Editor's note: When I was a child, anyone who watched Disney animation must have known about the character of Goofy. Everyone's impression of Goofy should belong to a more optimistic and funny image, right? However, the author of this article imagines Goofy's little-known depression based on a variety of details in the cartoon. Having known Goofy for so many years, it's time to talk about his missing wife and family.
By Daniel Friedman
Translation: Xiao Quan Proofreader: Zhang Yi
Polygon China Exclusive License Agreement, please obtain permission to reprint.
There are always stories that are too sad and take a breath to ease up. Before that, even in front of family and friends, I couldn't talk about these things calmly. Time may heal everything, but no one has a definite number of how long this process will take. Everybody understands that.
However, dear readers, although we are going to discuss Disney animation next, the related themes such as tragedy and life and death trauma may be more frightening and scary.
Goofy's tragic experience
Goofy is the dog in Disney that is particularly prone to accidents, and if you don't know much about his Disney classics and the cartoons of the 90s, I will use some information as a foreshadowing.
In the 1950s, Goofy began appearing as a regular character in Disney's theatrical animated shorts. He wears a coat and sits in shifts every day, and the couple has a son named Goofy Jr., but Goofy's wife has her back to the camera every time she appears, and although she has spoken in some short films, she has never shown her face. Later, television became popular, and these theatrical animations were slowly eliminated, and most of the characters disappeared from public view in the early 1960s.
However, in 1992, Goofy returned again in "The Goofy Family" broadcast in the Disney Afternoon Animation Time, with a total of 78 episodes of half an hour each. This was followed by a theatrical version of Goofy Movies in 1995. In 2000, Disney launched the film sequel "Extreme High Flying" in the form of a dvd.
In "The Goofy Family" and two other Goofy films, Goofy is a single father with a son named Max, and his wife never appears again in the 50s short films. Fans of The Goofy Family have long speculated about what happened to his wife, but Disney has never given any official explanation.
Many websites say that in an episode of "Goofy Family", Goofy once told his son that his mother was "a star in the sky", but this is only an "urban legend". In fact, Goofy and Max never mentioned it. Disney officials have posted a statement about Goofy's wife in the FAQ section of its official website. The statement (which was later deleted) had only one sentence: They also did not know exactly what had happened to Goofy's wife.
Years later, "The Goofy Family" was released, Little Goofy changed his name to Max, and Mrs. Goofy disappeared. Given that these characters are all fictional characters and have no real biographies, we can only speculate from what was broadcast.
Maybe one day in the future, Disney will release another movie or TV series to further explain who Max's mother really is and where she is going. But until then, no one has a definitive answer.
In the earliest animated short films, Mrs. Goofy never showed her face, and later animations and movies simply did not exist
It's hard to convince everyone that Mrs. Goofy isn't dead, after all, there's no plot in "The Goofy Family" that mentions Max and a living mother. He had never seen her or called her. Goofy did not share the burden of raising his son with anyone.
Perhaps it was because what had happened had traumatized Goofy so much that he couldn't even bring it up. However, there is no plot in the anime that proves that Max has a mother who never interacts.
In the 1990s, a Disney executive put his feet on the conference table, leaned back in his chair, smoked a few cigars, and said, "Goofy should have had a late wife."
Another (and only plausible) explanation for the disappearance of Goofy's wife comes from the 1953 short film "Daddy's Day off." In this episode, because his wife is out, Goofy has to take a day off and go home to take care of the housework. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and after Goofy opened the door, the milk deliverer handed him two bottles of milk and kissed him. Goofy turned to the camera and said, "How warm and friendly are these buddies?"
The hidden truth behind this may be that the reason why the milk delivery man kissed Goofy was because he originally thought that It would be Goofy's wife who would open the door, after all, Goofy had to go to work on weekdays, and the people who answered the door were all his wife. It may be this apparent cheating that explains why she didn't appear in The Goofy Family, but that's not enough to explain why Mrs. Goofy didn't contact her son, or why Goofy was the son's sole guardian, because if this speculation is correct, Max may not even be Goofy's own son.
The most direct answer is usually the most deadly: through a variety of logical reasoning, we reluctantly deduce that Mrs. Goofy may no longer be alive, although we all hope that after Goofy discovers that his wife is cheating, the two people will be able to solve the problems of family life together as a matter of priority.
Sadly, however, the darkness doesn't end there.
Because most of the members of Goofy's family may have passed away.
The animation "Goofy Family" seems to imply that Goofy's entire immediate family is no longer there. After Max gets into trouble at school, Goofy is very worried about his son's future. He came up with a solution, taking Max fishing in the hope of helping him shape his character, notably that his own father had done the same thing when Goofy was a child.
Goofy showed Max the map that his father had marked, and he recalled the scene when his father taught him how to open the soup pot with his teeth, and the father-son relationship was once very harmonious, so Goofy also wanted to use the same way to establish contact with his son. In Goofy's view, even if his father is dead, Max should know what kind of person his grandfather was. Obviously, this is of great significance to Goofy.
However, Goofy's father does not appear in the movie, and in "The Goofy Family" and the two Goofy movies, Goofy did not contact his parents. Spoonerville, where Goofy and Max live, is Goofy's hometown, but from the plot point of view, it seems that Goofy has no other relatives living there.
Goofy may have had a late sibling. In one episode of The Goofy Family, Max's cousin, Debbie, comes to play with him. She calls Goofy "Uncle," which means she may be the daughter of Goofy's sister. However, Debbie's parents never showed up. In one episode, when their family gathers, all that appears is his aunt, uncle, uncle, and cousin.
However, considering that Debbie did not attend the family gathering at that time, it is likely that other relatives did not show up. But "Goofy Family" is a cartoon about parent-child relationship, and if even Goofy's parents don't appear, it's worth pondering.
