Mickey Goes Meta Without Being Meta In ‘Get A Horse’
by Frank Martin
Being meta is a very useful storytelling tool. Writers can utilize it for all sorts of reasons. Typically, something is meta if it breaks the fourth wall and acknowledges the audience in some way. This doesn’t necessarily have to be overt. Sometimes being meta is simply a subtle nod to the audience without the character actually knowing that they are inside of a story. When a work is meta in this way, it’s very hard to push right up to the line of what’s considered a direct fourth-wall break without actually breaking it. But the Disney short “Get A Horse!” accomplishes this wonderfully.
The short begins with a very small black and white screen. Mickey, Minnie, and their friends are all loaded onto a caravan and going down the road. Pete drives his car up behind them, and he gets mad when he can’t pass. A scuffle breaks out, which results in Mickey breaking through the screen and falling into a theater. From there, he tries to find ways to interact with the film on the screen in order to save the others from Pete’s clutches. This involves water moving back and forth between the theater and the film, and even having the film turn upside down. To make things more complicated, the film is in black and white while the theater is in color and a different style of animation. Seeing characters going back and forth between the two is wild to watch.
All in all, the short is extremely entertaining. These classic Disney shorts are usually structured around slapstick comedy. There might be a thin plot to them, but physical comedy is the main driver, and “Get A Horse!” acknowledges this by utilizing the theater dynamic to an extreme degree. Of course, there have been stories in the past that treated the film world as its own alternate dimension. But none have gone to the extent that “Get A Horse!” does in terms of playing up its nature. The short acknowledges that the characters were originally in a fictional world. They then broke out into another fictional world without directly acknowledging the fact that the theater setting itself was still fictional. The presence of the real audience was never noted, which makes the short meta, in a way, without technically being meta.
“Get A Horse!” Is now streaming on Disney+
