitié avec les lecteurs, qui avaient l’impression que leurs opinions étaient entendues. De même, les magazines pour enfants ont utilisé l’interaction avec les lecteurs comme un outil affectif à des fins de marketing et d’endoctrinement politique. L’hebdomadaire français pour enfants Le journal de Mickey en est un exemple frappant. À partir de 1934, il a créé une communauté par le biais de lettres, de concours et de clubs. Cet article examine les sections participatives des lecteurs du Journal de Mickey de 1940 à 1944, produites à Marseille, qui ont rarement été étudiées. Reflétant des lecteurs implicites plutôt que réels, ces sections révèlent comment les enfants ont été tout à la fois consolés du conflit et distraits de celui-ci, mobilisés et engagés pour l’effort de guerre. J’étudie l’impact de la cohésion sociale offerte par le Club Mickey à travers les activités des enfants pendant cette période. Combinant des lectures qualitatives approfondies avec un aperçu quantitatif, l’article analyse les changements dans les sections interactives du magazine de 1940 à 1944. Il met en évidence le passage d’un contenu américain à un contenu national, l’équilibre délicat entre la propagande nationale et le soutien affectif des lecteurs, ainsi que le rôle et les responsabilités des enfants dans la guerre. Cette recherche comble une lacune dans l’étude des magazines pour enfants pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en étendant les méthodologies des travaux de Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau et Manon Pignot sur la Première Guerre mondiale pour comprendre les effets de la Seconde Guerre mondiale sur la presse enfantine française.

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Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 See Maaheen Ahmed, “Popular Culture”, in: Marysa Demoor, Cedric van Dijck, Birgit Van Puymbroeck (e (...)

1In France, periodicals such as La semaine de Suzette (1905) and Fillette (1909) accompanied French youth amid First World War turmoil1. They survived until the 1960s, but their allure declined when Paul Winkler started Le journal de Mickey (Le JdM) in 1934. While American cartoon characters attracted the young French throughout the 1930s, from 1940 onwards, their imported imagery sharply contrasted with the domestic situation. In the firm hold of the reactionary Vichy regime and (partial and full) German occupation, Le JdM altered its approach to local readers.

  • 2 The Second World War period is mentioned in Patrick Weber’s book La grande histoire du Journal de M (...)
  • 3 See for instance Margaret Beetham’s seminal article “Open and Closed: The Periodical as a Publishin (...)
  • 4 Jacqueline Reid-Walsh calls children interactors”, arguing that reading books entails more than in (...)
  • 5 According to Nicholas Stargardt, we have to examine children’s activities – their forms of play – o (...)

2Whereas Le JdM’s publication has been researched by historians of comics and scholars focusing on the innovative comics it contained2, this article highlights the magazine’s value as a cultural artefact. As such, the magazine reflects changing ideas on childhood in France during the Second World War. This article therefore argues for an examination of the shifting nature of the reader address and participation, owing to the occupation of France. Interactive communication with readers was by no means an exclusivity of Le JdM; nor was it related solely to wartime publication. It is one of the basic ingredients of periodicals.3 Readers interact4 with their magazines and peers through play, letters and competitions. Those interactive components of periodicals offer valuable information on children as subjects rather than objects of history.5

  • 6 M. Ahmed, “Popular Culture”, op. cit., p. 95.

3Between 1940 and 1944, Le JdM directly addressed its young readers both as French citizens and as children experiencing war. Its serial publication throughout years of crisis involved its readership with the political cause, but also attempted to maintain readers’ loyalty and to provide them with emotional support. Previously, during the Great War, as Maaheen Ahmed states: “children’s magazines [had] rallied behind the nation, providing emotional support while maintaining a profitable commercial activity.”6 To track such serial strategies of affective connection, political indoctrination and commercial profit, I closely investigate the evolutions in the readers’ correspondence with Uncle Léon (Club Mickey), the readers’ page, the creation of a sports section and, later, that of a mathematical club; lastly, I analyse the paratextual messages that called on children to undertake charitable action. This article shows how those interactive sections evolved between 1940 and 1944 and juxtaposes quantitative data to close readings in order to understand French children’s reception of the magazine.

1. American Comics for French Children

  • 7 Alberto Becattini, Disney Comics: The Whole Story, Theme Park Press, 2016, p. 175.
  • 8 Laurence Grove, Mickey, Le Journal de Mickey and the Birth of the Popular BD”, Belphégor, vol. 1, (...)
  • 9 Alain Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes et des journaux d’enfants : 1768-1988, Paris, Édit (...)
  • 10 King Features Syndicate was the main agency of William Hearst, founded by Moses Konigsberg in 1914 (...)
  • 11 L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit. Grove’s information is based on Thierry Groensteen, “La Mise en cause (...)
  • 12 Opera Mundi sold this material, for instance, to the Spanish magazine Mickey, revista infantil ilus (...)
  • 13 Annie Renonciat, “Arthème Fayard’s Magazines and the Promotion of Picture Stories ‘à La Française’” (...)
  • 14 Joël Kotek and Didier Pasamonik, Mickey à Gurs : les carnets de dessins de Horst Rosenthal, Paris, (...)
  • 15 Georges Sadoul, Ce que lisent vos enfants, Paris, Bureau d’Éditions, 1938, p. 21-22, and L. Grove, (...)
  • 16 Ibid.
  • 17 Other French children’s magazines launched in 1934 also folded within the year: L’étoile qui rit, L (...)
  • 18 L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit.

