Posts Tagged 'religion'

Let’s go back to the early days, for a really great Bimbo short.

First of all, I think it’s worth noting that the whole “raiding the chicken house” trope is inextricably tied up with blackface minstrelsy.  Of course, Bimbo being a canine, he comes at it from his own angle (not unlike Mr. Fox), but in 1930 the racist minstrel tradition would have been fresh in the minds of audiences.

On the other hand, the bit where Bimbo and the chicken switch heads and clothing is pure  Fleischer craziness, with their usual touch of the uncanny (particularly when the chicken has Bimbo’s head but still makes chicken noises).  Even when his head’s on the right body, though, Bimbo never speaks in this cartoon, which isn’t really the norm for him.  It works here, though, putting the emphasis entirely on the song.

And what a song it is! In a cartoon this fun, made by Jewish animators no less, you can’t really take the hellfire-and-damnation lyrics seriously.  In fact the song has the same sort of ironic winking quality as Fats Waller’s “Devil to Pay.”  It seems to be largely a vehicle to subject to Bimbo to this round of surreal frights and tortures.  And honestly I’m not even sure I can parse all the levels of intersecting cultural implications at play when, amid all the Christian ghosts condemning Bimbo for stealing food, a stereotypically Jewish ghost shrugs and says, “You needed it.”

As usual in these sorts of cartoons, the weirdness escalates until it reaches a frenzy.  There’s a singing scythe, a scatting chicken, booty-dancing ghosts, and a trio of creatures I can only describe as angry crotches.  As Bimbo runs away at the end, the faces of the monsters who taunt him take on a surprising level of grotesque detail, reminiscent of the work of Basil Wolverton (who must surely have been watching these sorts of cartoons in his formative years as an artist).

I think I’ve previously discussed the tendency of Fleischer cartoons not to have real endings in any narrative sense.  For what it’s worth, this one is an exception.  The ghosts and demons come to drag Bimbo to hell, and that’s just what they do.