Maybe they're all dead
Goofy's parents, siblings, and wife don't appear in the anime, and it's strange that no one else is mentioned except for the occasional quote about his father. Because in several episodes, Goofy showed Max a collection of family photos and told Max the story of his ancestors, if this is the case, why not mention his parents or Max's mother? And why doesn't Max ask about it?
It could be because Goofy is trying to get out of some kind of great trauma, he can't face these things, and Max can understand his father's pain.
Why is there such a style?
Once upon a time, directors had the right to make some subversive changes to Disney's classic characters. In a 1947 Donald Duck cartoon, Donald Duck had a natural voice, and he abandoned Daisy to become a well-known singer. Later, Daisy obsessively follows Donald Duck and threatens him with suicide.
Of course, disney channels can't watch this episode anymore.
In the 1990s, Disney had a large number of media assets and theme parks, and began to be cautious about expensive IP roles. For various reasons, they retained the "Donald Duck Club" style duck duck. It's likely that Disney executives rejected the idea of portraying Goofy's wife, and she hadn't been featured in any animation before.
Of course, it is also possible that the animation screenwriter was more interested in the father-son relationship between Goofy and Max, and did not want to discuss the relationship between husband and wife or mother and son, so he simply let her disappear. But this leads to a problem: because the animation discusses family issues in itself, ignoring the mother will make some viewers feel strange.
The decision to get a character out of the animation may seem simple, but it can lead to very different outcomes. Goofy's wife and family have disappeared, and some people can't help but make up his real experience may be darker than the screenwriter imagined. And once you start thinking about these mysterious things, you can't stop and then can't help but look at the animation from a pessimistic perspective.
Perhaps, Goofy's wife suffered from an incurable disease, and he took care of her in every way, holding her hand and crying as she died. Can you imagine Goofy shutting himself in a pitch-black room, sitting alone, whiskey in hand, looking at wedding photos in a daze? Can you imagine Goofy vowing to cheer up for his son? Can you imagine Goofy hiding all his family photos just because he can't face them anymore?
Of course, the audience can watch the animation happily and not think too much about the family. They don't seem to exist anymore, but they must have existed. "Goofy Movies" focuses on Max's upbringing, and when Goofy has nothing and desperately wants to rely on his son, Max begins to alienate his father. The plot of the subsequent sequel movie "Extreme High Flying" is even more bizarre and difficult to understand. This shows that the tragedy of Goofy's past may have become a hidden subtext behind Goofy's movies:
Goofy is actually a depressed person.
In The Goofy Family, Max is still a child; In Goofy Movies, he is a high school student; In "Extreme High Flying", he is going to college, which makes Goofy into anxiety. At the beginning of the film, Goofy struggles through the empty house into Max's empty bedroom and hugs Max's teddy bear tightly. When Goofy began to cry, the whole picture slowly turned black. This scene lasts 95 seconds and is presented very directly to the audience, so painful and sad.
That's what I want to emphasize.
Goofy suffered from depression, which indirectly led to one of the great misfortunes of his career: he was fired. Later, Goofy went to the employment office and learned that he was unemployed because he only had a high school degree.
Middle-aged Goofy goes to college for embarrassing employment retraining, where he meets his son Max, who doesn't want to see his dad. All he wanted was listening to skar music, wearing hip-hop pants, peeking at pretty girls, practicing skateboarding and competing in college sports.
With the ability to approach his son again, Goofy was overjoyed, his spirits recovered, and he even began dating the university administrator, but Max began to become frustrated because he was not as popular as before, and skateboarding was not as slippery as his father, so he offered to let Goofy leave the university.
This caused Goofy to collapse again, because his son was everything to him. Depressed again, he released his new girlfriend's pigeon and hung up a very important exam.
Of course, because this is a Disney cartoon, the father and son will eventually reconcile, but the whole story is still very frightening. "Extreme High Flying" was released in 2000, eight years after the premiere of "The Goofy Family". By that time in 2000, a lot of people had already started going online, and they had their own social networking sites. The screenwriters of the film will certainly know the speculation of fans about Goofy's late wife, and the discussion is becoming more and more extensive and difficult to ignore. Such a sad plot is released, even if it is not explicitly said, everyone will continue to speculate.
Goofy's depressive and painful story should have been intentional by the screenwriters, after all, they could have made up some other plot.
"After 20 years of revisiting goofy movies, I feel more sympathetic to Goofy???"
Goofy's voice actor Bill Famo also received an Annie Award (an animation award and one of the highest honors in animation) for his performance in Extreme Flying. He tried to make the cry sound as real as possible, to convey the grief of a man who was gradually estranged from his family, and to express the loneliness of a lonely house alone. He had nothing but a ghostly past to accompany him.
Bill Famo played the role of Goofy perfectly.
What does this mean?
Disney's style has always been a joyous style for all ages, making a variety of works suitable for children, but inadvertently creating a sad animation that implies that the protagonist is a widower and that the family members may have little left.
Perhaps the fans' guess is correct, but perhaps this is the screenwriter's long-term plan: Goofy has always lived a life of tragedy, remorse and pain.
But what can we do even if we understand this? Can we learn some lessons from Goofy's past?
If goofy has taught us anything, it's that sometimes all you need is a cry to vent all your emotions. If you can't face the grief of the past, if you can't make a good living now, and at the same time drag on not seeking any help, then people around you may be jealous and estranged by your words and deeds.
Goofy needs someone to help him face the trauma, and maybe one day, with the help of others, he will be able to look at the past calmly and tell the audience in front of the TV, or at least to his son. The writers don't owe us a complete story, but before it's too late, Max has the right to hear his father tell what happened over the years.