4Two years after editor Nerbini revolutionised Italian children’s press with Topolino – a magazine whose header and 6-panel comic starred a mouse inspired by Mickey cartoons –7 Le JdM’s first issue of 21 October 1934 similarly introduced French youth to what Laurence Grove has called “modern francophone bande dessinée”.8 Alain Fourment has congruously argued that Le JdM opened up a “vast domain of foreign, mainly American comics, to French readers”.9 The man responsible for the importation of American comics was Paul Winkler. Through his syndicate Opera Mundi, he obtained the exclusive rights to American series and King Features Syndicate10 titles in collaboration with Hachette.11 Winkler’s Opera Mundi was instrumental in the international dissemination of American comics.12 The format of Le JdM was bigger than Fayard’s traditional “picture stories”13, and its innovative comics with balloons, animated movements, and cinematographic influence, laid the foundations for the periodical’s success.14 By 1938, circulation figures of Le JdM and its “sister publication” Robinson (1936) had risen to 400,000.15 “The closest competitors of the time were Cino Del Duca’s journals such as Hurrah ! and L’Aventureux (100-200,000 each) which were almost entirely based on imports”.16 Consequently, many older magazines folded17 or changed between 1936 and 1939.18

  • 19 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Profession, 1991, p. 34.
  • 20 I apply the argument made by Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen and M. O. Grenby in their introducti (...)
  • 21 See Casey Brienza’s Manga in America, New York, Bloomsbury, 2016.

5However, as Grove has importantly shown, the periodical’s success with French youth was also built on its local contents. By appropriating American material, the European periodical became what Mary Louise Pratt calls a “contact zone”, a space where “cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other”.19 That grappling almost inevitably produced hybridity, as new textual formations emerged from the encounters between American and French traditions.20 The novel format of Le JdM hybridised American comics with carefully constructed French references throughout the magazine. This endeavour to adapt American comics as cartoons by translating, reformatting and editing them so that they would feel less “alien” to French readers, is what Casey Brienza calls “domestication”.21 This article studies domestication in Le JdM by showing that the local address in paratextual and interactive sections, especially in wartime, manifests changed ideas on childhood and an autarchic inclination in France.

  • 22 M. Pignot, “Suzette contre Fillette”, op. cit., p. 221.

6Le JdM cleverly juxtaposed adapted American content with local references and national subjects. Children were invited to a national conversation and addressed as nieces and nephews by Uncle Léon, they read about French sports and national aviation heroes and found informational pieces on their home country. Likewise, the multitude of Mickey Clubs brought together French children in play and games during summer camps in coastal towns. In wartime, both the domesticated comics and the local address changed. When history took a dramatic turn, in 1940, the magazine cried out for national charity and solidarity, heavily promoted sports and helped children express their feelings about their fathers’ departure.22 The following explores the evolution of the periodical: progressively estranged from the globally circulating and innovative entertainment, and increasingly inscribed within nationally organised indoctrination of French children.

2. Le journal de Mickey during World War II

  • 23 P. Weber, La Grande Histoire du Journal de Mickey, op. cit., p. 36.
  • 24 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 231.
  • 25 P. Weber, La Grande Histoire du Journal de Mickey, op. cit., p. 36.

7From 1940, Le JdM underwent significant changes: on 16 June, the Paris publication was suspended and its legendary issue n° 296 was, in fact, never distributed.23 The team, determined to continue their work, fled to the free zone in the south of France.24 While Paul Winkler, as a Hungarian Jew, chose exile in the US with his three children, his wife Betty Winkler stayed in Marseilles, taking charge of the magazine. She had to “contend with the administrative hassle of Vichy censorship [and] to plead the magazine’s cause, denying that it mocked the Germans in its pages.”25 The adaptations that followed increasingly domesticated the magazine, until the only material left was locally produced.

  • 26 I am referring to Scott Bukatman’s notion of comics characters as animated, i.e. highly kinetic, an (...)
  • 27 Ibid.

8The impact of war is clear from the image below (ill. 1): Le JdM merged with another Opera Mundi children’s periodical, Hop-Là ! (1937). Le journal de Mickey et Hop-Là ! réunis combined local and global content until June 1942: the front cover offered a Disney story and a domestic series on a bald kid, Babou, while the back cover featured Prince Vaillant. To fit the domestic to the global on the cover, the primary colours of the Mickey comics (strong yellows, blues and reds) were mimicked in Babou. But the French series lacked the animatedness26 of the American characters. From July 1942 onwards, domestication reached its extreme: American series were eliminated from the magazine and children had to content themselves with French material.27 Total German occupation of France in November 1942 also led to the transformation of other sections.

Illustration 1 : Le journal de Mickey of 13 July 1942 versus Le journal de Mickey of 17 November 1940. Image source: Van Passen Collection, Ghent University.

  • 28 The periodical shrank in 12 July 1942 from 31.5 by 4.5 cm to 2.5 by 31 cm, the price went up from 1 (...)

9The Second World War impacted both the content and the form of Le JdM. Restrictions on ink and paper caused a drop in the number of pages, paper quality decreased and colour (partly) disappeared even as prices went up.28 Meanwhile, the editorial communication insisted on issues such as paper shortage and the need for solidarity with one’s compatriots.

  • 29 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 251 & 260.
  • 30 Half of the population of Casablanca (Morocco) were Europeans. The city was under Vichy’s control u (...)

10After June 1940, Le JdM solely circulated in the free south of France. French children in the north saw their reading choice limited to the following: Les grandes aventures (September 1940-1941), Gavroche (October 1940-December 1941), Fanfan la Tulipe (May 1941-March 1942), Journal de Taty (June-December 1941), and Le téméraire (15 January 1943-1 August 1944). That last periodical especially strove to lay the foundations for a French equivalent of Hitler youth brigades.29 Le journal de Mickey testifies to that new lack of readership from the north of France: from 1940 onwards, the reported locations of child readers mention cities ranging from Cannes to Casablanca,30 Lyon, Montpellier, Nice, Nîmes, Toulouse and Sète.

