Elroy, Ellsworth, Pluto, Goofy, what's an animal and what's a person

[whatevs]

Throwing in random tidbits:

I'd argue Ellsworth's situation is preceded by Old Yellow Beak from "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold". He looks a regular parrot and Donald's surprise suggests he should be interpreted as one, but everything else about the story portrays him no different than a person.

Walsh, Ellsworth's creator, loved blurring the line, predominantly with simians ("Eega Beeva and the Atombrella", "Mickey Takes Umbrage", "Tzig-tzag Fever", and several gag comics). Of course, Walsh's stories in general are weird. My personal biggest nope is ZM 52-01-27, where Ellsworth calls a taxidermy service to get him a dummy so Goofy won't notice he's gone. And "Mousepotamia" features a unique take on Jaq and Gus as people-mice just like Mickey. All Mousepotamians adhere to the Cinderella mice design, including the villain Iron Mask.

A number of early stories (pre-1950, I think) featuring Clara Cluck present her as a sapient regular chicken bored with her egg-laying life. The text story "Easter Eggs" even has her being Goofy's prize chicken. Being an animal-chicken didn't stop her from engaging in person-activities either, like running off with Panchito or pursuing a singing career.

Then there's also Gregory Gopher in "The Strange World of Gregory Gopher", who is like Darkwing Duck's Neptunia but a mutant gopher instead of a mutant fish. No one could tell he was anything out of the ordinary until his origin reveal.

Copy-pasting myself from TVTropes: In "The Mystery at Hidden River", Mickey searches for Clarabelle, who has disappeared, and describes her to the locals. One woman claims to have seen her and mentions she's been tied to a tree by a man two days ago. When Mickey incredulously runs to the spot, it turns out the "victim" is a regular cow. A 1955 newspaper comic repeats this joke by introducing Goofy's cousin Wilspeth, who's a beaver. He nearly gets adopted by regular beavers. "The Villain of the Victory Garden" goes for the macabre by having Horace comment that he's done with vegetables and that he'd "eat hoss meat if [he] was sure it wa'nt one o' ['is] relatives!". And in "Mickey for Mayor", Pete goes around making photos of Mickey to use them as the basis of bad publicity news articles. One photo is of Mickey's hand as he reaches for the camera to block the view. The headline? "Mouse Mauls Cuddly Cats!"

As an aside, Zeke is referred to as "Ezekiel Wolf" in W WDC 73-04 by his mother.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 16:45:23 GMT whatevs said:

Throwing in random tidbits:

I'd argue Ellsworth's situation is preceded by Old Yellow Beak from "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold". He looks a regular parrot and Donald's surprise suggests he should be interpreted as one, but everything else about the story portrays him no different than a person.

Walsh, Ellsworth's creator, loved blurring the line, predominantly with simians ("Eega Beeva and the Atombrella", "Mickey Takes Umbrage", "Tzig-tzag Fever", and several gag comics). Of course, Walsh's stories in general are weird. My personal biggest nope is ZM 52-01-27, where Ellsworth calls a taxidermy service to get him a dummy so Goofy won't notice he's gone. And "Mousepotamia" features a unique take on Jaq and Gus as people-mice just like Mickey. All Mousepotamians adhere to the Cinderella mice design, including the villain Iron Mask.

A number of early stories (pre-1950, I think) featuring Clara Cluck present her as a sapient regular chicken bored with her egg-laying life. The text story "Easter Eggs" even has her being Goofy's prize chicken. Being an animal-chicken didn't stop her from engaging in person-activities either, like running off with Panchito or pursuing a singing career.

Then there's also Gregory Gopher in "The Strange World of Gregory Gopher", who is like Darkwing Duck's Neptunia but a mutant gopher instead of a mutant fish. No one could tell he was anything out of the ordinary until his origin reveal.

Copy-pasting myself from TVTropes: In "The Mystery at Hidden River", Mickey searches for Clarabelle, who has disappeared, and describes her to the locals. One woman claims to have seen her and mentions she's been tied to a tree by a man two days ago. When Mickey incredulously runs to the spot, it turns out the "victim" is a regular cow. A 1955 newspaper comic repeats this joke by introducing Goofy's cousin Wilspeth, who's a beaver. He nearly gets adopted by regular beavers. "The Villain of the Victory Garden" goes for the macabre by having Horace comment that he's done with vegetables and that he'd "eat hoss meat if [he] was sure it wa'nt one o' ['is] relatives!". And in "Mickey for Mayor", Pete goes around making photos of Mickey to use them as the basis of bad publicity news articles. One photo is of Mickey's hand as he reaches for the camera to block the view. The headline? "Mouse Mauls Cuddly Cats!"

