“We
Are Confronted With Insurmountable Opportunities.”
—
Walt Kelly
Back when Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" was subtly satirizing
FDR's socialism with his magically masochistic Shmoos, Walt
Kelly's
"Pogo" was reminding us, thru
his comic, what a beautiful world we had and how we were
monumentally screwing it up by treating it like our personal
trash-heap. Thus the famous "We have met the enemy
and he is us" comic. (You
can see the original 1971 comic here.)
It was also infamous,
in a way, because it made people think, and Americans hate
it when they have to think. In this case the thought was
a spark, along with many others, that led to the environmental
movement.
As such, the significance of Kelly's contribution should
not be underappreciated.
And then, only somewhat related to the above, an animated
version of Pogo appeared in 1969, a 30-minute feature called "The
Pogo Special Birthday Special". The production was
significant in my life
as I'm certain the cartoon version of the delicious Mam'selle
Hepzibah, channeling a French version of Marilyn
Monroe, is singularly responsible for the dropping of my
testicles. (Hey! Access to erotica was severely limited to
teen males in 1969. An immature male like moi took what he
could get.) She was without question the sexiest animated
creature
I
had ever beheld until "Fritz
the Cat" came
along. But that's another story.
Stick with the video, as crappy as the VHS quality may be,
as there's plenty of fun and Mam'selle for everyone.
Bonus Trivia: The voice of P.T. Bridgeport is Walt Kelly
himself while animator of the gods, Chuck Jones, takes a
turn as Porky Pine.
All of the female voices, along with Pogo himself, is deftly
handled by the lovely and talented June Foray.
------------
Technical Note: I've been kicking this cartoon around in
the back of my brain thing for some time but i knew it'd
involve more than an average amount of time to create, which
it did. I also kept adding and subtracting characters, which
took a lot of editing.
Unfortunately, regarding response to this 'toon, what I'm
discovering is that I have a much better memory
of
all things
Pogo than
most folks. But better a head full of useless trivia than
the memory of a goldfish. What were we talking about again?
=Lefty=
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