Porky Pig Goes Surreal William L. Benzon January 2015
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
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PORKY IN WACKYLAND
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WACKYLAND REDUX
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THREE STOOGES IN WACKYLAND SELF IN CONFLICT MAMA WAS SCARED
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WACKYLAND 3: INTRODUCING, THE DO-DO
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THROUGH THE FAUCET TO THE DO-DO WHAT HAVE WE JUST SEEN?
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WACKYLAND 4: WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
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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. And that’s not at all obvious, and I say that after having watched the cartoon many times and spending hours analyzing it and writing up the results. While I’m tempted to make yet another try at pulling an interpretive rabbit out of the analytic hat, I fear that all I’ll do is simply recount, in summary form, the various things I point out in the first three posts–the ogre that transforms into a sweetie-pie, the cat-dog in conflict with itself, the pawnshop balls that become the three stooges, the meta-commentary where the do-do draws a door in the middle of nowhere and then goes through it, the…–I’m doing it, aren’t I? I’m attempting to summarize the cartoon. Impossible at the moment. We don’t know how to think about what’s going on. I am convinced that there is coherent order here, that the cartoon has seven segments, and that there is a change of direction after the middle segment. Before the middle Porky was secondary to all the tomfoolery that is Wackyland, after the middle the focus shifts to a battle between Porky and the do-do. But how the mind takes this in, that’s a mystery.
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I figure my contribution to solving that mystery is to describe just what’s happening as best I can. There’s much more to do along those lines. For one thing, I’m mostly been concerned about identifying objects and things and categorizing them in some meaningful way. I’ve said little about the visual logic through which they’re deployed on the screen, mostly because THAT kind of description if very difficult as it requires almost frame-by-frame annotation. Where I to do more work on this cartoon I’d probably try to get a handle on just what kinds of things appear in the cartoon. I’d make an inventory of the objects, actions, and gags and see what we’ve got. What I’m looking for is an ontology: animal, vegetable, mineral, and so forth. It’s a various world Clampett’s gathered there and I want to see just how various. Is it various enough that we could argue that’s he’s put together a mini-cosmology? That’s what Walt Disney was up to in Fantasia, a matter I’ve argued at length.1 Disney, of course, had a much larger canvas to work with, but Clampett was working in a much more distilled idiom. But so what? We’re just beginning to understand the mind, so why should cartoons be any different? Porky in Wackland is extraordinarily rich and has much to teach us about the wacky underpinnings of the mind.
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Walt Disney’s Fantasia: The Cosmos and the Mind in Two Hours, Working Paper, November 2001, URL: https://www.academia.edu/1128493/Walt_Disney_s_Fantasia_The_Cosmos_and_the_Mind_in_Two_H ours
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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:
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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 turns out to be 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.
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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. That conceit is maintained as Porky and the plane approach the border of Wackyland and cross into it – notice the landing gear:
Up to this point everything we’ve seen is pretty much drawn from a “standard issue” repertoire of gags and devices, including the border-line inscribed in the ground. We’ve not seen anything particularly wacky. But notice the sky, how it shades to night in Wackyland. That’s moving into wacky territory. Once Porky and the plane have crossed into Wackyland proper they’re accosted by a strange monster:
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Notice the multiple moons in the sky and the trees that look like large mushrooms. We’re getting wacky. But it’s not until the monster suddenly backs off, transforms, and says “boo” that we get a full measure of the wackiness to come:
Porky then walks into Wackyland, leaving his plane behind, and sees the sun being pushed into sky atop a tower of animals. That gag reduces the center of the solar system, with all that implies, into a stage prop.