All interesting! (In spite of this weirdness, I love Bill Walsh's stories — and movies — to death.) As fars monkeys are concerned, my understanding (filtered through the original Planet of the Apes and The Jungle Book) is that apes are essentially no different from humans, but that it just so happens that they never did climb down from their trees and try agriculture or hunting; as a result, some, like Ombrage, can be educated to be equals to full-blown humans, and the descendants thereof can enter the melting-pot of human cities, like Doctors Ex, Doublex and Triplex. As for Mousepotamia, it's made even odder by the fact that the people-mice of Mousepotamia are clearly the same size as Mickey even though they have a Cinderella-based design. It's debatable whether the Jacq and Gus seen in the story are, in-universe, the same mice that later turned up on Grandma's farm.

[drakeborough]

Jun 27, 2017 14:00:54 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 27, 2017 13:08:04 GMT drakeborough said:

TV Tropes has a more elaborate take on this: Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism. This list includes 11 degrees of anthropomorphism (9 if you remove the extremes "Human" and "Animals"), though they are ordered from human to animal rather than from animal to human like in the image you posted:

That seems overly detailed, I couldn't even bring myself to read it all. As someone who deals with scales like this all the time, I would say, the simpler the better. I vastly prefer the MEAS, which is elegant and more concise. Not perfect, but does the job, IMHO.

That's overly detailed indeed, even though I think it deserved to be posted here. But the MEAS, as you call it, works fine in most cases.

Jun 27, 2017 14:00:54 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Also, in a 2000 discussion on DCML Don Rosa gave the following answer to a user who had asked about the relation between Mickey Mouse and the Cinderella mice:

Rosa seems to essentially be describing the MEAS here.

True, though if what he remembered about the 15 degrees is correct, then that scale would have been even more complex than TV Tropes' scale.

Jun 27, 2017 14:00:54 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Why do they need to be at level 4A, instead of just being at level 3?

The distinction is whether the character lives predominantly in the animal world (level 3, eg., Chip 'N Dale) or predominantly in the human world (level 4 eg., Bugs Bunny). Also, an additional characteristic appears to be whether the character retains the size of the animal (level 3) or is much bigger (level 4), in relationship to humans. Both groups can apparently wear clothes or use props (glasses, canes).

Does Bugs Bunny really look that human? I am not a big expert on him, but in addition of wearing no clothes (except for cartoon gloves) and having no anthropomorphic aspects in his design, it seems to me that he acts like an animal (humanized to the point that he can talk, but still mostly animalistic); same for Daffy Duck. This Rosa quote from the link I posted before should explain how I view it:

Bugs Bunny comics were about a rabbit who lived in a hole in the ground and stole carrots from a farmer. Daffy Duck was a flying bird who flew south for the winter and was hunted by duck hunters. And both of these characters had silly personalities and were butt-naked.
Donald (and Mickey Mouse) wore clothes, lived in real houses, had normal jobs, had very real and sensible personalities. They had responsibilities and lived in a community of what seemed to me were real humans. I thought the way that a cartoonist drew humans was with a round black nose. But they were obviously not supposed to be dogs — Scamp was a dog, he acted like a dog, ate bones, lived in a doghouse. Donald had nothing about him that suggested he was a duck. So, I knew that this was simply a cartoonist’s caricature of a normal human being, whereas Bugs Bunny was a caricature of a (talking) rabbit. I never worried about it — I knew Donald and $crooge were people. The fact that they were drawn strangely never bothered me. Human beings don’t have noses as big as Asterix or bellies as big as Obelix, and they don’t look like Tintin, but that doesn’t upset readers, either.

That's why I think Bugs Bunny belongs to level 3.

Jun 27, 2017 14:00:54 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Can you tell me the page and panel in which this happens?

