Porky Pig Goes Surreal

Another workping paper, this one about Porky in Wackyland. You can download it HERE. Abstract and introduction below.

* * * * *

Abstract: Porky in Wackyland is a satire of the get-rich-quick scheme in which Porky intends to get rich by capturing the rare do-do bird. It turns out that the do-do isn’t so rare and that the do-do and his companions capture Porky. The cartoon consists of seven segments, with the nature of the action changing after the fourth and middle segment. Before that Porky Pig is subordinate to all the strange objects, creatures, and events that take place in Wackyland. After that the focus shifts to a battle between Porky and the do-do bird he’s attempting to capture. The cartoon features self referential elements and a diverse ontology of strange and not-so-strange creatures.

* * * * *

Introduction: Some Title Here

Cartoons have always bordered on the surreal. It’s not only that animals talked, but that the whole world was fluid. Inanimate objects talked as well, and shapes would shift, identities would change. Cartoonists took advantage of the medium’s inherent freedom – anything you could draw was fair game – to create gags that played against our ordinary sense of the world. They were trying to do things that couldn’t be done in live action film and, in the process, entered the surreal, not though deliberate desire to stake out the aesthetic avant-garde – they were, after all, engaged in a commercial enterprise – but simply because, there it was, standing right next to good old reality, the surreal.

You couldn’t miss it. And so animated cartoons, as a medium, found favor with the avant-garde prior to World War II. You shouldn’t miss it.

But in Porky in Wackyland (1938) director Bob Clampett decided to embrace surrealism whole hog. If one were to count the frequency of gags, one would find they’re more frequent in this cartoon than in most. In a sense, the whole Wackyland world is a gag asking us to find some sense somewhere somehow.

That makes this cartoon fertile to a descriptive analyst like me. You can go nuts just pointing out all the gags and references. And I DO devote a fair amount of time at this, though I make no claim that I’ve caught them all. I didn’t even attempt to do so.

But one can’t help but feeling that that’s something of a trap. To invoke an old cliché, you miss the forest for the trees. There must be something else going on besides a heaping pile of gags. But what is it?

There is, after all, a fairly conventional quest story. Porky Pig is looking for a rare do-do bird so he can collect a huge reward. The whole cartoon’s a gag on a get rich quick scheme – the bird’s name, do-do, is a pun on “dough”, a slang term for money. In the time-honored manner of cartoons, the scheme fails. No sooner does Porky catch the do-do than the do-do turns out to have lots of pals and they collectively catch him.

One might even say that Clampett is deconstructing the get rich scheme, which is more or less what I do in the last of the four posts I’ve gathered here. Now that I’ve pointed that out, though, it seems obvious. But it wasn’t obvious when I started working on the cartoon. And, however obvious it may be, I don’t find it very satisfying in itself. What’s interesting is how Clampett got there.

Porky in Zanyland

I’ve been thinking more about Ngai’s remarks on zaniness:

You could say that zaniness is essentially the experience of an agent confronted by—even endangered by—too many things coming at her quickly and at once. ... So much of “serious” postwar American literature is zany, for instance, that one reviewer’s description of Donald Barthelme’s Snow White—“a staccato burst of verbal star shells, pinwheel phrases, [and] cherry bombs of … puns and wordplays”—seems applicable to the bulk of the post-1945 canon, from Ashbery to Flarf; Ishmael Reed to Shelley Jackson.

What I’ve been thinking is that, when Porky ends up in Wackyland he certainly seems stressed out by too many things coming at him quickly.

Like modern city life.

Imagine that you were born and raised in the country, and then, wham! you suddenly find yourself in the middle of New York’s Times Square. Talk about wackyland! So many things to see! So many things to do! And so many things coming right at you!

Of course, Porky’s Wackyland is nowhere near New York City. It’s deep in “darkest” Africa. Notice, though, that this version of darkest Africa is completely lacking in dark natives. That, I submit, is because it really isn’t about the traditional darkest Africa. Africa’s just a dodge, camouflage, a defense—as though it’ll all go away if we can pin it on Africa.

Wackyland 4: What’s It All About?

My previous posts on Porky in Wackyland have been about limited aspects of the cartoon: overall structure in the first post, self-conflict in the second post (along with more structural analysis), and the third post was about some gags used in introducing the do-do. Now I want to step back from that and look at the whole cartoon: What’s going on?

Why’s Porky going to Wackyland? We aren’t told. We have to infer his motive, if possible, from the newspaper cover announcing his trip:

While it is possible that Porky is a naturalist interested in rare creatures, the emphasis on the do-do’s value suggests a different motive: He wants to get rich, quick!

According to the Wikipedia, the phrase “get rich quick” has been around since the beginning of the 20th century. By the time this cartoon was made, it was a well-known cultural trope. If “get rich quick” is what Porky was up to, then Porky in Wackyland would be a commentary on get-rich-quick-schemes.

