After I noticed how much I loved a Constable Dogberry role in a story of recognition, I started looking at other popular mystery stories to see if similar characters popped up. To date I have discovered: Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies starring Peter Sellers, Maxwell Smart of the Get Smart tv show starring Don Adams, and Inspector Gadget the cartoon. Each of them have a boss or assistant who is perturbed by the clumsiness and complete cluelessness of each. Yet it seems to be their very cluelessness which causes them stumble into every situation with a perfectly unpredictable approach, and every time they accidentally expose the criminal, find the stolen papers, or discover the kidnapped professor. These are stories that point to a world where fools are the best candidates for uncovering a crafty plot, even if they stumbled upon the answers out of sheer clumsiness.
In the typical Scooby-Doo, Where Are You original cartoon episode, the gang of mystery solving kids will search for clues by dividing up into two groups, the serious and smart ones: Fred, Velma and Daphne, and the fearful, hungry ones: Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. Shaggy and Scooby are considered by the others as a slight nuisance to the serious detective work, because they always get distracted by the sight or smell of food, but it usually turns out to be that their hunt for food leads them to the secret hideaway or one of the most important clues in cracking the case. Scooby-Doo and Shaggy regularly get tripped up in the trap as they try to help execute Fred's elaborate trap schemes, they always run away in fear from their own shadow, and they are ever the hams who generate most of the the laughs, but while we are laughing at them, we love them for being a crucial link to the success of the Mystery Inc. gang
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You also consistently uses an "unmasking" as the final identification of the episode's rascal or villian. Someone whom they had probably already talked to on the crime scene is disguised under that mask and portraying himself as a supernatural monster. The mask is pulled off, the terror is reduced and the answers all make sense. I don't think this show has ever been considered part of "apocalyptic" genre of writing, but whenever I see the unveiling and unmasking at the end of each episode, I want to clap at how cleverly this scary-funny show reassures children that the most terrifying monsters of human imagination will someday all be unmasked as pesky but ultimately powerless con-artists who may be experts with holography and creepy howls but that is about it.
Those are all the examples I have space to mention of the unrecognized smart fools, and here is my only example I will mention of an unrecognized visionary animal:
The famous talking ass in the story of Balaam in Numbers 22, who was able to recognize the hazardous object in the road which Balaam could not, and saved Balaam's life. But before Balaam recognized the value of his ass, he treated it as a nuisance who deserved several whippings for disobedience and stupidness and stubbornness.
Tomorrow I will talk about my favorite unrecognized recognizer, the young child.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment