September 10, 2004
Interspecies Sexuality Dept.
In Roger Ebert’s Movie Answer Man column this week, he got a question about one of this blog’s favorite topics:
Q. In "The Three Musketeers," the new made-for-DVD animated feature from Walt Disney Productions starring Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck, Goofy falls in love with Clarabelle the Cow. Which leads me to wonder: Is this the first interspecies romance ever depicted in a Disney cartoon?Ebert and Maltin may be two of the nation’s leading authorities on film, but in this case they’re BOTH WRONG. As any reader of James Lileks knows, there exists a series of Disney cartoons from the ‘50s in which Goofy had a human wife. And not only that, but Maltin himself did commentary on those very DVDs, so he should really know better.Joe Leydon, Houston
A. Few people know more about animated characters and even their sex lives than my friend and colleague Leonard Maltin, who responds: "The first thing that comes to mind is Donald Duck's aggressive flirting with human bathing beauties in 'The Three Caballeros.' For the most part, Disney kept the animal species together, as nature intended, but the very same Clarabelle Cow kept company for years with Horace Horsecollar -- a horse.
Then again, I suppose you could make the argument that Goofy is disqualified from discussions of interspecies sexuality, since we don’t know what species he is.
Speaking of Ebert, he’s got a new website. Check out his picture:
Look familiar?
That movie, incidentally, got one of Roger’s rare zero-star reviews, so strange that he would emulate it.
Posted by Stephen Silver at September 10, 2004 03:06 PMWhat about humans dating robots? There's a whole Futurama episode about that moral quandry :-)
Posted by: Mike Silverman at September 10, 2004 04:56 PMWhat about humans dating robots? There's a whole Futurama episode about that moral quandry
Only one?
Posted by: Stephen Silver at September 10, 2004 05:08 PMOne early reference to "robosexuals", then an entire episode where Bender complains that humans like Fry are hogging all the fine Robot sisters.
"You got Metal Fever, boy! Metal Fever!"
Posted by: Bill McCabe at September 10, 2004 05:41 PMfirst of all, Goofy (whose last name, as we also learned from Lileks, is Geef, which sounds suspiciously similar to queef, but that's an issue for another day) is a dog, but a dog who aspires to be human. Some might consider him an Uncle Tom of the dog world.
Additionally, I'd submit that the old Looney Tunes in which Pepe LePew pursues (some might say stalks) and eventually catches up with (some might say sexually assaults) female cats that he thinks are skunks is an early instance of cartoon interspecies sexuality. Of course, Looney Tunes is Warner Bros. and not Disney, but still.
Posted by: LilB at September 10, 2004 06:03 PMEbeert is in no way emulating Tom Green. Their hands are totally different. And that motion that both are doing is one directors use all the time...
Posted by: A at September 12, 2004 12:27 PM