Yesterday’s Zippy:
(#1)
Themes here: cooking, masculinity, cartoonishness / cartooniness, the Disney cartoon character Goofy, funny laughs, office supplies.
Background: cartoonish Goofiosity. From a 7/30/14 posting, this earlier Zippy, in which Zippy becomes cartoonish, and takes on Goofy’s signature laugh, represented by Griffith in the spelling uh-hyuk, hyuk, hyuk (by others often as ah-hyuck):
(#2)
Cartoonishness / Cartooniness is explained in a 2/6/16 posting as
indicated by various physical characteristics — noses, eyes, eyebrows, ears, jawlines, and mouths. In Zippyland, of course, everyone’s a cartoon character and they’re all dressed like one, but some of them are “realistic”, normal, regular folks,, while others are flagrantly cartoony.
In #2, the characters become cartoony, while in #1 the character is cartoony throughout. Along with cartoonishness in form comes a cartoony laugh, specifically Goofy’s laugh.
Background: goof, goofy. From NOAD2:
noun goof: 1 a mistake: he made one of the most embarrassing goofs of his tenure. 2 a foolish or stupid person. ORIGIN early 20th century: of unknown origin.
adj. goofy: chiefly North American foolish; harmlessly eccentric.
Background: Goofy. From Wikipedia:
(#3) Goofy laughing
Goofy is a funny-animal cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog with a Southern drawl, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and is one of Disney’s most recognizable characters. He is normally characterized as extremely clumsy and dimwitted [that is, as a goof; Disney played on the stereotype of the amiable but simpleminded hillbilly], yet this interpretation is not always definitive; occasionally Goofy is shown as intuitive, and clever, albeit in his own unique, eccentric way. [Goofy sometimes plays the role of the Wise Fool.]
… Goofy’s catchphrases are “gawrsh!” (which is his usual exclamation of surprise and his way of pronouncing “gosh”), along with “ah-hyuck!” (a distinctive chuckle) that is sometimes followed by a “hoo hoo hoo hoo!”, and especially the Goofy holler…. [Voice actor] Pinto Colvig, who was a man of primarily one voice, would incorporate the unique laugh and speech pattern into otherwise unrelated cartoon characters that he voiced.
You can listen to a series of goofy Goofy noises, starting with the chuckle, in this brief YouTube clip.
Masculinity, cooking, and supplies. Overlaid on the cartoony Goofy theme in #1 is the theme of men cooking up supplies — in this case, office supplies, from the American big-box retailer Staples, though it could have been hardware, auto supplies, or sporting goods, all of which sometimes figure in Zippy strips. (The American motor oil Valvoline figures prominently as a foodstuff in many strips.)
So the Pinhead in #1 fries, scrambles, sautes, and grills gummed reinforcements, White-Out, paper clips, push pins, acetate overlays, Post-Its, Elmer’s glue, and toner cartridges.
He’s from the cartoony district of Dingburg — the analogue of a gayborhood, where the Pinheads are flagrantly cartoonish rather than “normal”, and gender roles are to some extent reversed: men take on the stereotypically feminine role of cook, but do so with masculine materials rather than customary foodstuffs.
Note that Dingburg, the world of Pinheads, is itself a kind of ghetto of freaks, set off from the wide world of “normal” Roundheads that surrounds it. But even ghettos can have their ghettos: in this case, a neighborhood for the most freakish of freaks, the cartoony ones.
So it’s natural that cartoony Pinheads take on the mannerisms of Goofy, the least “normal” of the main Disney characters, the prime fool among fools (all classic cartoon characters are foolish). Also the most isolated socially: Donald Duck has a girlfriend, Daisy Duck; Mickey Mouse has a girlfriend, Minnie Mouse; and both Donald and Mickey have elaborate extended families; but Goofy has only occasionally been paired with a female counterpart (Clarabelle Cow), not of his own species, and he’s not surrounded by a rich array of blood family. Instead, Goofy’s social life is as the amiable sidekick to his friends, especially Donald and Mickey. Goofy’s the odd one out.
Leave a Reply