I don't have the story at hand, and was going by a description I read online. Perhaps someone who has easy access to the story can chime in?

I have just read the story in English, and the only references to the word "chicken" are when Donald-disguised-as-a-wolf and later the real wolf (who make the same speech) say that they were on their way to steal a chicken, but then after passing through the boxes they no longer had appetite for raw chicken and wanted cooked food. There are no references to Gyro being a chicken, as I think we discussed in the thread about Gyro's species.

Jun 27, 2017 14:00:54 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

In theory, a dognose calling himself a "dog" is not different from Donald calling himself alternatingly a "duck" and a "man", or Mickey calling himself alternatingly a "mouse" and a "man". Of course, seeing an anthropomorphic dog calling himself a "dog" feels weirder, because we are not used to it, while we are used to characters calling themselves a "duck" or a "mouse".

Here I kind of like Scrooge MacDuck's idea of subdividing MEAS 4B into 4B1 (characters are still occasionally referred to as their species, not just as a last name) and 4B2 (characters never referred to as animals, and all treated as human entirely). Thus, since Donald and Scrooge are referred to as "ducks" (not just because of their names) and Mickey is referred to as a "mouse" (again, not just  because of his name, he is often called a "meddlesome mouse") they would be 4B1s. On the other hand, O'Hara or Neighbor Jones are never referred to as dogs, they're men, and so level 4B2s. Goofy somehow slipped through as a level 4B2 (never called a dog, always a man). I don't like the fact that there are 4B1s at all (Scrooge should never be called "the richest duck in the world", he's the "richest man in the world") but the tradition is too well-established to be changed now.

The division sounds good. I have no problem with Donald and Scroge being sometimes called "ducks" instead of "men", but that's just because I am used to it: I guess that it must have been strange for readers in the 1940's, just like it would be strange for us to see Goofy or O'Hara or Jones called "dogs", which is a reason why the wording of the line "I'm not a dog! I am a wolf!" is weird. I wonder if the editor (who had scolded Barks shortly before that for using humans in "Dangerous Disguise") had something to do with this choice: maybe he censored the reference to "man", or maybe Barks censored himself to avoid that.

As a rule of thumb, "richest duck in the world" is used when Scrooge faces off against other ducks (like in Flintheart Glomgold's debut story, which is even titled "The Second-Richest Duck"), while stories in which he faces off against dognoses (like the Cornelius Coot statue story) will obviously use the expression "richest man in the world", since being just the richest duck wouldn't necessarily mean he is richer than his rival dognose; plus, a line like "He can't be the world's richest man! I am!" makes sense, while a line like "He can't be the world's richest dog! I am the richest duck!" wouldn't make any sense. Stories that don't feature a "who is richer?" plot are more unpredictable as to which wording will be used.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 18:17:09 GMT drakeborough said:

I have no problem with Donald and Scroge being sometimes called "ducks" instead of "men", but that's just because I am used to it: I guess that it must have been strange for readers in the 1940's, just like it would be strange for us to see Goofy or O'Hara or Jones called "dogs", which is a reason why the wording of the line "I'm not a dog! I am a wolf!" is weird. I wonder if the editor (who had scolded Barks shortly before that for using humans in "Dangerous Disguise") had something to do with this choice: maybe he censored the reference to "man", or maybe Barks censored himself to avoid that.

Funny thing: that line never did seem odd to me. That is because The Thinking Box was one of the first Duck stories I ever read, and thus dognoses referring to themselves as dogs became a "normal thing" in my unconscious headcanon for Disney comics.

[Matilda]

Yes, whatevs, I was also going to say that Ellsworth reminds me of Yellow Beak, in terms of level of anthropomorphism.

In MEAS terms, I'm OK with some level 2s in my headcanon Duckiverse (Chip and Dale talking to each other and other forest creatures, Tabby and Spitfire thinking articulately, Bolivar playing chess with Helper, eagles speaking in eaglese, etc.), but not with level 3s. Also, what I assume here is that the animals' speech (if any) would sound to humans like the sounds those animals make in our universe, not like human language.

I suppose an animal like Tabby, who acts like a cat but thinks in sophisticated language, could be level 1 or 2, depending on one's definition of "talking". Does Tabby ever talk out loud to another animal?