The film’s basic comment follows from the fact that Porky doesn’t get rich: such schemes don’t work. Porky sets out to get rich and what happens? He ends up in this crazy place where nothing makes any sense. It’s worse than that, however. The cartoon makes a very interesting comment on the kind of craziness that is “get rich quick.”

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. 

Wackyland Redux

I continue to think about Porky in Wackyland and have decided to make another post about it. I missed something important in my earlier post and want to amend that analysis. There’s an extended gag involving a three-headed creature that comes in the middle of the cartoon. It deserves a close look.

Three Stooges in Wackyland

I’d argued that Wackyland has six major sequences:

1) Title sequence
2) Porky takes us to Wackyland
3) Audience immersed in Wackyland wackiness
4) Porky finds the do-do
5) Porky chases the do-do
6) Porky captures the do-do

I’m now inclined to think there are seven major sequences. There’s a segment at the end of the third sequence involving a Three Stooges gag that really needs to be separated out as an independent sequence. It’s musically distinct from what came before and takes place against a different background. That sequence runs about 28 seconds or so, from 3:35 to 4:03.

So the third sequence in the earlier analysis now becomes two sequences (3 & 4), for a total of seven:

1) Title sequence
2) Porky takes us to Wackyland
3) Flower-to-Flower: Wackyland on Parade
4) Three Stooges pawn sign
5) Porky finds the do-do
6) Porky chases the do-do
7) Porky captures the do-do

Let’s start with sequence 3, which I’ve renamed “Flower-to-Flower: Wackyland on Parade.” As I indicated in the earlier post, it starts with this flower-character:

First the character is playing a pastoral melody through its nose; then it shifts to a drum solo as the music shifts gear to big-band jazz. Porky’s no longer on screen. For about a minute the action become very busy, wild music and lots of stuff on screen. There’s no central character or action to follow, but Porky reappears about halfway through the sequence as a peripheral character who reacts to what’s going on around him. He then disappears and the flower creature reappears, again playing a drum solo. The solo ends as the creature bashes himself in the head and ‘folds’ into the flower, which then withdraws into the ground:

That’s the end of this sequence, which is clearly marked by the flower creature at the beginning and the end. There’s more happening in this sequence than one can parse in one viewing; it’s too complex and chaotic.

There’s an immediate segue, including slow moody music, to this:

 

Porky in Wackyland

Porky in Wackyland is regarded as one of the finest cartoon shorts ever made. Directed by Bob Clampett for Warner Brothers, it was released in 1938 in black and white in the Looney Tunes series. Like many shorts, it has little plot to speak of. The story is straightforward: Porky Pig goes searching for the last of the do-do birds; finds him; but there’s a catch. The cartoon gets its dramatic interest from its gags, one after the other. In a sense, this whole cartoon is a gag, a gag called Wackyland.

The cartoon signals its waywardness just before the title sequence ends. A newsboy enters from the right, hawking a special edition about Porky’s expedition to find the do-do:

The intrusion of the cartoon proper into the title sequence puts us on notice that this is not going to be an ordinary gagfest. Yet, wacky though the film is, it is not without a simple dramatic order. The object of this post is to sketch that order.

* * * * *

The first task is to transport us from the newsboy in our world to Wackyland. The first move is simple; the newsboy holds the paper up so we can see it, full screen:

That front page is on the screen for 16 seconds before it fades to a shot of Porky in his plane in the air. That’s more than enough time to read the headlines, which are all that’s readable (at least on my DVD). Porky does a bit of flying, holds up a photo while telling us that, yes, this is the do-do, and then the camera zooms out so we can see the whole world. Porky’s plane flies a convoluted path toward Wackyland, which is in Africa.

As the plane goes over Africa, we get a progressive gag. First it flies over a background in medium gray, which is labeled “Dark Africa” – at this point I suspect that many viewers will have anticipated what’s going to happen next. Then the plane’s over a darker area: “Darker Africa.” At this point one can feel pretty sure that Wackyland will be in an area of Africa that is black on the map and that is labeled “Darkest Africa.” And that’s what happens.

What doesn’t happen, however, is that Wackyland is populated with jungle flora and fauna and restless natives with bones through their noses and big kettles all ready for cooking missionaries. While such things were common enough in cartoons – think of the cartoons the Fleisher Brothers did with Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong – Clampett doesn’t call on those clichés. The only significance of this “darkest Africa” is that it is remote, very remote.

Once we’re through that gag the camera zooms in on Porky and his plane and we see them land in an area that doesn’t seem particularly African or wacky. Look closely at the relationship between Porky and the plane:

The plane is treated as an extension of Porky’s body, with the landing gear becoming an extension of his legs. That image, it seems to me, typifies the nature of the cartoon medium. The distinction between man, umm, err, pig and machine is all but obliterated; the machine itself has become animated and shares in the life of the pig.