  • 31 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 261.
  • 32 French children’s publications came to a general halt by October 1944, as Fourment explains: “The s (...)

11The Germans’ total occupation of France in November 1942 changed the face of many periodicals in the south, and with it that of children’s readings. Coeurs vaillants, for instance, ceased to support Marshal Pétain, turned to passive resistance, and its remaining cartoonists in Paris were arrested by the Gestapo.31 In the case of Le JdM, Disney series were eliminated and many sections transformed. Child readers were undoubtedly aware of the changes made to their reading material, as their loyal readership had habituated them to recurring items. After issue n° 477, published on 2 July 1944, the magazine vanished altogether for eight years, but readers could have seen this coming: the journal’s direction had apologized for irregular issues since 18 June 1944.32

3. Changing Ways of Interacting with Readers

  • 33 The Alain Van Passen collection is housed at the Faculty of Arts Library of Ghent University. For a (...)

12Due to the war and the abovementioned changes, Le JdM’s interactive sections evolved. To track the evolution in reader address and interaction, this article draws from a corpus of approximately 180 issues published between 22 September 1940 (n° 297) and 2 July 1944 (n° 477), kept at the Alain Van Passen collection at the Ghent University Library.33 As a weekly periodical, there were mostly four or five issues per month, except from late 1943 when publication was reduced to one or two times a month. To compare this data across years, I refer to the presence of the relative sections as a percentage of the monthly issues. At first, the readers’ page [“La page de nos lecteurs”], and the correspondence section (either named “Le Club Mickey” or “Onc’ Léon répond”) were presented together on the sixth page of the periodical. Their presence runs more or less simultaneously and is reasonably consistent until 1941 (see ill. 2a and b). Then, with the decline of the readers’ page and correspondence between mid-1940 and mid-1942 came the progressive presence of a “Mickey Sports” section (see ill. 2c). By the end of 1942 and with the complete elimination of Disney characters, this section too was domesticated by focusing on local characters doing sports (Tatou, Minouchette and Yanic, see ill. 6). This meant that the presence of the readers in the journal drastically declined, while overall text-heaviness increased. As is clear from the graphs (ill. 2a, b), however, the correspondence page and the readers’ page did not disappear entirely until after 1943. They returned around the turn of the year (in 1942 and in 1943) indicating that those were moments when more child address was tolerated or desirable. Still, the only interaction left by 1943-1944 was a section dedicated to a mathematical club called “Le cercle Eureka” (see ill. 2d).

Illustration 2 : The evolution of the correspondence, the readers’ page, the sections Mickey Sports and Cercle Eureka between 1940 and 1944 in Journal de Mickey.

13The following part discusses the quantitative data of the different sections illustrated above in detail.

4. Corresponding with Onc’ Léon

  • 34 Jessica Kohn, Travailler dans les petits Mickeys : les dessinateurs-illustrateurs en France et en B (...)
  • 35 Uncle Léon’s real name was Léon Sée. He was replaced by his son-in-law when the offices moved to Ma (...)

14Children’s magazines addressed their readership through “a mediating figure: the Fureteur and Uncle Paul in Spirou, the pages of Uncle Tom or the ‘Ici et Ailleurs’ pages in Vaillant and Uncle Léon in Journal de Mickey”.34 Those spokesmen embodied the periodical’s educational task, teaching the child reader about a wide range of topics, and ensured affective rapport with the readers. Onc’ Léon35 instructed his nephews and nieces on diverse school subjects, discussed paper shortage and the national lottery, or used moral proverbs to lecture on proper behaviour. Léon’s letters paraphrased questions from boys and girls including their first, last name and location, but never reported them entirely.

  • 36 M. Ahmed, “Popular Culture”, op. cit., p. 99-100.

15Through Léon’s address, the anonymous editorial team established emotional connections with and between their readers. As the leader of a “club” and an intimate family member, Léon created a space of support. Peers expressed (as did characters in the comics and serials) the struggles of French 1940s childhood and channelled “the realities, fears and hopes of […] readers”, like the First World War periodicals studied by Ahmed.36 The commercial reasons for the resulting affective attachment are evident, but especially in times of war, those reasons were not exclusively economic.

16French children from the free south used the readers’ column, for instance, to overcome the lack of a paternal figure at home. On 29 June 1941, Lucie L. (Béziers) asks Léon’s advice on how to deal with her 14-year-old brother Louis’ laziness: “As I’m responsible, after Mum, for my brothers and sisters – Dad’s in the occupied zone – I haven’t hesitated to ask you what remedy should be applied to such a devastating illness.” Lucie feels comfortable enough to address her “uncle” informally and describes her brother’s lack of initiative as an illness. Lucie’s question reveals the extent to which girls interiorised ideas of responsibility and feelings of guilt in a war where (young) men were giving their lives for them. Her absent father has been sent to the occupied part of France. With her letter, she asks for an adult male’s opinion about her brother’s conduct.

17Marjorie Curtis’s contribution on the same page (29 June 1941, p. 6) is a poem entitled “The Pendulum”:

The clock sings tic-tac
The storm sparks tic-tac
The rain pours tic-tac
And the ridge falls tic-tac
I rub my nose tic-tac
In front of the fireplace tic-tac
I don’t waste my time tic-tac
I always have to be happy tic-tac
When knitting a scarf tic-tac
I escape boredom tic-tac
To the story of the clock tic-tac
I lend a credulous ear tic-tac.

