Arnold Zwicky's Blog

One of Dan Piraro’s specialties in his Bizarro strip. Today’s strip brings Pinocchio to the beach, offering to exchange favors:

  (#1)

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)

Asking someone to put sunscreen on your back at the beach or by a swimming pool is an invitation to a small intimacy, but in the beach or pool context, it can be an allowable intimacy even between strangers (though the conventions governing such interactions are complex and not entirely clear).

In the case at hand, we have a possible exchange of protections: the woman from sunburn, Pinocchio (being a boy of wood) from termites.

From Wikipedia:

Pinocchio, the name a variant of common pinolo (“pine seed”), is a fictional character and the protagonist of the children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) by Italian writer Carlo Collodi. Carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a village near Florence, he was created as a wooden puppet but dreamed of becoming a real boy. He lies often.

Pinocchio is a cultural icon. As one of the most reimagined characters in children’s literature, his story has been adapted into other media.

In particular, it was adapted by Disney into a famous animated film. From Wikipedia:

  (#2)

Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the Italian children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was the second animated feature film produced by Disney, made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

The plot of the film involves an old wood-carver named Geppetto who carves a wooden puppet named Pinocchio. The puppet is brought to life by a blue fairy, who informs him that he can become a real boy if he proves himself to be “brave, truthful, and unselfish”. Pinocchio’s efforts to become a real boy involve encounters with a host of unsavory characters.

It’s the Disney version of Pinocchio that appears, bizarrely, on the beach in #1, wielding a Flit insecticide spray gun from the 40s/50s:

  (#3)

This entry was posted on July 15, 2017 at 5:30 am and is filed under Books, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Sociocultural conventions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.