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At the same time the sound-track gives us one of the staples of cartoon music, the section of the “William Tell Overture” which had become a standard musical evocation of sunrise. And that, in turn, provides an opportunity for yet another gag, of a different type. The second statement of the melody is by a flute. As we hear the flute the camera pans right and we see an odd humanoid in a flower playing that melody out of its elongated nose:
In effect, the music is being generated from within the film itself rather than being an external accompaniment. No sooner do we get used to that than the film changes on us. The onscreen musician discards the flute in favor of a drum kit and the music becomes raucous big band swing:
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We’re now roughly a third of the way through the cartoon, thoroughly immersed in Wackyland, and Porky is nowhere to be seen. He disappears completely for over half a minute and doesn’t take an active role until about the four-minute mark. Until then the big band music continues and we see a parade of strange creatures. Clampett has used the music to reach out, grab us, and pull us into the action, settling us in the midst of his funny business. The way I see, the cartoon will have gone through three phases by the time this segment ends. First we have the title sequence, which is, of course, standard with every cartoon. But this sequence is ‘broken’ at the end by the intrusion of the newsboy. Second, Porky takes us to Wackyland. Porky doesn’t actually do anything but fly the plane and walk into Wackyland, but the action centers on him. Then we leave Porky aside for a while and become immersed in the strange doings of Wackyland. We establish our own relationship with Wackyland. Now, at roughly four minutes in, we’re ready for the fourth phase, in which Porky finally finds the do-do. This phase begins when Porky sees a sign promising information about the do-do:
It’s a bit less than a minute from that point to Porky’s meeting with the bird, and quite a bit of business takes place in that interval. We end up with this scene:
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That’s Porky down in front, almost as though he were in a theatre waiting for the show to unfold before his eyes. The do-do will appear through the door immediately beneath the neon sign. He takes a boat across the moat, disembarks, sinks the boat with its anchor, and gets quizzed by Porky: “Are you re-re-really the la-la-last of the do-dos?” “Yes, I’m really the last of the do-dos.” He then proceeds to beat Porky up and dance on him:
Now we’re in familiar Porky Pig territory: Porky getting beaten by whomever he’s chasing. It will be like that to the end. A bit before the six-minute mark the do-do produces a pencil and proceeds to draw a door:
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Everyone in the audience of course knows that the images they’re watching were originally drawn on paper. While the cartoon has been commenting on itself ever since that newsboy invaded the title sequence, this comment is the most explicit and direct one we’ve seen. Such commentary is native to the medium; it was there in Winsor McCay. That door, of course, proves impermeable to Porky:
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Three or four gags later the do-do will appear out of the WB logo and clobber Porky with a slingshot pellet:
This is yet another reference to the fact that this is, after all, a cartoon. Yet there’s nothing selfconscious or “arty” about it. It’s just another piece of wacky business in Wackyland. In much of its business the do-do is playing with Wackyland itself, as it did with by using the pencil. This logo gag is followed by another gag or two, ending with Porky under a pile of bricks. We then cut to a scene where the do-do prances along against a black background. He passes an old man hawking a newspaper – Porky in disguise – proclaiming that Porky’s captured the do-do.
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When the do-do inquires about the story – since, obviously, it’s not captured – Porky whacks it over the head with a mallet and grabs it by the neck. But the victory is short-lived. The dodo is not, in fact, the last of it kind:
The premise of Porky’s expedition is thus destroyed. The do-do is not so valuable after all. It’s all in the journey, as they say. ***** What, then, is the logic of this cartoon? I’ve already spelled out part of it: 1) Title sequence 2) Porky takes us to Wackyland 3) Audience immersed in Wackyland wackiness Then we have three more phases:
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4) Porky finds the do-do 5) Porky chases the do-do 6) Porky captures the do-do The gags in this part of the cartoon are more self-referential than those in the first part. When Porky finds the do-do he does so as the spectator in a little theatrical production in which the do-do makes a grand entrance, crosses a moat, and lands where Porky can reach him. At that point Porky is playing the same role in his story that the audience plays: both are spectators. In the chase the do-do manipulates the apparatus of Wackyland as though the cartoon were drawing itself – an effect that will be intensified over a decade later in Duck Amuck. Just as Porky is trapped in the do-do’s manipulations, so we are trapped in the cartoon, and have been so since the title sequence. As a final gesture, the cartoon in effect swallows itself by dissolving the premise that had motivated Porky’s flight to dark, darker, darkest Africa. In seven minutes Clampett and his crew have given us a painless lesson in selfreferential avant-garde art. I suspect that most of the contemporary audience for this cartoon would have been puzzled by surrealist art, which is an obvious inspiration for Wackyland. They would have wanted pictures to look like, well, like something recognizable, not like puzzle pieces from an alien board game. But the movie theater isn’t a museum, and these images aren’t framed paintings hung reverentially on a wall. They’re the setting for a bunch of funny business enacted by a familiar and beloved figure, Porky Pig. Thus does lowbrow culture use highbrow culture for its own purposes.
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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: 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:
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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:
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Notice the igloo in front and the distinctive rising-sun/fan pattern in the background. That’s new. The three characters, obviously modeled on the Three Stooges, are arguing among themselves in gibberish. They move to the left and we can see that it’s only one character, but with three heads:
Notice the broad shoulders above the narrow waist, very masculine, and short skirt over the bloomers with the frilly bottom hems, very feminine. The character bends forward and a little light bulb character comes forward to interpret their gibberish:
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“He says his mama was scared by a pawn broker’s sign.” The light bulb character leaves and the Stooges character stands upright and continues to babble while the arms poke at eyes and noses in typical Stooges fashion. What, if anything, do we make of this? The scene lasts a bit over thirty seconds, which is quite a lot in a seven-minute cartoon. And the scene is planted just after the halfway point in a story about Porky and a do-do with neither Porky nor the do-do in sight. Strange, very strange.