  • 37 Ibid., p. 218.

Marjorie links the clock’s ticking to female chores (knitting) that cannot bore her. Her poem evinces the internalisation of the expected behaviour of girls and the specific, domestic spaces to which they were relegated during wartime. More girls’ poems in Le JdM offer insights into girls’ war activities. On 6 April 1941, a poem by Marie Flaugère (Lyon) entitled “Triolet” is dedicated “To my comrade Jean B..., currently a prisoner”. Marie is writing comforting words to a young man at war, continuing the mobilisation of girls during the First World War. As Pignot argued, making girls act as “young godmothers” to soldiers, was another way of cultivating a sense of female culpability.37

  • 38 Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France. Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, New York, Columbia University P (...)

18The only future for boys, on the contrary, was active warfare. Léon envisions battle for Lucie’s brother: “I advise Louis L... to shed his nonchalance […] he should look after his health and arm himself for the daily battle.” Léon’s advice is to prepare oneself for battle by maintaining one’s health and joining a youth organisation; it chimes with the chastising hand and paternal role of Marshal Pétain.38

  • 39 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 227.

19Le JdM further iterated the regime’s inculcation of charity “towards those of our brothers and sisters struck by fate”.39 On 13 April 1941, for example, a small text box (“À nos lecteurs”) stated that sergeant Pierre La Cal, a “friend of Journal de Mickey and Robinson” asked readers to send a football to “their distant older brother”, a prisoner-of-war in Stalag III, a German camp, stating “every football match will be for him an hour of hope and joy that he owes you”. Children are presented with a way to reduce their guilt about not being active in war by acting as charitable friends. The young men at war and in camps, were thus united with younger readers at home, through Le JdM’s imagined community.

  • 40 For instance, in the summer of 1943 such Secours national disclaimers can be found in issues publis (...)
  • 41 National campaigns were launched, such as the “school rabbit campaigns”. Guided by their teachers, (...)

20Additionally, the periodical heavily promoted the Secours national. Founded in 1914 to help people affected by the First World War, the organisation was reactivated in 1939, and used to launch public appeals for generosity. Vichy used it as a powerful propaganda tool. The organisation, which relied on the work of 5,000 employees and the help of 35,000 volunteers, became the main player in humanitarian action during the Occupation. In fact, it was the only organisation authorised to launch appeals to public generosity. Léon repeated this appeal in a letter of 16 March 1941, calling for his readers’ solidarity. From 1943 Le JdM explicitly mobilised national charity through weekly publicity.40 Block-lettered messages in boxes demanded: “You have money, donate it/ You have wool, give it away/ You own nothing, give your time, force, heart. Secours National” (Le JdM, 11 July 1943). Le JdM thus contributed to a national action that incited children, in their leisure time and at school, to counteract shortages in a land exporting its riches to Germany.41

21Le JdM also promoted the anti-tuberculosis stamps, a socio-sanitary project launched in March 1944 to raise money for healthcare. The periodical was under obligation to publish propaganda for this new campaign. The message was “not to refuse to buy a stamp”, as it represented “an hour of sun and pure air for a sick child” (Le JdM, 26 March 1944). The campaign’s iterated slogan appealed to patriotic feelings: “To fight tuberculosis is to serve the country”. The image on the stamp underlined the ideal outcome: framed by the national flag’s colours, a healthy boy in shorts stands proudly with raised arms in front of a recovery house.

22The flipside of charity, frugality, was also present in Le JdM. Children were warned about the need to economise because of the array of materials in short supply. On 23 March 1941, Léon warned against throwing away older issues of Le JdM. On 24 May 1941 an anonymous text entitled “To our readers” warned that the periodical’s continuation depended on children’s paper rationing. Léon also discussed the scarcity of metals: “The recovery of non-ferrous metals is a matter of utmost urgency: to respond promptly is to be French!” (Le JdM, 14 December 1941). On other occasions, bricolage [DIY] sections taught boys and girls how to protect their bike tyres (Le JdM, 2 November 1941) or how to make objects out of a few pieces of cheap materials. In sum, Le JdM personalised the appeal of national projects and united its reader community in the face of war in favour of peer support and societal action.

5. Mediated Reader Response

23Léon was not the only mediating figure in Le JdM, cartoonists and editorial staff played an influential role in readers’ lives, too. The readers’ page solicited contributions and mentioned children’s names and locations in the following sections: “Leurs poésies” [Their poems], “Onc’ Léon répond” [Uncle Léon answers], “Pour rire un peu” [Let’s laugh a bit], “Nos charades rimées” [Our rhyming riddles] and “À travers le monde” [Across the world]. The poems and questions were content directly cited from child readers. To mark the horizontal relationship with the reader, children’s poems were published right next to Léon’s correspondence. Other sections were curated by adult collaborators. In “Pour rire un peu”, cartoonists turned children’s gags into cartoons stating “based on an idea suggested by...”. In “À travers le monde”, journalists provided children with interesting facts written as small texts. The readers’ page further offered DIY activities to activate children’s hands, announced various competitions, and proclaimed their subsequent winners. By publishing such sections on a fixed page on a weekly basis, the magazine gave children a voice and an audience.

24However, from 1942 onwards, as illustrations 2a and b show, the correspondence and readers’ page was considerably less present. French readers had to carefully scan the pages to find their uncle’s weekly letter under “Le Club Mickey”. On 17 May 1942, for instance, the Club is sandwiched between American humorous comics: the Katzenjammer Kids and Disney’s Hiawatha. Far removed from the colonialist slapstick and animated accidents in those episodes, Léon explains to his “dear nephews and nieces” how to maintain their mental health. He does not mention war but encourages them, through a “lesson from Nature” to “keep the inner life deep in our hearts, sheltered from everything that mocks, attacks, destroys and corrupts the enthusiasm of life.” (ill. 3). Such texts show that Le JdM offered, alongside global comics, local support to children.

