{"id":4900,"date":"2011-07-04T23:22:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T07:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4900"},"modified":"2021-03-18T19:08:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T02:08:22","slug":"in-the-woodpile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4900","title":{"rendered":"In the Woodpile"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some weeks ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/mocketymock.com\/\">the Woman of Interest<\/a> spotted an interesting deck of cards on eBay.  The deck was miniature, Disney-themed (Mickey Mouse on the backs and on the box), and dated from the late '30s or perhaps 1940.  I later found a similar or identical sort of deck listed.<\/p> <p>These decks are very appealing, but there's something disturbing about them as well.  Here are the joker cards shown in the listings: <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/inwoodpile.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/inwoodpile_450x338.jpg\" alt=\"[image of two cards, each showing Goofy with his head and neck sticking up from within or behind a woodpile]\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ;\" \/><\/a> The two designs, of course, are basically identical except for coloration and for the presence of a background cloud in one and not in the other.  I don't yet know whether these cards represent two designs found in each deck, or distinguish one sort of deck from another, but I believe that the latter is the case.<\/p> <p>In any event, each pictures Goofy's head and neck sticking-up from within or from behind a <em>woodpile<\/em>.<\/p> <p>There's an expression<\/p> <blockquote>a n_gg_r in the woodpile<\/blockquote> <p>It refers to a condition where something significant, typically undesirable, is believed to be concealed.  This unpleasant metaphor is no longer current in America;<span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span> in fact, I had to relate and to explain it to <a href=\"http:\/\/mocketymock.com\/\">the Woman of Interest<\/a>, who had never encountered it, and I had to double-check on its exact meaning.  But it used to be quite current here, and certainly would have been when those cards were designed and when they were released.  I cannot help but think that <em>in the mind of the designer<\/em>, these graphics are meant to be an allusion to that expression, with the underlying notion being <em>that Goofy is an analogue, within the Disney universe, of the stereotypical black character from that era<\/em>.<\/p> <p>I draw attention to the point that one cannot infer that this is how Disney or the rest of the firm conceptualized Goofy; an alien analogy would not be recognized as such, and the image could have been seen as simply <em>silly<\/em>.<\/p> <hr width=\"50%\" align=\"left\" \/> <p><span style=\"vertical-align: top ; font-size: smaller ;\">&#91;1&#93;<\/span> It evidently retains some currency in Britain, where state and corporate officials continue to let it slip in public!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some weeks ago, the Woman of Interest spotted an interesting deck of cards on eBay. The deck was miniature, Disney-themed (Mickey Mouse on the backs and on the box), and dated from the late '30s or perhaps 1940. I later found a similar or identical sort of deck listed. These decks are very appealing, but [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4908,"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":[164,6,4],"tags":[1026,1027,90],"class_list":["post-4900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-commentary","category-public","tag-disney","tag-goofy","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4900","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=4900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11695,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4900\/revisions\/11695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}