Walt Disney was smart to spruce up the Talking Cricket, putting on a top hat, tying up his white tie, and brushing up his tails. Jiminy Cricket earns his 18 Carat Gold Official Conscience Badge from the Blue Fairy by giving good advice through personal example and sincere friendship. As Walt Disney so astutely understood, nobody likes to be scolded. We want a conscience with a touch of class!
An aside but along the lines of Jiminy’s popularity … Clothes make the cricket, clothes made the 1930’s man. A man with nicely tailored clothes in 1930’s America, Disney’s primary audience who had just lived through the thirties, had to know a thing or two and that usually revealed in speaking well. Such a person would be someone to hear.
In those days a lot of first jobs were shining shoes because there was a need for those with tailored clothes to keep clean, and there was money to be made in the right shining location, prized and protected by hired protection of an informal sort. It was fashion to keep clean and there were dirty jobs keeping folks who knew a thing or two, clean.
Disney’s audience revered education, knowledge and wisdom. Those led to clean jobs, most prized in 1940 America when folks were seeking dinner rather than searching for themselves.
Jiminy dispensed his observations in a creaky, critckity voice like a grandpa, the paying kind of grandpa who would likely treat his grandchild to the movies with popcorn, a corn dog with mustard, and a soda, even if he had to work a second job to afford it on some really special occasion like a birthday, or Christmas. Marketing target dates.
In those days Disney was magic. Today, it still is. These days Disney has lots of magical miracles, but do any of these miracles involve God?