Since last week’s post, What’s Up Between Cartoonist and Audience? I’ve been thinking about the fact that so many (most? almost all?) Golden Age cartoons are constructed with gags. We all know this, and yet, I must confess, that I for one don’t know what’s going on. What are these things, these gags? How do they work, why should we take such pleasure in a sequence of them? And why did they come to occupy such a large place in popular culture when they did?
I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but I do know something about how to describe and analyze cartoons. I can at least take a look at some more cartoons and see how they work. As for those large questions, they’ll just have to wait.
Duck Dodgers Instructs His Pupil
Let’s take a look at Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, a 1952 Chuck Jones cartoon featuring Daffy Duck as Duck Dodgers and Porky Pig as his space cadet sidekick. The earth is running out of Illudium Phosdex, the essential ingredient in shaving cream, and Duck Dodgers is sent to claim the only remaining source, on Planet X. And Planet X is in a zone that’s simply marked “unknown” on a huge space chart—notice that Daffy and his boss are standing on a podium high up in the room, which is itself on the 17,000th floor of the building. Daffy accepts the mission, of course.
Those who’ve been through middle school algebra are likely to pick up some resonance at this point, for the mysterious UNKNOWN in an equation is typically represented by a variable labeled “X”. X is the unknown, and that’s where the hapless Daffy is going with the help of Porky.
Skipping over this and that, we’re under way and Daffy is going to explain to his young charge just how they’re going to find their way to Planet X:
Here’s how it’s going to go:
The explanation that goes along with this is pure gibberish:
Now then, eager young space cadet, here is the course we shall pursue to find Planet X. Starting from where we are we go thirty-three thousand six hundred turbo miles due up. Then West in an astroarc deviation to here. Then following the great circle down seven radial lubes South by down East, by asto astrobal to here, here, and here, then by space navigal compass to here, here, and then to here and here, by thirteen stratocumulus bearing four million light years and thus to our destination.
I suspect that then, as now, there were many in the audience for whom science and math made exactly that much sense, whatever they may have thought about space travel as adventure. Daffy doesn’t seen too convinced by his own explanation and asks Porky what he thinks:
Daffy: Now do you know how to reach Planet X?
Porky: Ah, yeh yeh ah yeh ah yehyehyehyeh oh sure.
Daffy: Well I wish you’d explain it to me sometime, buster.
Daffy finds Porky’s confidence both surprising and unnerving:
Porky notes, however, that if you look out there, you’ll see that the planets are labeled in alphabetic order. Perhaps we can get to Planet X by following that order. Daffy rejects the idea, then reconsiders, discovers that it was his idea, and off they go. Note that not only is Planet X marked with a large X, but it’s furnished with Xs as well.
Life Lessons
So, what’s going on here? First, while Daffy is the one in charge, he’s incompetent. Porky’s competent but also quite willing to let Daffy run things. He even seems to respect Daffy’s position of authority, as though he can separate the authority from the competence.
This situation plays well from different angles. Sooner or later all adults have been in Porky’s position and so can appreciate seeing it played out this way on the screen. In particular, Porky’s willingness to let Daffy take credit for his idea—follow the letters—exemplifies standard advice for how to do with difficult people. Similarly, the adult world often seems baffling to a child and so it’s comforting to see Porky surreptitiously prevail over Daffy.
What is comforting to all is that the solution to the problem—follow the letters—is such a simple one. Things have labels and those labels are useful. They tell us what the things are and how they’re ordered. We’ve left the world of How to Win Friends and Influence People and entered the sacred precincts of philosophy, the relationship between words and things.
On that last point, however, we are being set-up for a sequence of gags based on the tricky relationship between words and things.
Words and Things
No sooner has Daffy claimed the planet in the name of the earth than an odd little creature claims it in the name of Mars. And that odd creature has a disintegrating pistol; it says so right on the label:
Daffy’s not worried, though, as he informs us (yes, he addresses us, the audience), he’s wearing a disintegration proof vest. But alas, the vest doesn’t protect him:
Now we’ve got a problem. The cartoon’s only two-thirds over and our protagonist is a pile of dust. What’s going to happen?
Well, Porky saved Daffy once, when he showed him how to follow the letters. He’s going to do it again, with an integrating pistol? But what’s an integrating pistol? Disintegrating rays/guns/pistols are ubiquitous in science fiction, but who ever heard of an integrating ray/gun/pistol. It must be somehow related to the disintegrating pistol, as the words are related, but ...
By the time you’ve figured it out, it’s already happened on the screen. Daffy’s little bits have reintegrated into the heroic Duck Dodgers.
Far from being appreciative, however, Daffy acts like he had the strange little Martian cornered and orders Porky back to the spaceship.
He then pulls HIS disintegrating pistol on the Martian: “Got the drop on you with MY disintegrating pistol. And, brother, when it disintegrates, it disintegrates!” Which it does, but not in the way Daffy intends:
At the point Daffy beats a retreat into the safety of his spaceship and we have more gags, and more word play. But this is enough for now.
One thing about this sequence is that the order of the gags is important. You couldn’t change the order and have the same effect. Obviously you can’t integrate Daffy before he’s been disintegrated. And the play on the label of Daffy’s own pistol gets its force and surprise from the two previous gags, the vest that doesn’t protect Daffy and the pistol that reassembles him.
So that’s one thing, order is important—my impression is that that’s generally true in gag-driven cartoons. The other thing is that, as the previous scene, we see the peculiar power-relationship between Daffy and Porky. In both cases Porky saves Daffy’s bacon, as it were, and in both cases he has to do so from a position of subservience.
That won’t happen again in the cartoon. At the point Porky’s effectively out of the action. Daffy and the Martian with fight one another to a stalemate and destroy the planet in the process. The End.
And the Larger Issues?
Of course, this little bit of analysis can’t contribute much to resolving the large issues I raised at the beginning. That would require many more cases, many.
But I would like to end with one simple and obvious point: These gags are intrinsic to the medium. They require the play of images and of words, both spoken and written.
But what does that have to do with the relationship between cartoon and audience? How does that support the way these characters are playing to and for the audience? That’s a matter I’ll continue to think about.
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