Africa Squeaks was one of thirty-eight Flip the Frog cartoons produced by Ub Iwerks between 1930 and 1933. Iwerks had worked closely alongside Walt Disney and his ‘contribution had been decisive’ in the creation and early animation of Mickey Mouse, with whom Flip the Frog –who at one point was going to be named Tony –shares many similarities (Horn, 1999, 279). However, Iwerks left Disney after receiving an offer from Pat Powers in 1930 to set up his own animation studio at Powers’ Celebrity Pictures. The Flip the Frog cartoons, although distributed by MGM, did not enjoy the commercial success of their Disney counterparts, and Iwerks replaced Flip with a new character, Willie Whopper in 1933. Iwerk’s studio closed in 1936 and, after briefly working for Columbia, he returned to Disney in 1940, and worked particularly on developing special technical effects.

The title Africa Squeaks responds directly to the popular 1930 travelogue Africa Speaks and is one of a number of films – such as the 1931 Vitagraph Variety Africa Shrieks – to exploit this earlier work. A Looney Tunes cartoon from 1940 adopted the same name, although it responded more closely to Stanley and Livingstone (1939) as it featured Porky alongside Spencer Tracy. Africa Squeaks, in its depiction of Africans as cannibals, is perhaps best viewed in the context of other cartoons.

The cannibal stereotype was popularised in earlier cartoons, such as Alice Cans the Cannibals (1925), on which Iwerks worked, Felix Tees off for the Big Africa Games (1926) which featured jungle cannibals attempting to eat Felix, Pathé’s 1926 short Jerry is too Canny for the Cannibals and Cannibal Capers (1930). Indeed most popular series appeared to feature the cartoon cannibal, from Mickey Mouse in Trader Mickey (1932) and Mickey’s Man Friday, to the Popeye cartoon, Pop-Pie A La Mode (1945),and Tom and Jerry’s encounter with cannibals in His Mouse Friday (1951). The cannibal would reappear in Iwerks’ own 1934 Willie Whopper cartoon, Jungle Jitters, while a 1938 film of the same name, virtually replicated the final scene from Africa Squeaks as the rescued white hero jumps back into the cannibal cookpot in order to avoid the advances of the local queen.