Illustration 3: Le journal de Mickey, 17 May 1942, p. 3.

25The increasing pressure of censors and the reality of war changed Le JdM further: first the correspondence was gradually phased out in favour of “Mickey Sports” (compare ill. 2a, b and c), then “Mickey Sports” was replaced by “Le cercle Eureka” after July 1942 (ill. 2d).

6. Uniting Readers through (Mickey) Sports

  • 42 Education in France became compulsory with the Jules Ferry law of 28 March 1882. The obligation app (...)
  • 43 Thierry Terret, “L’identité de l’éducation physique à l’école primaire (1880-1998)”, Spirales, n° 1 (...)
  • 44 Ibid., p. 342.
  • 45 Évelyne Combeau-Mari, “Les politiques de la jeunesse et des sports du régime de Vichy à la Réunion  (...)
  • 46 T. Terret, “L’identité de l’éducation physique, op. cit., p. 343.

26Gymnastics had been a mandatory subject in primary education since Jules Ferry’s law on compulsory education of 28 March 1882.42 The principal idea was that attention paid in primary school to physical exercise could “prepare and predispose boys to the future work of labourers and soldiers, and girls to the care of the household and the work of women”.43 Sports became more important, when, in 1937, Léo Lagrange and Henri Sellier created the Brevet sportif populaire (BSP), a diploma that assessed a person’s athletic performance. In 1938, this BSP was imposed as a physical education test for the Certificat d’études, the examination that marked the end of primary school.44 Even though the sports initiatives of the Front Populaire were abolished under Vichy, its educational choices were largely continued. Vichy replaced the BSP with a Brevet sportif national and chose active over abstract education through natural exercises,an introduction to sports, manual work, outdoor activities, and first aid. Pétain preferred healthy, courageous, disciplined French children to “useless, pseudo-cultured bookworms”.45 As a result, school timetables significantly increased the number of hours allocated to sports (nine, then seven hours per week). However, the widespread under-nutrition of children from 1941 onwards raises doubts about the actual implementation of such changes.46

  • 47 Christophe Pécout, “Les pratiques physiques et sportives au service de l’idéal vichyste : L’exemple (...)
  • 48 E. Combeau-Mari, “Les politiques de la jeunesse”, op. cit., p. 137.
  • 49 The bulletin is digitised on Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k11644013.

27Le JdM aligned with Vichy’s educational exaltation of physical exercise, by directing its reader community towards sports.47 Le JdM became an instrument of propaganda for the “Commissariat général à l’Éducation générale et sportive” [General Commission of Education and Sports] created by Vichy on 7 August 1940.48 By June 1942 this commission had its own monthly “bulletin”,49 but before such a periodical existed, children’s magazines like Le JdM supported the Commission’s glorification of sports through comics and interactive practices.

28From July 1941, the correspondence and reader’s page gradually yielded to “Mickey Sports” on page 6 of the magazine (ill. 4). On the cover of issue 340 on 20 July 1941, a big red paratextual reference cried out “In this issue: Mickey-Sports! The Commissariat général à l’Éducation nationale et aux sports page!”. In his editorial communication, Léon motivated readers to perfect their bodies, spread the pleasure of sports around them, and then write about sports in the form of articles or drawings as a “living proof of [their] enthusiasm!” Le JdM thus changed the readers’ page and thereby altered its expectations of readers.

29In illustration 4, the sports section takes up considerable space on the readers’ page (with poetry, gags and a correspondence section) and consists of informational, illustrated texts, and a humorous gag strip on sports. The contrasting image of a boy bent over his bench admonishes readers against bad posture, and that visual message is supported by the words in the title: “Sit up straight at the table”. The physical activity of these realistically drawn boys and girls is different from that of the characters in the comic Bizou sportif, whose caricature style underscores the comic’s slapstick humour. Unlike Bizou, none of the girls or boys suffer, beat others or get beaten; rather, they thrive because of the sports and outdoor activities they pursue. In case the images alone did not get the message across, the small editorial text written in a squiggly-lined box at the bottom right of illustration 4 underlined the take-home message. Echoing the words of the Marshal, the text intended to convince children (just as they were about to turn the page of their periodical) that they would find more pleasure in playing in the school playground with their classmates than by remaining “lonely dreamers”.

Illustration 4: Le journal de Mickey, 10 August 1941, p. 6.

  • 50 L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit.

30With time, the sports section was to replace the readers’ page (ill. 5). The graph (ill. 2c) might suggest that “Mickey Sports was only present until the end of 1942, but the section simply changed name to stop referring to the Disney character. The elimination of Mickey from this section and from comics, announced another evolution that took place slightly later, namely by July 1949, when French “law had assured that the vast majority of comics productions were home grown”50. The presence of Mickey and other American characters was thus progressively shunned.

31After Mickey was eliminated, three home-grown characters embodied the sports page: an adolescent boy called Yanic, a younger girl Minouchette and a comics character Tatou, signed R. F. (ill. 5). This new readers’ page made sharp gender distinctions (both in relation to readers and contributors) and excluded the voice of actual readers. The illustrated text directed to girls, “Minouchette practices sports”, is signed by a woman named “Babiche”. The page layout and vertical line separating Yanic and Minouchette amplify the gender-divide on the readers’ page. While “Yanic becomes a man” underscores virility, Minouchette’s conversation with an adult interlocutor shows her ignorance of sports rules. The text’s informational load does not fit the image of a girl on a springboard at a swimming pool. Her hesitation contrasts with the determination expressed by Yanic, the exemplary boy character in the image on the left (ill. 5).

