In 1950, Disney launched an academic quick titled Donald in Mathmagic Land, a 27-minute animated featurette during which the notorious belligerent duck with a speech obstacle visits a surreal world crammed with geometric shapes, numbers, and puzzles. Lovely, eye-catching, and credited for making arithmetic accessible to generations of youngsters, the toon is acknowledged for uplifting many future scientists, mathematicians, and engineers… and apparently TV writers, because it was used as the large inspiration for each Futurama and Ted Lasso.
Guided by a disembodied narrator (voiced by Paul Frees, a.ok.a. The Ghost Host for all you Disney adults on the market), Donald in Mathmagic Land was way more than only a cartoon about math. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Finest Documentary (Quick Topic), and Walt Disney himself referred to as it “essentially the most fascinating movie we now have ever made” by way of instructional worth. Extra importantly, the good mixture of traditional Disney animation, summary design, and colourful visuals made it extremely memorable.
In 1961, it grew to become the primary Disney cartoon ever televised in colour because the premiere episode of The Fantastic World of Coloration, and it typically performed in syndication for generations, permitting audiences to observe and soak up its trippy, dippy classes in geometry.
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Is it any surprise it received a wink from the writers of Ted Lasso and Futurama, who can’t resist raiding popular culture’s attic for inspiration?
In Season 3 Episode 6 of Ted Lasso (“Sunflowers”), Ted (Jason Sudeikis) finds himself in an American-themed sports activities bar in Amsterdam whereas excessive on mushrooms (as one does). As he sits watching an previous basketball recreation he as soon as shared along with his father, a disembodied voice calling itself “The True Spirit of Journey” (voiced by Corey Burton), who materializes and affords him recommendation on triangles, inspiring him to attempt “Complete Soccer” along with his gamers.
It’s no coincidence that this shares the title of the narrator in Donald in Mathmagic Land, who guides Donald by his classes in spatial design. Along with the title connection, simply because the Disney waterfowl was guided by Frees, a well-liked Disney voice actor, Lasso is guided by Corey Burton, the voice of Captain Hook, Ludwig Von Drake, Dale, the Mad Hatter, and different iconic Disney characters.
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Fairly neat, proper? It will get higher.
That takes us to Season 13 of Futurama, a present that’s no stranger to satirizing popular culture references, regardless of how obscure. Given the terribly excessive degree of mad genius on the writing workers, lots of whom maintain PhDs from Ivy League universities, it is smart that most of the gags can be peppered with ambiguous references reminiscent of puns on architect Buckminster Fuller and the P vs NP downside in computational complexity principle, nods to Toad the Moist Sprocket, or visible sight gags to ELO’s Out of the Blue album cowl, simply to call a couple of.
Disney/Matt Groening
Within the episode, ‘The Numberland Hole,” the gang travels to a mysterious world inhabited by numbers after receiving a numbered message by Bender’s (John DiMaggio) AM radio that led to an encoded plan in a paint-by-numbers portray. After Amy (Lauren Tom) builds the machine that transports the crew to the summary world of Numberland, the place the Professor (Billy West) meets a captive Georg Cantor and thus begins a stunning carnival of intelligent, calculated quips.
It additionally options Danica McKellar as a head in a jar! From The Marvel Years! A really whackadoo episode that solely the good maniacs over at Futurama can cook dinner up.
“It’s a really experimental episode,” stated showrunner and author David X. Cohen. “In order that is without doubt one of the most fascinating episodes of the yr. It’s referred to as ‘The Numberland Hole,’ however it was impressed at Matt Groening’s suggestion by this previous Disney cartoon, Donald in Mathmagic Land, the place Donald Duck creeps by this land of numbers and has adventures. And he wished us to do a model of that, however with extra precise math in it, versus obscure references to how math is essential to structure.
“He stated, ‘You guys do one thing like that, however with actual math,’” recalled Cohen. “It sounds form of arduous, however we’re up for the problem. So our crew goes right into a land inhabited fully by numbers.”
Disney/Matt Groening
“There’s some actually spectacular 3D graphics, I’ve to say, within the two accomplished by our studio, Tough Draft Studios and Scott Vanzo, the 3D director there,” continued Cohen. “I’m more than happy with the way it got here out. However I’m significantly curious as a result of it’s a wacko episode.”
“So it’s an exceptionally summary episode, however I believe we labored further arduous on it for that purpose, and got here out fairly humorous, and there’s some math in it, however you don’t need to know the maths to understand it. However for many who do know the maths, I believe it’ll be an additional deal with.”
In the long run, Donald in Mathmagic Land didn’t simply train children about geometry; it additionally taught TV writers flip math into comedy gold and discover magic and humor in treasures from our shared popular culture previous.
Futurama, Hulu