The great non-violent animated feature, The Iron Giant, bombed out at the box office. All Iron Giant images courtesy of and © 1999 Warner Bros.

Peace isn’t a popular theme in Hollywood or TV productions as it doesn’t sell a lot of tickets, toothpaste or spin-off toys. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by fans that love seeing Darth Vader threatening the existence of the universe, but Iron Giant, a great non-violent animated feature with a peace message, languished at the box office. While hostility, aggression and violence sells, fewer Americans are willing to purchase theater tickets or support advertisers of TV shows that depict people or animals living in harmony with each other.

Films about peace are generally made for idealistic reasons, and that job is usually left to independent animators and filmmakers. Since the artists making the films are often passionate about the subject, many animated films with peace messages in them are memorable works. One of the defining moments in my life was seeing three films by Norman McLaren when I was 12 or 13. For the first time I saw animation that wasn’t from Hollywood. I was delighted to see Fiddle De De (1947) and Hen Hop (1942), but the film that made the greatest impression was his Neighbours (1952). The use of pixelation amazed me and the “Love Thy Neighbor” message got through to me.

When I first told Animation World Magazine I wanted to write about peace, a war was just about to start in the Middle East. I didn’t rush into this project, as I wasn’t sure how one could best express peace in a film. After considerable research and thought, the following was organized around the different story structures of a few exceptional films.

Films About Cataclysmic Disasters
The most common plot structure of peace films has been films that show either total destruction or films that take us to the brink of a worldwide disaster. In Neighbours the two male neighbors fight over ownership of a flower that has a fabulous aroma. It grows on the imaginary property line between their adjoining front yards. Rather than sharing the experience of sniffing the flower, they fight over who owns the plant. They end up destroying each other’s homes, family (cut from most 16mm prints distributed in the U.S.), the plant and ultimately themselves. The film ends with new plants growing on their adjoining graves. The end titles spell out “Love Thy Neighbor” in 15 or 20 languages. McLaren said the film was made as his response to the horror of the Korean War.

The film won numerous awards including an Oscar for best short film. The short is available on several VHS tapes from the NFB (Best of the Best: Strange Tales of Imagination, Hollywood Salutes Canadian Animation and Selected Films of Norman McLaren)

An equally powerful film experience is the Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising short Peace on Earth (MGM, 1939, directed by Harman). It begins in a picturesque village and a chorus of cute animals singing part of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. When Grandpa squirrel goes indoors singing the refrain “Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men,” he is asked by a grandchild, “what are men?” He explains there aren’t any more men in the world, and then tells how they were always fighting about one thing or another (one sequence shows the vegetarians going to war against the meat-eaters). Somber images of giant war machines destroying everything are shown.

Finally only two men are left alive. They shoot each other (we see the bloody hand of one man sink into a pool of nasty looking ooze), leaving the planet to the animals. When the animals come out of hiding, they find a bible. A wise old owl reads them a passage “ye shall rebuild the old wastes” and they do so using military helmets for house roofs, etc. The film ends with a long pan over the snow covered village and grandpa saying, “and that’s why we say peace on earth, good will to men.”

The film leaves a powerful impression on people. It was nominated for an Oscar and has the unusual distinction of being the only cartoon to ever be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Although it didn’t win either award (Disney’s The Ugly Duckling was chosen as the best cartoon of 1939) it was honored by Parents Magazine with a medal, and was remade as Good Will to Men in 1955 by MGM for widescreen CinemaScope theaters.