I detest the Cinderella mice, and I dislike all the Grandma Duck stories which brought them and other level 3s (Brer Fox) onto her farm, precisely because that mixes levels of anthropomorphism. (Dumbo, I guess, is a 2? Not that he exists in my Duckiverse!)

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 18:38:51 GMT Matilda said:

Dumbo, I guess, is a 2? Not that he exists in my Duckiverse!

Well, Dumbo as shown in the Grandma Duck's Farm Friends comics is a case that is not covered in the scale we were dealing with. 2.5, I guess? He can talk to the Level 3 and Level 4 characters in articulate English (at least in The Flying Farm Hand), but he still walks on all four. In the film itself, the scale is also put to trial: apparently the elephants and other animals cannot talk to the humans, but Timothy (who generally behaves like he's in the same boat as Dumbo and Co., rather than superior to them) is capable of speaking to both.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jun 27, 2017 18:17:09 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 27, 2017 14:17:09 GMT -4 drakeborough said:
Does Bugs Bunny really look that human? I am not a big expert on him, but in addition of wearing no clothes (except for cartoon gloves) and having no anthropomorphic aspects in his design, it seems to me that he acts like an animal (humanized to the point that he can talk, but still mostly animalistic); same for Daffy Duck.

I guess the issue with Bugs Bunny is that he doesn't always act like an animal, and is not always treated as one. There are cartoons, such as when he faces off against Yosemite Sam, where he acts as almost a human antagonist. Also, he is physically huge (taller than both Fudd and Sam), and thus "easily fits into human society", which usually a characteristic of a level 4. But the MEAS seems to work much better with Disney Duck and Mice characters than Looney Tunes. For example, Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner clearly behave like level 3s, but physically are more level 4As.

The division sounds good. I have no problem with Donald and Scroge being sometimes called "ducks" instead of "men", but that's just because I am used to it:

But if you believe (as I do, and I know you do) that (A) the Ducks are people, not ducks and (B) the "Duck" in "Donald Duck" is a family name, not a species, then you should have a problem with it. I know, it's ingrained in our minds and, "the richest duck in the world" and "the world's luckiest duck" sound good, but if I were a Disney comics writer or editor, I would eschew any references to Scrooge or Donald being called "ducks". Stories where Scrooge is competing with Glomgold for the title of "richest duck in the world" are, admittedly, problematic in their very premise.

This time I disagree: the following scene...... still works even if you replaced Donald and the boys with real humans, since finding stuffed ducks in that place is scary in itself.

I don't think that holds, because a normal human being would not be so horrified by stuffed ducks. Besides, there are other stuffed animals there ... I see a cat. Why were Donald, HD&L only perturbed by the ducks?

Well, there is one early cartoon (When the Cat's Away, 1929) in which Mickey and Minnie are real mice and Pete (here called "Tom", before getting in later cartoons the name Pegleg Pete given to the pre-Mickey Disney villain) is a real cat. But we can call it the exception that proves the rule, as it was released in a period where the concept of anthropomorphic animal was still in the process of being defined (see Horace and Clarabelle starting as real animals before becoming humans with animal features).

So, despite this example, your point is still valid.

Actually, I thought of another example of the usually MEAS level 4B Ducks acting like 4A ducks in animation ... the recent Mickey Mouse cartoon, "Duck the Halls" where all the Disney ducks had to go south for winter, à la Daffy. But those Mickey Mouse shorts are so ugly that I feel no compunction ignoring their existence.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 19:18:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 27, 2017 18:17:09 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 27, 2017 14:17:09 GMT -4 drakeborough said:
Does Bugs Bunny really look that human? I am not a big expert on him, but in addition of wearing no clothes (except for cartoon gloves) and having no anthropomorphic aspects in his design, it seems to me that he acts like an animal (humanized to the point that he can talk, but still mostly animalistic); same for Daffy Duck.

I guess the issue with Bugs Bunny is that he doesn't always act like an animal, and is not always treated as one. There are cartoons, such as when he faces off against Yosemite Sam, where he acts as almost a human antagonist. Also, he is physically huge (taller than both Fudd and Sam), and thus "easily fits into human society", which usually a characteristic of a level 4. But the MEAS seems to work much better with Disney Duck and Mice characters than Looney Tunes. For example, Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner clearly behave like level 3s, but physically are more level 4As.