Self in Conflict What we’re seeing is a very odd character that’s fighting with itself. And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a character fights with itself. There are two of them in the preceding Flower-toFlower sequence. First we have this fellow:
He’s yelling, “Let me out.” But who’s keeping him behind bars? He’s the one holding the bars that imprison him. Then after Porky’s reappeared, we have a scene that starts like this:
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Notice the scuffle at the right rear. It will move forward and surround Porky:
And then we see that what we’d thought was two or three animals turns out to be this odd creature, a combination cat and dog:
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No wonder they’re scrapping. Tradition has it that cats and dogs are natural enemies. After they’ve rested a second or three they take up their fight again as they move to the left, taking Porky with them:
The cat-dog continues to the left, leaving Porky on the ground. Now the flower-creature returns on the drum solo and ends the Flower-to-Flower sequence. The important point, then, is that when Three-Stooges-in-One shows up, he’s the third instance of the theme of self-conflict. That’s no accident. But just what one makes of it, I don’t know, other than to observe that everyone experiences inner conflict of one sort or another.
Mama was Scared And then there’s that line about mama being scared by a pawn broker’s sign. The visual reference is obvious. When the creature bends forward its heads are hung low; they assume the form of the pawn broker’s triple ball, which may have been particularly salient during the Depression, when this cartoon was made. The triple ball, of course, is an inanimate object while this creature, whatever it is, is a living being. And we’re told that the resemblance is not
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fortuitous; rather, the being looks like that because its mother was somehow influenced by a sign. There’s a logic here, but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps the idea is to multiple incongruities so that Porky’s final confrontation with the do-do, and subsequent chase, seems refreshingly sensible. Perhaps, but only perhaps. Perhaps another time.
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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 (section) I argued that it had six sequences that differed from one another in their internal construction and action. In my second post (section) 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 (section) 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:
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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:
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Notice the fish skeleton below Porky. Porky ends up coming out a faucet. That drip is Porky:
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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:
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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.
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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 26
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.
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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 (section), self-conflict in the second post (section) (along with more structural analysis), and the third post (section) 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’s possible that Porky’s a naturalist interested in rare creatures, the emphasis on DoDo’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.2 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.” Recall the self-conflicted characters that appear in the first half of the cartoon. We have the man who’s holding the bars behind which he is imprisoned:
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URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get-rich-quick_scheme
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And the cat-dog that chases itself silly:
Then, at the halfway point where it’s given a self-contained vignette of its own, the three-inone stooges:
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Not only does Clampett devote almost half a minute to these guys, but he works hard at a gag about the traditional triple-ball sign of a pawn broker:
The little light bulb at the left tells us: “He says his mama was scared by a pawn broker’s sign.” We can puzzle all want over just what that’s supposed to mean. What the statement, and the image, does is to put the notion of pawning one’s stuff at the very middle of this cartoon that’s satirizing get rich quick schemes. Pawning one’s stuff is NOT a way to get rich quick. But someone who’s in the position of having to pawn stuff may be vulnerable to the seductions of such schemes. That vulnerability is at the psychological heart of this cartoon. It’s only after this vignette that Porky reappears and takes an active role in seeking out the do-do. Up to this point he’d just been getting acclimated to Wackyland and not doing much of anything. Now he starts on the chase. But it’s not much of a chase. The do-do may be out in front and, in that minimal sense, is being chased by Porky. But the do-do is manipulating Porky every bit of the way, even at the very end, at which point he reveals all his comrades. As there are lots of do-dos, none of them is worth a dime. Porky’s been played for a sucker; he’s been conned. Of course, con games depend on the active complicity of the mark. They wouldn’t work if the mark didn’t want to believe that, however implausible it may be, scheme is going to make them rich, rich, rich! In that sense the con-man is working the mark against himself. And 30
that, I suggest, is why we have those self-conflicted characters in the first half; they implant the idea of self-conflict in our minds so that it can serve as a subconscious frame for the action in the last half of the cartoon. Just as the cat and the dog are joined at the middle, so in a sense, Porky and the dodo are the same character, but divided against itself. The do-do is no more, and no less, than an expression of Porky’s desire to Get Rich and therefore to transform his life in a miraculous way.
And so Porky does all sorts of silly things in order to keep the dream alive. It’s the dream that matters. And, in the end, the dream collapses in on itself. As we knew it would. For that’s how cartoons go, is it not? Porky, of course, is Everyman, which means that he is, of course, us. We too often day dream of getting rich quick. And yet we can watch Porky in Wackyland without a trace of self-consciousness. It’s not serious, it’s just a cartoon. And so relax, enjoy it, laugh ourselves silly, and thereby purge ourselves of the “get rich quick” demons, at least for awhile. In this way this wacky cartoon helps us keep our sanity.
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