{"id":4556,"date":"2011-03-05T02:36:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T10:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4556"},"modified":"2021-01-14T21:19:49","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T05:19:49","slug":"all-that-he-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4556","title":{"rendered":"All that He Is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although I'm something of a fan of E&#91;lzie&#93; C&#91;risler&#93; Segar, what I like most when it comes to Popeye are the animated cartoons made by the Fleischer Studios, before they relocated to Florida. (Some years ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/mocketymock.com\/\">the Woman of Interest<\/a> got me a copy of <cite>Popeye the Sailor: 1933 &ndash; 1938<\/cite>, which was exactly the perfect collection for me.)<\/p> <p>Anyway, I thought that I'd present my single favorite bit from those cartoons: <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/pop_opt.gif\" width=\"110\" height=\"100\" alt=\"[animation of Popeye jumping from a stool and beginning to pump his fists]\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ;\" \/> For a better sense of what is happening here, watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0029415\/combined\"><cite>Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves<\/cite> (1937)<\/a>, or at least the minute and 48 seconds starting at 6:12. <div style=\"text-align: center ;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bitchute.com\/embed\/QKOTRHgzsuQE\/\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" style=\"border: none ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 57vw ;\"><\/iframe><\/div> Popeye and Olive and Wimpy are the restaurant of an oasis village, when there is a warning that Abu Hassan and his band of forty thieves are out on a raid.  The villagers go into hiding (as does Olive).  Indeed, the thieves approach this very village.  Popeye hears a great commotion outside, leaps from his stool, and begins pumping his fists.<\/p> <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0029415\/combined\"><cite>Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves<\/cite><\/a> is, over all, not actually my favorite Popeye cartoon &mdash; which, off the top of my head, might instead be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0028119\/combined\"><cite>Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor<\/cite> (1936)<\/a>, though I'm not sure &mdash; but this one bit is perfect.  Popeye isn't sure what he's about to confront, <em>but he's prepared to fight it!<\/em>  Popeye is emotionally prepared to fight <nobreak><em>anything<\/em>,<span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span><\/nobreak> and he expects to do so <em>with his fists!<\/em><\/p><p> <\/p><p>Popeye is, in important respects, a simple man.  He has many apparently unexamined certitudes, leaps to conclusions, and often does things that are very inappropriate.  And he <em>knows<\/em> that he's simple; that's part of what he's saying with <q>I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam!<\/q>  Popeye doesn't typically <q>think<\/q> his way out of a problem; it doesn't even seem to occur to him to try.  If thinking were suggested to him, then he'd probably confess that he couldn't.  He uses his fisks 'cause that's what he's gots.  And, ultimately, they've always seemed to be enough.<\/p> <p>But, in the moral sphere, he is <em>consistently doing his very best<\/em>.  Not just what others might see as <em>enough<\/em>, but his <em>best<\/em>.  <q>I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam!<\/q> isn't used to rationalize <em>shirking<\/em>.  Popeye is prepared to fight whatever comes through that door because, if it's bad, <em>somebody has to<\/em> fight it; and, if Popeye doesn't fight it, well, then who will?<\/p> <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"center\" \/> <p><abbr title=\"by the way\">BTW<\/abbr>, on Thursday, I received copies of the first three volumes of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/index.php?keyword=Popeye&search_type=titles&Search=Search&Itemid=62&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse\">the Fantagraphics Popeye reprints<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/edwardrhamilton.com\/\">Edward R. Hamilton<\/a>, mentioned in <a href=\"?p=4365\">a previous entry<\/a>; they had no remainder marks. (And the transaction seems otherwise to have been perfectly satisfactory.) <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"left\" \/> <\/p><p><span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span> Except in-so-far as he has no personally acceptable means by which to fight a <em>woman<\/em>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although I'm something of a fan of E&#91;lzie&#93; C&#91;risler&#93; Segar, what I like most when it comes to Popeye are the animated cartoons made by the Fleischer Studios, before they relocated to Florida. (Some years ago, the Woman of Interest got me a copy of Popeye the Sailor: 1933 &ndash; 1938, which was exactly the [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,6,318,5,4],"tags":[251,430,941,943,958,959,942,740,741],"class_list":["post-4556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-personal","category-public","tag-comic-strips","tag-comics","tag-edward-r-hamilton","tag-fantagraphics","tag-fleischer","tag-fleischer-studios","tag-hamilton-books","tag-popeye","tag-segar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11623,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556\/revisions\/11623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}