I think the Loney Tunes' case, it should mostly be chalked up to the fact that the cartoons have no continuity, with the cartoons being loosely defined as films in which the Looney Toons star. The vintage Looney Tunes comics tried to pull a Disney Ducks and Mice-inspired continuty out of it with very mixed success.

[drakeborough]

Jun 27, 2017 16:45:23 GMT whatevs said:

I'd argue Ellsworth's situation is preceded by Old Yellow Beak from "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold". He looks a regular parrot and Donald's surprise suggests he should be interpreted as one, but everything else about the story portrays him no different than a person.

I think Old Yellow Beak is meant to be an actual animal, just like Pluto. Of course, in popular culture parrots are often portrayed as being able to speak and think like human beings, and the story follows this idea, but I don't think he is meant to be a person.

Jun 27, 2017 16:45:23 GMT whatevs said:

As an aside, Zeke is referred to as "Ezekiel Wolf" in W WDC 73-04 by his mother.

Does his mother actually appear in that story? Inducks doesn't list her, while both of Zeke's parents are listed as appearing in W WDC 65-04, which came out the same year but 8 months before. Are you sure you didn't confuse the two stories?

By the way, in a previous message I wrote that "we just said that the name "Zeke" (of which "Ezechiele" is a translation) was first used in W WDC 65-04". This is not really true, as I had only posted a Wikipedia quote saying the name Zeke was invented by Buettner in 1946, and there are three Big Bad Wolf stories by Buettner from that year: W WDC 65-04, W WDC 66-04 and W WDC 67-04. Given that Inducks uses Zeke in the description of the first story but not the other two, and given that the first story features Zeke's parents and a flashback of Zeke's youth, I deduced that the name was introduced in this story (which of course doesn't prevent the name from also being used in the second story and/or in the third story), but I guess that having a confirmation would be better than relying on a deduction, however logical.

Jun 27, 2017 18:34:00 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 27, 2017 18:17:09 GMT drakeborough said:

I have no problem with Donald and Scroge being sometimes called "ducks" instead of "men", but that's just because I am used to it: I guess that it must have been strange for readers in the 1940's, just like it would be strange for us to see Goofy or O'Hara or Jones called "dogs", which is a reason why the wording of the line "I'm not a dog! I am a wolf!" is weird. I wonder if the editor (who had scolded Barks shortly before that for using humans in "Dangerous Disguise") had something to do with this choice: maybe he censored the reference to "man", or maybe Barks censored himself to avoid that.

Funny thing: that line never did seem odd to me. That is because The Thinking Box was one of the first Duck stories I ever read, and thus dognoses referring to themselves as dogs became a "normal thing" in my unconscious headcanon for Disney comics.

To be clear: I don't think I see it as out of place (like I think that Kenney gag is), as in theory it's not any different from Donald and other members of his family often referring to themselves as a ducks. It's just that that line seems odd because we are not use to have dognoses (or other anthropomorphic dogs) call themeselves dogs. But, of course, if that story is one of the first duck stories you ever read, it makes sense that you wouldn't find it odd. This reminds me of some online discussions I have recently read in websites where people who are not familiar with Disney comics are puzzled by the very concept of dognoses and find that odd. I guess it's all a matter of imprinting.

And even though it has nothing to do with this thread, I'll add the info that a panel from The Thinking Box was in one of my high school books of literature (second year, maybe?) for a reason I can't recall.

[drakeborough]

Jun 27, 2017 18:38:51 GMT Matilda said:

Yes, whatevs, I was also going to say that Ellsworth reminds me of Yellow Beak, in terms of level of anthropomorphism.

I'm not entirely convinced by this, as a I see a talking parrot as being diferent than a human-animal hybrid.

Jun 27, 2017 18:38:51 GMT Matilda said:

In MEAS terms, I'm OK with some level 2s in my headcanon Duckiverse (Chip and Dale talking to each other and other forest creatures, Tabby and Spitfire thinking articulately, Bolivar playing chess with Helper, eagles speaking in eaglese, etc.), but not with level 3s. Also, what I assume here is that the animals' speech (if any) would sound to humans like the sounds those animals make in our universe, not like human language.

