Andres Kaneb Moby Dick Final Project

Hello.

this presentation is gonna be focusing on the influence

of Moby Dick on popular culture through animated television.

So prior to analyzing Moby Dick's influence on animated television,

I believe it was necessary to acknowledge the influence

that classic text had on Moby Dick itself.

Moby Dick is a novel deeply rooted in classic references.

For example,

here I included the cover of certain books that

Melville was influenced by some that he directly mentions including

Dante's divine comedy, John Milton's Paradise lost Seneca Shakespeare.

The works just King Lear and Macbeth. And most obviously the Bible

It is fascinating to see how Moby Dick has inherited

the role of these classic works and become one itself.

Moby Dick has become a hyper canonical text in American popular culture.

It has appeared in almost every medium of modern American culture

and here I've included some. So first you have the movies uh and this is

The cover for the sea beast of silent film from 1926.

Then you have television series and this is the cover of one from 2011 uh a

television miniseries called Moby Dick

and then here you have one that I found really fascinating is um

Led Zeppelin uh had a song called Moby Dick.

Well, it was one of the names that the song had, but it's from their

1969 album Led Zeppelin Two. It is most

known for this really long drum solo.

Another medium that's really interesting is comics. And here is the cover of um

one that Gilbert Gilbert in publications uh published in 1946,

Other forms include theater.

And here is a photo from a Syracuse University,

the theatrical adaptation of Moby Dick.

and another one that's pretty funny is uh here is Moby Dick,

an Ocean primer book by Jennifer Adams.

And I don't know if you can really see because of the presentation, but on the top,

it says Little Master Melville.

um I found it a little funny to think that

Such a

classic text that is largely regarded as somewhat of a

difficult read can be simplified here to a children's book,

which is probably one of the most simple forms of media

However,

the medium that this paper will be exploring is that of animated television.

And here I included some uh photos of cartoons,

none of these will be specifically touched on or analyzed in this uh

presentation.

However, on the top left, you have Woody the Woodpecker on the top, right, you have

and

bottom left is family guy and then the bottom right is the Flintstones.

so

It's interesting to think how the novel back when

it was published was the popular form of culture.

However,

you fast forward to our times and,

the uh Moby Dick has become a far more of an academic study

and being replaced by new mediums um such as film and television,

television shows have come to dominate popular culture.

Therefore, it's especially fitting to see how the novel has been adapted.

And it's interesting that anime television

is largely considered somewhat simple,

brief, funny and even childish.

However,

I actually think it's one of the perfect mediums to explore Movie Dick because

the surrealist aspects of cartoons and how you're not

basically confined by a lot of realist aspects of maybe movies or television.

Um You're really able to explore the absurdity

and like different interpretations of movie Dick.

Um

So the first episode

or TV series

um or anime television episode that this presentation is gonna focus on is that of

Tom and Jerry. And

it is a seven minute long episode called Dickie Mo from 1962.

So to quickly summarize what takes place.

Uh in the episode, it starts off in a fishing harbor where the captain of the calm qut,

which is a play on the P Quad is obsessed with catching Diy Mo the great white whale,

his obsession terrifies his crew that they all desert

the ship before it even leaves the harbor.

And the captain who goes unnamed,

but it is clearly a play on Ahab uh finds Tom and knocks him out.

and he takes them on board to work the boat. And

during a lot of the episode,

uh there's the usual Tom and Jerry Antics where they perform jokes on one another.

Um At one point, Tom falls into a bearable harpoons and

the captain grabs one and throws it for target practice. And is the image on the top?

Right? Is you can see the harpoon impales an image of Dickie Mo on the main mast.

and

I hope these images kind of give an idea

of the madness that is consuming uh the captain.

And then at the end of the episode,

uh

they finally get sight of Dickie Mo

and the captain fires off a harpoon and it,

however, it ends up yanking Tom off the ship. Um

It's very similar, I think it's kind of a play on Fido's

corpse that gets strapped to Moby Dick.

Um

And it's the first hearse that Fiala

predicted as Moby Dick and Dickie Mo are obviously not made by mortal hands.

Um Here I actually included uh

to the last two minutes of the episode to add some visual context.

However, I recently realized that due to youtube copyrights,

I actually can't show the video while I present

um over it and record my vogues. So I'm gonna attach the link to my um

pre

presentation on my,

at the top of my reflection.

I believe it's essential honestly to watch these

videos to understand the specific references I make

and I'm really sorry for the trouble. However, it would be greatly appreciated.

So going back to

uh

the episode,

um

It's really incredible how in just only seven minutes of runtime,

Dickie Moe is able to capture the obsession of Ahab and

how this obsession obsession turns into madness. Um

This is a large part behind why

I decided to choose this episode.

Other episodes such as Woody, The Woodpecker and The Flintstones don't convey

any real meaning like that's truly adds to the text. However, Dicky Mo

uh really is able to encapsulate the madness of Ahab.

and throughout the episode,

uh

you see

the captain obviously just ranting and muttering under his breath.

Constantly, Dickie Mo, it just kind of adds to this obsession and madness.

And another interesting thing that I've read about and I realized is that

unlike the majority of Tom and Jerry episodes, which center around obviously,

Tom and Jerry.

Um

this one has a lot more focus on

the captain and kind of subverts and,

Makes Tom and Jerry feel almost like side characters and members of the crew,

which is

really,

I thought really similar and fascinating to Moby Dick itself by Melville because,

The first half of the book, you really don't see much of a hab.

