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April 07, 2005

DisneyWar -- First Impressions

Posted by Christine Hurt

On the plane from Milwaukee to Toledo, I started James B. Stewart's DisneyWar. So far, I'm enjoying it, but the author damaged his credibility with me in the Prologue. On page 5, Stewart loses me with the following statement:

Goofy is a dog, of course, with fur, a long snout, floppy ears, a slight potbelly, and big paws.

Goofy is not a dog.

In what kind of sick world would Mickey Mouse have a nonverbal dog named Pluto that lived in a doghouse and walked on all fours with a collar on and also have a dog friend named Goofy, who walked on two legs, talked, played sports, and sent his son, Max, to college? If you watch the old Mickey Mouse cartoons, they are populated with a species that looks similar to Mickey, although some are taller, skinnier, shorter, rounder, burlier, scrawnier, etc. Goofy is one of the taller, scrawnier specimens of that species. if Mickey is a mouse, then Goofy is a mouse.

Stewart quotes later from a Disney memo he was given when he volunteered to be Goofy at Disney World for a day, which states "Goofy is a dog in man's clothing." I think this is revisionist history. Goofy is a mutant mouse.

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Comments (5)

1. Posted by Gordon Smith on April 7, 2005 @ 13:16 | Permalink

Christine, I used to think that Goofy was a director at Disney. The one who computed that value of Michael Ovitz' severance package before the board approved his employment agreement. Then I realized that no one computed the value of Michael Ovitz' severance package. Silly me.

2. Posted by Kaimi on April 7, 2005 @ 14:11 | Permalink

Christine,

Sorry to be a revisionist historian, but a google search turns up this site:

http://psc.disney.go.com/guestservices/8709.html

which claims that Goofy began life in 1932 as a character named "Dippy the Dawg." In 1938, the named was changed to "Goofy."

3. Posted by Christine on April 7, 2005 @ 14:44 | Permalink

OK, I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but compare Kaimi's website with the Disney archive website to which it points: http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/characterstandard/goofy/goofy.html. You'll notice that Kaimi's Disney website and the archive text are word for word except for the first sentence. The first website uses the sentence "Goofy is a dog!" but the archive website does not have that sentence. That's all I'm saying.

Except this: What kind of strange, Orwellian world is Disneyland if some dogs are "humans" and some are "pets." If Goofy is a dog, then I say that's WRONG, if not in the "incorrect" sense at least in that "not fitting into my worldview" sense.

4. Posted by Nathan Nelson on April 8, 2005 @ 9:53 | Permalink

I love reading this blog.

5. Posted by Christine on April 8, 2005 @ 16:37 | Permalink

I love the people that read this blog.