I suppose an animal like Tabby, who acts like a cat but thinks in sophisticated language, could be level 1 or 2, depending on one's definition of "talking". Does Tabby ever talk out loud to another animal?

I detest the Cinderella mice, and I dislike all the Grandma Duck stories which brought them and other level 3s (Brer Fox) onto her farm, precisely because that mixes levels of anthropomorphism. (Dumbo, I guess, is a 2? Not that he exists in my Duckiverse!)

I agree with this, especially the last paragraph: those mice are really annoying and I dislike to see them on Grandma's farm. They are just not part of my headcanon, just like Brer Fox and Dumbo.

Jun 27, 2017 19:18:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jun 27, 2017 18:17:09 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 27, 2017 14:17:09 GMT -4 drakeborough said:
Does Bugs Bunny really look that human? I am not a big expert on him, but in addition of wearing no clothes (except for cartoon gloves) and having no anthropomorphic aspects in his design, it seems to me that he acts like an animal (humanized to the point that he can talk, but still mostly animalistic); same for Daffy Duck.

I guess the issue with Bugs Bunny is that he doesn't always act like an animal, and is not always treated as one. There are cartoons, such as when he faces off against Yosemite Sam, where he acts as almost a human antagonist. Also, he is physically huge (taller than both Fudd and Sam), and thus "easily fits into human society", which usually a characteristic of a level 4. But the MEAS seems to work much better with Disney Duck and Mice characters than Looney Tunes. For example, Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner clearly behave like level 3s, but physically are more level 4As.

Well, as I said I am not an expert on Looney Tunes, so my image of Bugs Bunny is that of a naked talking rabbit who lives in a hole and steals carrots from a farmer; reading that Rosa interview sort of corroborated that image. But from what you said maybe there are other cartoons in which he is more anthropomorphic.

Jun 27, 2017 19:18:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

The division sounds good. I have no problem with Donald and Scroge being sometimes called "ducks" instead of "men", but that's just because I am used to it:

But if you believe (as I do, and I know you do) that (A) the Ducks are people, not ducks and (B) the "Duck" in "Donald Duck" is a family name, not a species, then you should have a problem with it. I know, it's ingrained in our minds and, "the richest duck in the world" and "the world's luckiest duck" sound good, but if I were a Disney comics writer or editor, I would eschew any references to Scrooge or Donald being called "ducks". Stories where Scrooge is competing with Glomgold for the title of "richest duck in the world" are, admittedly, problematic in their very premise.

I guess that, just like I see duck comics as being told through a lens that gives animal features to what are actually human beings, I can also see the same lens occasionally turning the word "man" into "duck", just like it turns the word "pink" into "white" in reference to the color of their skin. Or, to quote again from that Rosa interview (except that this time is from the second part of it):

I use “duck” and “man” interchangingly when the Ducks refer to themselves or when other characters talk to them. It is used like an ethnic name, or a regional appellation like a “Hoosier”. I do not use it to mean a waterfowl. And as you bring it up yourself, you can see that Barks always had $crooge refer to himself as a man, and the Barks’ title of the original $crooge McDuck story was “Only a Poor Old Man”, not “Only a Poor Old Waterfowl”.

[...]

I’m referring to the way the character is drawn, the caricature. We refer to our butts as “tails”. I must say “white” in place of “pink” because that’s the color it is caricatured as. Etc. However, let’s say the Ducks are in a deadly trap and they need (for some reason) a FEATHER to save their life. They could NOT pluck one out of their tail, because they actually have no feathers, regardless of how they are drawn.

Of course, I like when the Duck are referred to as "men", and I wouldn't object to your idea of removing references to them as "ducks". It's just that I am so used to see both words that when I hear "duck" in a story I sort of forget that the word indicates an animal, just like while reading a story I sort of don't notice, unless I decide to focus on Donald's appearance and keep thinking about it, that he has a beak and a white skin.

Jun 27, 2017 19:18:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

This time I disagree: the following scene...... still works even if you replaced Donald and the boys with real humans, since finding stuffed ducks in that place is scary in itself.

I don't think that holds, because a normal human being would not be so horrified by stuffed ducks. Besides, there are other stuffed animals there ... I see a cat. Why were Donald, HD&L only perturbed by the ducks?

