Wackyland 3: Introducing, the Do-Do

After I’d made my second post about Porky in Wackyland I figured that was enough, at least for now. To be sure, I’d noticed many things that didn’t make it in to either of my two posts, but that’s always the way these things are. You can’t get everything in, ever. The idea is to say what you need to say in order to make a coherent argument.

I’d set out to demonstrate that there was a coherent logic in this cartoon and that’s what I did. In my first post I argued that it had six sequences that differed from one another in their internal construction and action. In my second post I amended that analysis and argued for seven sequences.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the film, and the thinking has been of the sort that demands written form. So here I am, starting a third post about Porky in Wackyland. I’m satisfied with the analysis into seven sequences, but I’d like to say a bit about one of those sequences, the fifth one, where Porky finally meets the do-do.

Through the faucet to the do-do

As this sequence opens Porky is passing a Wackylander wearing a sandwich board offering information about the do-do:

Porky asks where to find the do-do and he receives this response, which is not very helpful:

The vendor regroups, however, and makes Porky another offer:

Notice that this frame depicts a situation that is physically impossible: Where’s the Wackylander? He’s not behind the sandwich board. He appears to be inside some space that opens through one half of the board. But that’s not consistent with other information in the image. 

Porky accepts the offer and goes tumbling down a slide some sort:

Notice the fish skeleton below Porky. Porky ends up coming out a faucet. That drip is Porky:

It doesn’t look like Porky, but it must be him because he rises up from the saucer:

This takes 25 or 30 frames, about two seconds. It’s enough so that you can clearly see the drop coming out of the faucet and Porky materializing in the bowl. As soon as Porky’s form has become well-established the camera moves behind him and we see this:

That door is quickly replace by another, and another, and another, for twelve in all, each one smaller that the previous one until there are none:

Then the night sky is rolled up to reveal the do-do’s castle. This is the first time we’ve seen this gag – a background being treated as something painted on a curtain, which will be repeated several more times before the cartoon ends.

As I indicated in my first post, the do-do will come through the castle door and cross the moat to the near side.

While this is happening, a voice announces: “Introducing, in person . . . the do-do.” The accompanying music is very ceremonious, with lots of trumpet flourishes. The do-do is being presented as a personage of some importance, as indeed it is, with a $4,000,000,000,000 valuation (that’s in 1938 dollars, with no adjustment for inflation).

What have we just seen?

The first thing to notice is that, up to this point, Clampett has treated space in a more or less coherent way. Porky’s flight from America to Africa was convoluted, but perfectly intelligible. Once he arrived in Wackyland his movements, mostly lateral, were intelligible, as were the movements of the other characters. There were a couple quick cuts from one scene to another where there’s no spatial relationship specified between the locations on either sides of the cuts. In particular the location of the Stooges sequence is not specified; but Porky doesn’t appear in that sequence nor do any of the other characters we’ve seen. So there’s no problem.

The moment the Wackylander appeared inside that sandwich board, however, space became incoherent. And the incoherence got worse when Porky went through the hole and down the slide. Just where was he while he was doing that? And where’d he end up? Where’s the do-do’s castle in relation to anything else in Wackyland?

Second, how’d the do-do end up in a castle? That’s a rich man’s home, not the nest of an exotic wild bird. It’s one thing to stick really strange flora and fauna in the heart of darkest Africa, but a medieval European castle? It’s as though we’d moved into an alternate universe. Or a different cartoon.

Which might explain the elaborate ceremonial music and introduction. Yes, at long last we’re going to see the do-do. And the do-do will turn out to be a trickster who manipulates Porky to the end of the cartoon, despite the fact that Porky is chasing him. In this the do-do is like Bugs Bunny, who also manipulates anyone who chases him.

Finally, there is that gag where Porky passes through the faucet as a liquid that becomes reconstituted as Porky. As that just a clever gag or is it more, a mini-rebirth, a reintroduction to Wackyland? All I can say is that from here on out it’s a different cartoon. Up to this point Porky has been secondary to Wackyland itself. After this point all action centers on Porky and the do-do. And much of that action centers on the do-do’s manipulation of Wackyland itself, such as drawing a door in the middle of nowhere:

It’s an unusual structure for an unusual cartoon.