And when you do, he's somewhat of a quiet and reserved figure,

but he has such a presence in the novel and that there's very similar,

similar place to that in this episode.

Um

His central presence really is never lost.

And then the next episode

that I will be touching on

is one from

Sorry, give me Bear with me.

Futurama.

And so you're gonna fast forward about 49 years, which is a decent amount of time.

And

basically the name of this episode is Mobius stick

and it has a 22 minute long run time.

So to quickly summarize what takes place in the episode.

uh the plane express crew um which you can see here on the top, right,

which is traveling in the ship,

which is right there next to the whale is tasked with picking up a statue

and then on the way back to Earth,

the spaceship makes a short cut through the Bermuda Tetrahedron.

and which is obviously a play on the Bermuda triangle.

And

while it's crossing this four dimensional space, uh

Mobi stick or Moby Dick appears and actually eats the statue.

And while in this Bermuda Teer

Hadron, they find a graveyard of lost ships.

And Zoidberg,

a member of the crew crew explains how the whale is

the one responsible for the loss of all these space ships.

And here in the bottom left,

I included a picture of all the abandoned and destroyed ships,

and

this image really reminds me of the,

by all the wounded chips um such as

the,

the uh Jabo

and the Samuel Enderby and Lea,

the captain of the ship who has the purple hair here on the top

actually becomes obsessed with killing the whale that

ate the statue and delayed their trip.

So as the episode continues, Lea becomes more and more obsessed,

uh which turns into madness very similar to a hub

and

the Mobius Stick eventually eats the ship and swallows the crew

and then inside the whale.

However, we learn that the whale itself feeds on obsession, which

lures these captains into

um the Bermuda toucher head drawn in order to feed itself.

However,

Lela becomes so obsessed with delivering the statue and completing her trip

that she takes control over the whale and basically releases the crew

and obviously similar

to,

um,

Tom and Jerry, I included here a four minute clip and unfortunately,

I can't show it to you guys.

Um I wish I could.

Um But I hope you have the presentation up and can hopefully click it and see it.

And

this episode very much,

unlike the Tom and Jerry episode takes

Melville's novel and truly transforms it into

like a modern pop culture work with a tremendous amount of futuristic elements.

and the interdimensional aspects of the whale is very unlike the original novel,

but in a way,

it is somewhat in line because

in the novel, we hear of Moby Dick appearing in all corners of the sea.

And Futurama basically takes this idea and just

blows it up into all corners of the universe

And

Moby Dick, the novel

gives us this

truly.

Um

idea of Moby Dick that defies the laws of nature and that is clearly is.

And that is really at play here with Mobius Stick, who's a four dimensional being,

which is something obviously

very much outside the laws of nature.

and

but similar to the Tom and Jerry episode,

the mo what I found the most interesting part of this

episode is Lela's Madness and how it parallels to A A

P.

And in the clip which I, which I could show

Lela has this one line when she's talking about her madness.

And, and I quote in my dreams,

I've peered beyond its eyes and into the crackling hell within us all.

And this is Lea talking about the whale.

This quote is incredibly similar to one of that.

Ahab has on page 2 83 chapter 86 when Ahab is talking about the whale's tail,

So in dreams or, and I quote sow in dreams, have I been Maes?

How,

how have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his

tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of hell?

and

then you just get this idea of the madness

of Ahab through Lea.

And I think the directors of the episode and who

overrode it does a great job in doing that.

And then in the same clip at the very end,

Um

Lela actually jumps at Moby a stick with a knife, which is

which I found really funny and great and just a play on

Moby Dick in the first interaction.

Um Sorry, Captain Ahab in the first interaction with Moby Dick.

When he jumps at him with a knife,

Um

And

another idea that's really interesting in this episode

is how Moby Dick actually feeds an obsession and

If you think back to the end of the novel, there's a,

there's a point in the attacks when we could have actually left,

but he decides to come back.

So

the episode is kind of making a play on an obsession

of the whales obsession that could in reality be a real theme in the original novel

Um

And

at its core, this episode really parallels the badness incredibly well.

So

kind of wrapping up here

um

Moby Dick. Going back to this idea of a hyper canonical text. Um

Both of these episodes show the influence the work has

on pop culture and the different adaptations that is taken.

Um

the meaning and symbolism that comes out of these episodes seems to

change and transform from the original and from the original novel,

um for example, in Futurama, the thought of Ahab controlling his obsession

is something incredibly bizarre.

yet,

Lela actually does control her obsession and utilize it to save the crew

Um,

and something that I really thought that speaks to

the classic aspect of Moby Dick is how Futurama

in many of its episodes takes classic texts and

does exactly what they did with Moby Dick.

And some of those include pride and prejudice. Tom Sawyer and Lord of the Rings,

which kind of puts Moby Dick very much in this class of classics.

and then the final idea for the,

This idea of Moby Dick adapting to mediums is

what future generations will do with Moby Dick.

I mean, we've already seen it been adopted, adapted to,

uh TV animation. And one can only imagine

what maybe artificial intelligence and A I will do with the text, for example,

Oculus text, which is like a virtual reality headset.

Maybe one could actually potentially place themselves on the voyage of the p

And this final quote really stuck with me

from American literary critic,

Andrew Del Banco del Banco where he writes Melville seems

to renew himself for each new generation and we,

we'll only see how Melville continues to

renew himself for future generations. So my last slide is simply my bibliography.

And thank you very much, very much for listening to my presentation.

Andres Kaneb Moby Dick Final Project

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