I should re-read the whole story, but I think it makes sense to be scared if, being in a situation of potential danger, you find out that you are in a place in which someone placed stuffed animals. Why did they only name the ducks? I don't know... maybe it's because they noticed them first, which makes sense since there were plenty of ducks there.

Jun 27, 2017 19:18:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Well, there is one early cartoon (When the Cat's Away, 1929) in which Mickey and Minnie are real mice and Pete (here called "Tom", before getting in later cartoons the name Pegleg Pete given to the pre-Mickey Disney villain) is a real cat. But we can call it the exception that proves the rule, as it was released in a period where the concept of anthropomorphic animal was still in the process of being defined (see Horace and Clarabelle starting as real animals before becoming humans with animal features).

So, despite this example, your point is still valid.

Actually, I thought of another example of the usually MEAS level 4B Ducks acting like 4A ducks in animation ... the recent Mickey Mouse cartoon, "Duck the Halls" where all the Disney ducks had to go south for winter, à la Daffy. But those Mickey Mouse shorts are so ugly that I feel no compunction ignoring their existence.

I remember hearing about that on hex' blog, and complaining in it as an anon for the same reason that you mentioned. Too bad they did that, since I heard that episode also had good things, like a Scrooge appearance (one of the only three in that show), a Gus appearance (the only one in that show) and a flashback of Mickey's parents (even though they are only silhouettes).

Jun 27, 2017 19:27:47 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 27, 2017 19:18:28 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I guess the issue with Bugs Bunny is that he doesn't always act like an animal, and is not always treated as one. There are cartoons, such as when he faces off against Yosemite Sam, where he acts as almost a human antagonist. Also, he is physically huge (taller than both Fudd and Sam), and thus "easily fits into human society", which usually a characteristic of a level 4. But the MEAS seems to work much better with Disney Duck and Mice characters than Looney Tunes. For example, Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner clearly behave like level 3s, but physically are more level 4As.

I think the Loney Tunes' case, it should mostly be chalked up to the fact that the cartoons have no continuity, with the cartoons being loosely defined as films in which the Looney Toons star. The vintage Looney Tunes comics tried to pull a Disney Ducks and Mice-inspired continuty out of it with very mixed success.

I think the few instances suggesting that the Looney Tunes characters are just actors playing roles in their cartoons should be taken with a grain of salt, just like when the same suggestion is made for Disney characters.

[RobbK1]

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

The Big Bad Wolf was named "Zeke" (Short for Ezekial) in the English language Disney Comics.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:20 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 27, 2017 19:27:47 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

I think the Loney Tunes' case, it should mostly be chalked up to the fact that the cartoons have no continuity, with the cartoons being loosely defined as films in which the Looney Toons star. The vintage Looney Tunes comics tried to pull a Disney Ducks and Mice-inspired continuty out of it with very mixed success.

I think the few instances suggesting that the Looney Tunes characters are just actors playing roles in their cartoons should be taken with a grain of salt, just like when the same suggestion is made for Disney characters.

Well, it's a tad more complicated, but what pops up very often is a mild fourth-wall-breaking that seems to imply the "films" are just being done by putting the Toons in a set, giving them a vague idea who they are supposed to be, getting the cameras rolling, and then letting them be themselves. Though of course a grain of salt is always welcome, the idea is much more solid about the Looney Tunes, since it is, in several cases, featured (more or less prominently) in the cartoons themselves, whereas the Disney cartoons being films was only invented for comics and anthology TV specials. 

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

A few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once).

We discussed those already, and drakeborough's reading is that those definitely fall in the "the characters are playing a role" category, where the Goofy we see is just one Goofy lookalike in a world full of Goofy lookalikes, and not actually the Goofy we're used to seeing. Mind you, I disagree, but the point is, this argument won't convince him.