Illustration 5: The new readers’ page from 30 August 1942, sports without Mickey but with domestic characters.

32When the sports page subsided altogether around 1942 – probably because those responsible for the section were mobilised or had to quit the journal under complete German occupation – other techniques of community building were used.

7. Not Just Sports: Intellectual Adolescents and Famous Frenchmen

33Two new sections strove to compensate for the loss of a community and that of Uncle Léon’s mediating figure: the sections “Les soirées du cercle Eureka” [Evenings at the Eureka Circle], and “Leurs années à l’école” [Their school years] (ill. 6). Both overemphasised the informational format of former sections like “Qu’en dites-vous ?” [What do you say?] a four-panel picture story with knowledgeable historical and geographical facts. The Eureka circle was a constant presence until the end of the publication in 1944. The section targeted a somewhat older readership, as suggested by the image accompanying the header: a group of adolescents in neat clothes stand or sit around an older master. The complexity of the matters discussed further substantiates that older readership. Perhaps as important as the readership is the fact that scientific (mathematical) riddles were ideologically neutral and could not upset possible censors.

  • 51 Roger Sabin, “Ally Sloper: The First Comics Superstar?”, Image & Narrative, n° 7, 2003, URL : https (...)
  • 52 Robert DeCordova, “Tracing the Child Audience: The Case of Disney, 1929-1933”, in: Prima dei codici (...)

34The text presenting the Eureka circle of mathematicians (upper half, ill. 6), imitates friendly, ongoing conversation between peers: a circle of young adults gathers in the evening to discuss and solve riddles. Both through indirect speech referring to earlier talks on the subject, and through literal quotes from a conversation between boys who are named, the section draws the reader into a circle of trust and equality. The club format thus tried to give readers a sense of being involved. This “friendship technique” was not new, nor was it confined to a specific medium or format. Comics historian Roger Sabin has demonstrated how, in the late-nineteenth-century, British comics character Ally Sloper’s fan club buttressed fandom and solidified what Martin Barker defined as “the magazine’s contract with the reader”.51 Film scholar Richard DeCordova has indicated how Mickey clubs in America boosted the attendance of matinee sessions, while convincing mothers of the positive effects of Disney cartoons on their children’s upbringing.52 Clubs thus expressed the imagined sentiments of readers (and their guardians), giving them the illusion of being involved in a didactic experience and entertaining dialogue. While the design mimicked a readers’ community, the Eureka circle never mentioned actual child readers. The conversation in the Eureka circle was no longer the direct or indirect reflection of actual readers’ letters: with the progress of war and the total occupation of the country, communication through letters was impossible.

35Political indoctrination through glorification of the past, by contrast, increased. The Eureka circle was repeatedly combined with a recurring section on the school years of famous Frenchmen (lower half, ill. 6). It detailed the childhoods of artists like Bizet and Rimbaud, philosophers like Diderot, and military leaders like Marshal Bugeaud and General La Fayette, etc. with a drawing of their busts, and a short biography in the form of a brief text. The series was signed L.G.S., and added to the glorification of France’s past, as well as to the education of French youth of the 1940s. The section aimed to resonate with children by depicting these figures in their youth, fostering a sense of connection and a seemingly equal relationship with the child.

Illustration 6: Le journal de Mickey, n° 461, 5 December 1943, p. 7.

  • 53 Lara Saguisag, “RAW and Little Lit: Resisting and Redefining Children’s Comics”, in: Mark Heimerman (...)

36In the context of war, when ideas from children could no longer figure through letter pages, fictional alternative communities thus replaced interaction and correspondence. With the disappearance of an actual letter column, the Eureka circle tried to provide children with an alternative sense of community: a fictional place for readers to meet like-minded readers and to find out whether they had been smart enough to solve the riddle. The ploy behind the Eureka riddle section was not only affective but also commercial. It can be compared to the efficacy and suspense of comics’ “to be continued”. The solution of the problems would only be given in the following instalment.53

Conclusion

37This article has focused on the interactive sections in Le JdM to map the ways in which child readers were addressed and expected to react during the Second World War. Between 1940 and 1944, the journal evolved from a highly responsive format that made room for readers on the readers’ page, through correspondence and competitions, to a considerably less interactive periodical. I have indicated how interactive sections managed to balance two goals: establishing an affective rapport and allowing for political indoctrination. On the one hand, the magazine gave children a voice and an audience, and helped children with the problems of wartime childhood. On the other, the periodical was used to “inforce social and moral codes, heighten gender barriers, and accentuate the consequences of cultural differences” as Pignot stated about First World War periodicals. Le JdM readers thus faced Vichy propaganda. While children in the “free” south of France were progressively indoctrinated with the rhetoric of the regime, however, those in the occupied north completely lost access to their JdM from 1940.

  • 54 M. Pignot, “Suzette contre Fillette”, op. cit., p. 211.

38The war changed the periodical, and the periodical altered its readers. Le JdM moved its publishing headquarters to the south, shrank in size, reduced its pages and use of colour, replaced American series with domestic ones and redesigned interactive sections. Instrumentalising the reader community and changing the journal itself into a microcosm of France, Le JdM supported Pétain’s regime, inculcating “in young Frenchmen a team spirit, solidarity, a sense of service to the community and obedience to the authorities.”54 The children’s magazine thus aligned with educational policies and the indoctrination of children in youth organisations. Because of political pressure and the convoluted context, the magazine’s pages insistently urged children to become more attuned to local socio-economical needs, and to live up to local expectations. Boys and girls, for instance, were instructed about charity, frugality and economy while both sexes were rigidly separated in the sports section.

