"You're Not a Puppet with Strings Tied to You!"

[beamjockey]

So I noticed that the twenty-first century Davey and Goliath Christmas special, Davey and Goliath’'s Snowboard Christmas, will air this weekend in my area. Out of curiosity, I asked Mister Tivo to record it for me.

D&G are a property of the Lutherans, a sect more likely to fantasize about snowboarding with a talking dog than about, say, machine-gunning Catholics in the streets after the Rapture. Good for them. Besides, I love animation, and I love puppets, and so I have always had a soft spot for Davey & Goliath.

D&C were created by Art Clokey, who also was the father of The Gumby Show, a fact which will surprise no one who has seen both series.

I was pleased a couple of years ago to see Davey and Goliath still showing on one of the Christian channels on my dial. I'm not a big fan, and I don't feel a need to see every episode, but there's a dollhouse charm in the characters, their clothing, and their props. And in the earnest way the stories contrive to teach Christian lessons.

The first time I tuned in, I was a bit startled to see a bumper after the story that showed Davey sitting under a tree with his laptop, surfing to his denomination's Web site, while his dog looked on. 1962 Goliath didn't wear a collar, but 2004 Goliath was wearing a medallion shaped just like the logo of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I didn't think of these guys as Web-era characters... but then maybe they could say the same about me, since I was about Davey's age when we first encountered one another.

In one episode I saw, "The Silver Mine," Davey ignores warnings and explores an abandoned mine. Of course he becomes trapped and injured, sister Sally sends Goliath to get help, and Dad rescues Davey. There ensues the following dialogue:

Davey: Dad, why did God let this happen to me?
Dad: Don't blame God, Davey. It wasn't His fault.
Davey: God let me do it!
Dad: What God lets you do is decide for yourself what you will do. You're not a puppet with strings tied to you!
Davey: No.
Dad: So God doesn't make you do anything. He lets you decide for yourself.
Davey: So you mean I decided by myself to come into the mine.
Dad: Didn't you?
Sally: He sure did!
Davey: God let me decide to come into the silver mine. It's my fault I got smashed!
Dad: Right.

Are the writers having fun with us? On the one hand, Dad is teaching Davey about free will. On the other hand, Davey really is a puppet. Okay, not, strictly speaking, a puppet with strings tied to him. But an unseen hand causes Davey to move in the interstices between moments of time. This is no better than having strings. He only appears, once the film is developed, to have free will.

At no time do the characters break the Fourth Wall. It just seems weird to have one puppet telling another puppet that he's not a puppet.

In 2002 D&G appeared in a commercial for Mountain Dew animated by Wreckless Abandon Studios. Proceeds from this helped finance the 2004 revival Christmas film. There once was an amusing on-set interview where D&G talked about working together again after all these years, but it seems no longer to be available.

So I'm a little bit curious to see what the latter-day modern version of Davey & Goliath is like. I probably won't watch the program all the way through. But I'd like to sample just a little of it, for old times' sake. We were kids together.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

In the Boston area a few years back, Davey and Goliath aired on the Catholic cable channel. There's something charming about that fact. I guess at no time did he ever nail 95 theses to anything.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

And while you're at it, don't forget "Davey and Son of Goliath (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcjLp-40_9M)", about little Davey Berkowitz and his talking dog. "I need more blood, Davey."

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

When will I learn to read the comments before I go spend time finding the same link?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

This is deep in a preposterous way. I love the internet as the place for such ponderings, and where one might encounter an animated conversation about an animated conversation.

[gypsy1969.livejournal.com]

Davey & Goliath & Gumby. I was thinking they were on the same show, but I guess it was just the same chanel. Anyway, I loved them both and I don't know why.

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

I used to view D&G quite religiously avidly in my childhood.

For me, that conversation about puppets talking about not being puppets makes perfect sense -- they're actors, after all. And my willing suspension of disbelief has always been tuned rather high. 8]

Davey and Goliath

[(Anonymous)]

You're not the only D&G fan out there. Though I never heard of them growing up (where was I?), a number of my friends have memories of them as fond as yours.

My old Boston apartment-mate Dennis (from 25 years ago) and his daughter (now 25... hmm, coincidence? I think not!) were at a baseball game at Yankee Stadium last year; she was wearing a Boston Red Sox tee-shirt, and he was wearing a Davey and Goliath shirt. Nobody noticed the Red Sox fan among them; everybody kept asking Dennis about his shirt!

[mbcrui.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Veggie Tales? Another christian cartoon that just crack me up. Sometimes the messages are so obvious they make me wince, but in general it's very cute.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Davey with a laptop? If this keeps up, Donner will have Rudolph cover his nose not with mud, but with some lead shielding because of the health hazzards of others being too close to his luminscent proboscis.

The medium doesn't have to be the message....

[dmh-phoenix.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Heh, I remember Davey and Goliath from childhood too! At the time, I didn't know they were "Christian stuff", but I knew that TV show starred a kid with the same name as me.....

As far as philosophy: the show itself is a confabulation! They are not filming a "real" D&G as they wander around, even as actors!

Indeed, Davey is not a puppet -- he's a fictional character, depicted in puppet-like form. It would be perfectly practical to tell his tale in picture-books, all-text books, animated drawings, or even with live actors. Indeed, the very story you're discussing could easily be presented in all of those forms, (and might be, what with media tie-ins). In all of these cases, the viewer would confidently expect him to go through his story, without reference to the medium of the tale. Would DaveDad's line still be notable if you were reading it in a book, or if it were delivered by a live actor?

Re: The medium doesn't have to be the message....

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I had not thought of it that way. Everything you say is perfectly correct.

Yet this does not remove the irony; we are still watching a puppet tell another puppet that he is not a puppet.

Both things are true. It's a paradox.

(Sometimes we are told that fictional characters are aware that people are telling stories about them. There are Buckaroo Banzai comics in the world of Buckaroo Banzai, for example. And this practice goes way back. I seem to recall that the second half of Don Quixote refers to the publication of the first half. Girl Genius plays with this idea a lot, giving us Heterodyne Boys books and traveling Heterodyne shows as well as real-life Heterodynes.)

Indeed, the very story you're discussing could easily be presented in all of those forms, (and might be, what with media tie-ins).

Now I'm shuddering to contemplate the live-action full-length feature remake of Davey and Goliath, as directed by Michael Bay.