[drakeborough]

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

Actually, the wife was known as "Mrs. Geef", since she wasn't really Goofy's wife but rather the wife of a Goofy lookalike named "George Geef". And the son was named "Junior". We already discussed this on this very thread, but the subject was quickly dropped because it was OT; maybe we could open a separate thread about it. Anyway, I'll repost here Scrooge MacDuck's post and my answer to it:

Jun 25, 2017 20:46:03 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

You are mistaken on one account, though: Goofy having a son was not made up for Goof Troop. In the 50's and 60's, it was a recurring element of his theatrical cartoons that he was married and had a young son, who was only ever called "Junior"

Actually, I'd say that a recurring element of Goofy's theatrical cartoons in the 50's and 60's is that... they didn't feature Goofy at all! Disney often regards their characters as actors playing roles (in animation more than in comics), and this idea was heavily used in the Goofy cartoons of the time, in which at first we were introduced to a world in which everyone is a Goofy lookalike (none of which was the "real" one), and then the series focused on one of them, George Geef, who could do things that Goofy cannot.

The fact that George is not Goofy is indicated by many clues: the fact that we were introduced to him through the device of a world populated by Goofy lookalikes, the fact that his appearance was gradually changed until he was noticeably different from Goofy, the fact that he has a different name, the fact that his life and personality were often different from Goofy's, etc. So, if George Geef is not Goofy, then it is true that, prior to Goof Troop, Goofy was always portrayed as being a bachelor who had no children. Because of that, it was annoying to see what was intended to be the real Goofy suddenly being a father of a pre-teen, effectively creating a schism between animation and comics, as the differences here were far bigger than whatever change DuckTales made from the Uncle Scroge comics.

By the way, this is in my opinion the real reason why we often see nephews/nieces in the Duck and Mouse universe rather than sons and daughter. I don't think it's a matter of censorship as many people say, it's just that when you have unpteen stories establishing that a character has no children you can't have a grown child appearing out of nowhere in the character's (unpteen+1)th story as if the child has always been there. Or, you could do it (and, in the case of Goof Troop, they did it), but it would violate everything about the established continuity, possibly disappointing readers/viewers who feel their intelligence has been insulted. That's why giving a character a nephew/niece is often the only way to create stories in which he/she interacts with a kid.

Jun 25, 2017 17:09:30 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

(most people think Max is that 'Junior' all grown up, suggestig Goof Troop takes place a few years after those theatrical cartoons).


On an other note enitrely, in my view of continuity, it's easy to reconcile Max with Goofy's apparent son-lessness: House of Mouse, generally agreed to take place a few years after An Extremely Goofy Movie (the chronologically last work set in the Goof Troop series), shows Max having a job as a doorman. Indeed, from Goof Troop to A Goofy Movie to An Extremely Goofy Movie to House of Mouse, Max is seen steadily aging from a twelve-year-old to an adult, a unique case in Classic Disney paraphernalia, I believe. At any rate, it's easy to assume that Gottfredson stories took place when Goofy was still single, and that recent stories that have him single again take place when Max is already an independant young man.

I really admire, and I am not ironic, the cleverness of your explanations with which you always try to find a way to tie everything (in this case, Max' existence) together in a single continuity: I am really amused by it. I guess you also have an explanation for Pete's wife and children, and for why they live in Spoonerville rather than Mouseton, and I can image what it may be.

That said, I am not really convinced by these arguments: for example, why didn't HDL age between Goofy not being a father yet and Max being almost an adult (I am not sure if working as a doorman necessarily means you are an adult)?

My explanation is simply that Goof Troop is non-canon to the Mouse universe comics, and in my headcanon Max doesn't exist.

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

The Big Bad Wolf was named "Zeke" (Short for Ezekial) in the English language Disney Comics.

Are you sure "Ezekial" is not a typo? So, far, we said that his name is short for "Ezekiel", and that "Ezekiel" was actually used in WDC&S #73. All was left is to determine which issue used the name Zeke first, and the candidates were WDC&S #65, #66 and #67.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 28, 2017 10:16:16 GMT drakeborough said:

Jun 27, 2017 21:50:33 GMT RobbK1 said:

a few cartoon shorts had Goofy having a wife and a son (both of whom were unnamed (I think they used "Mrs. Goofy" once.

Actually, the wife was known as "Mrs. Geef", since she wasn't really Goofy's wife but rather the wife of a Goofy lookalike named "George Geef". And the son was named "Junior". We already discussed this on this very thread, but the subject was quickly dropped because it was OT; maybe we could open a separate thread about it. 

Yeah, maybe we should do another thread. To be honest, after seeing the cartoons, I simply thought of George Geef as the "real name" of Goofy. After all, "Goofy" is probably just a nickname…