  • 55 N. Stargardt, “Jeux de guerre”, op. cit., p. 62.

39Still, through leisure time activities offered to boys and girls (whether practising sports, enrolling in a youth movement or joining a riddle club), this article suggests that Le JdM enduringly invested in the creation of a sense of community among its readers that went beyond war propaganda and cannot therefore be understood solely as a mere vehicle for political mobilisation. Le JdM offers a lens to observe how the carefully constructed protection of childhood since the Enlightenment55, and the twentieth-century consolidation of the child consumer persisted notwithstanding war necessities and propaganda.

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Notes

1 See Maaheen Ahmed, “Popular Culture”, in: Marysa Demoor, Cedric van Dijck, Birgit Van Puymbroeck (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023, p. 95. Further research on French children’s magazines from the First World War has been done by: Manon Pignot, “Suzette contre Fillette: La Grande Guerre de deux illustrés français”, in: Thierry Crépin and Françoise Hache-Bissette (eds.), Les presses enfantines chrétiennes au xxe siècle, Arras, Artois Presses Université, 2008, p. 211-24; Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, La Guerre Des Enfants, 1914-1918 : Essai d’histoire Culturelle, Paris, Armand Colin, 1993, and Laurence Olivier-Messonnier, Guerre et littérature de jeunesse (1913-1919) : Analyse des dérives patriotiques dans les périodiques pour enfants, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012. The recent The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals (2024), edited by Kristine Moruzi, Beth Rodgers, and Michelle J. Smith, contains many contributions on First-World-War and interwar periodicals from diverse Anglophone countries.

2 The Second World War period is mentioned in Patrick Weber’s book La grande histoire du Journal de Mickey de 1934 à nos jours, Boulogne-Billancourt, Glénat, 2014, p. 36. There is also a number of issues of Le collectionneur de BD dedicated to Le journal de Mickey: n° 15, 16, 55, 77.

3 See for instance Margaret Beetham’s seminal article “Open and Closed: The Periodical as a Publishing Genre”, Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 22, n° 3, 1989, p. 98.

4 Jacqueline Reid-Walsh calls children interactors”, arguing that reading books entails more than intellectual comprehension. See: Interactive Books: Playful Media before Pop-Ups, New York, Routledge, 2018, p. xx.

5 According to Nicholas Stargardt, we have to examine children’s activities – their forms of play – or consult children’s personal diaries. When no such sources are available, periodicals’ interactive components offer valuable alternatives. See Nicholas Stargardt, “Jeux de guerre. Les enfants sous le régime nazi”, in: Marie-Bénédicte Vincent (ed.), Le nazisme, régime criminel, Paris, Perrin, coll. Tempus, 2015, p. 69.

6 M. Ahmed, “Popular Culture”, op. cit., p. 95.

7 Alberto Becattini, Disney Comics: The Whole Story, Theme Park Press, 2016, p. 175.

8 Laurence Grove, Mickey, Le Journal de Mickey and the Birth of the Popular BD”, Belphégor, vol. 1, n° 1, 2001, URI : http://hdl.handle.net/10222/47641.

9 Alain Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes et des journaux d’enfants : 1768-1988, Paris, Éditions Éole, 1987, p. 218. All translations from French to English are mine.

10 King Features Syndicate was the main agency of William Hearst, founded by Moses Konigsberg in 1914 (L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit.).

11 L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit. Grove’s information is based on Thierry Groensteen, “La Mise en cause de Paul Winckler”, in: Thierry Crépin, Thierry Groensteen (eds.), On tue à chaque page : la loi de 1949 sur les publications destinées à la jeunesse, Paris, Éditions du Temps, 1999, p. 53-60.

12 Opera Mundi sold this material, for instance, to the Spanish magazine Mickey, revista infantil ilustrada [Illustrated Children’s Magazine] (Molino 1935-1936).

13 Annie Renonciat, “Arthème Fayard’s Magazines and the Promotion of Picture Stories ‘à La Française’”, European Comic Art, vol. 1, n° 2, 2008, p. 145–56.

14 Joël Kotek and Didier Pasamonik, Mickey à Gurs : les carnets de dessins de Horst Rosenthal, Paris, Calmann-Levy, 2014, p. 144.

15 Georges Sadoul, Ce que lisent vos enfants, Paris, Bureau d’Éditions, 1938, p. 21-22, and L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit.

16 Ibid.

17 Other French children’s magazines launched in 1934 also folded within the year: L’étoile qui rit, Les jeunes de France, Pour les jeunes (A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 421.)

18 L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit.

19 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Profession, 1991, p. 34.

20 I apply the argument made by Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen and M. O. Grenby in their introduction to Transnational Books for Children 1750-1900: Producers, Consumers, Encounters, Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2023, p. 1-15.

21 See Casey Brienza’s Manga in America, New York, Bloomsbury, 2016.

22 M. Pignot, “Suzette contre Fillette”, op. cit., p. 221.

23 P. Weber, La Grande Histoire du Journal de Mickey, op. cit., p. 36.

24 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 231.

25 P. Weber, La Grande Histoire du Journal de Mickey, op. cit., p. 36.

26 I am referring to Scott Bukatman’s notion of comics characters as animated, i.e. highly kinetic, and spirited characters in The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012, p. 23.

27 Ibid.

28 The periodical shrank in 12 July 1942 from 31.5 by 4.5 cm to 2.5 by 31 cm, the price went up from 1 franc in 1941 to 3 francs in 1944.

29 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 251 & 260.

30 Half of the population of Casablanca (Morocco) were Europeans. The city was under Vichy’s control until France surrendered to the American forces on 11 November 1942.

31 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 261.

32 French children’s publications came to a general halt by October 1944, as Fourment explains: “The shortage of paper – which, especially from 1943 onwards, limited pagination and hampered publication – the difficulties in supplying comic strips and the precariousness of distribution compromised the life of the newspapers. Every issue had to be seen as a tour de force.” Ibid., p. 233.

33 The Alain Van Passen collection is housed at the Faculty of Arts Library of Ghent University. For an introduction, see Hugo Frey’s 2023 article: https://ucldigitalpress.co.uk/BOOC/Article/3/125/.

34 Jessica Kohn, Travailler dans les petits Mickeys : les dessinateurs-illustrateurs en France et en Belgique de 1945 à 1968, PhD thesis in History, directed by Laurent Martin and Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, 2018, p. 490, URL : https://theses.hal.science/tel-02147283.

35 Uncle Léon’s real name was Léon Sée. He was replaced by his son-in-law when the offices moved to Marseilles. I would like to thank Maaheen Ahmed for sharing this information.

36 M. Ahmed, “Popular Culture”, op. cit., p. 99-100.

37 Ibid., p. 218.

38 Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France. Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, New York, Columbia University Press, 2001 (1972), p. 34. Other children’s press insisted on the Marshal, such as this ABC primer: https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/image/b547e107-b009-44d3-8c9b-4cce9abc3de8-abecedaire-du-marechal-petain.

39 A. Fourment, Histoire de la presse des jeunes, op. cit., p. 227.

40 For instance, in the summer of 1943 such Secours national disclaimers can be found in issues published on 11, 18 and 25 July, and 1 and 8 August 1943.

41 National campaigns were launched, such as the “school rabbit campaigns”. Guided by their teachers, schoolchildren in rural areas raised rabbits, to feed the needy. A diploma of honour rewarded the commitment of these young breeders and inscribed them in Pétain’s “peasant corporation”. See Philippe Burrin, “Vichy”, in: Pierre Nora (ed.) Les Lieux de Mémoire. III: Les France 1. Conflits et Partage, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1992, p. 332.

42 Education in France became compulsory with the Jules Ferry law of 28 March 1882. The obligation applied to all French and foreign children living in France from the age of 3 until the age of 13.

43 Thierry Terret, “L’identité de l’éducation physique à l’école primaire (1880-1998)”, Spirales, n° 13-14, 1998, p. 339.

44 Ibid., p. 342.

45 Évelyne Combeau-Mari, “Les politiques de la jeunesse et des sports du régime de Vichy à la Réunion : 1940-1942”, Outre-mers, vol. 91, n° 342-343, 2004, p. 136, DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/outre.2004.4086.

46 T. Terret, “L’identité de l’éducation physique, op. cit., p. 343.

47 Christophe Pécout, “Les pratiques physiques et sportives au service de l’idéal vichyste : L’exemple des Chantiers de la Jeunesse (1940-1944)”, Sciences sociales et sport, vol. 1, n° 1, 2008, p. 5, DOI : https://doi.org/10.3917/rsss.001.0005.

48 E. Combeau-Mari, “Les politiques de la jeunesse”, op. cit., p. 137.

49 The bulletin is digitised on Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k11644013.

50 L. Grove, “Mickey”, op. cit.

51 Roger Sabin, “Ally Sloper: The First Comics Superstar?”, Image & Narrative, n° 7, 2003, URL : https://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/graphicnovel/rogersabin.htm.

52 Robert DeCordova, “Tracing the Child Audience: The Case of Disney, 1929-1933”, in: Prima dei codici 2: Alle porte di Hays, Venice, Milan, La Biennale di Venezia/Fabbri Editori, 1991, p. 219.

53 Lara Saguisag, “RAW and Little Lit: Resisting and Redefining Children’s Comics”, in: Mark Heimermann, Brittany Tullis (eds.), Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2017, p. 132.

54 M. Pignot, “Suzette contre Fillette”, op. cit., p. 211.

55 N. Stargardt, “Jeux de guerre”, op. cit., p. 62.

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Table des illustrations

Légende Illustration 1 : Le journal de Mickey of 13 July 1942 versus Le journal de Mickey of 17 November 1940. Image source: Van Passen Collection, Ghent University.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/docannexe/image/11222/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 154k
Légende Illustration 2 : The evolution of the correspondence, the readers’ page, the sections “Mickey Sports” and “Cercle Eureka” between 1940 and 1944 in Journal de Mickey.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/docannexe/image/11222/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 82k
Légende Illustration 3: Le journal de Mickey, 17 May 1942, p. 3.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/docannexe/image/11222/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 77k
Légende Illustration 4: Le journal de Mickey, 10 August 1941, p. 6.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/docannexe/image/11222/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 502k
Légende Illustration 5: The new readers’ page from 30 August 1942, sports without Mickey but with domestic characters.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/docannexe/image/11222/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 175k
Légende Illustration 6: Le journal de Mickey, n° 461, 5 December 1943, p. 7.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/docannexe/image/11222/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 118k
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Référence électronique

Eva Van De Wiele, « United in Times of War: Reading Mickey in 1940-1944 France »Strenæ [En ligne], 25 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 novembre 2024, consulté le 15 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/11222 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/130td

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Auteur

Eva Van De Wiele

FWO postdoctoral researcher at the Universities of Ghent and Antwerp

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