(continued from)
The central figure of “Booses” is the Great Gazoo from the popular 1960s animation show, The Flintstones. But here he’s seen in his live-action version from the 2000 movie “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.” More on the Great Gazoo here:
The Great Gazoo is a tiny, green, floating alien who was exiled to Earth from his home planet Zetox as punishment for having invented a doomsday machine, a weapon of immense destructive power. His invention was a button which if pressed would destroy the universe in an explosive “ZAM,” though he insists he made it on a whim (“I wanted to be the first on my block to have one!”) with no intent of using it. Gazoo was discovered by Fred and Barney when his flying saucer crashed; Gazoo recognizes Fred’s and Barney’s world as prehistoric Earth, implying Zetox banished him through time as well as space.
Gazoo refers to Fred and Barney as “dum-dums” and constantly causes problems for them. He can materialize and dematerialize objects, teleport, freeze time, travel through time, and perform other remarkable feats, but when he attempts to help out Fred and Barney, he usually ends up causing even more trouble. Although his powers are frequently described as “magic,” they are more likely based on incredibly advanced science, in accordance with the third of Clarke’s three laws. The only people who are able to see Gazoo are Fred, Barney, and the children, because they believe in him; animals also can see him. A running gag is that Fred argues with Gazoo while Wilma believes that he is talking to himself. When their daughter, Pebbles, says “Gazoo,” Wilma thinks Pebbles is sneezing.
And a funny addition here:
The Great Gazoo is also referenced in The Simpsons episode “The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase”, a metafictional episode looking at alleged future developments in the series that would never come to pass, which include Ozmodiar, a floating green alien that only Homer could see. Ozmodiar eventually appeared (twice) in The Simpsons episode “HOMR”.
Metafiction rocks! Back to “Booses”: The Great Gazoo holds a silver fish in his hands, and seems to be eating it. A small white cartoon ghost hovers to his left, holding a mug of booze or beer. Ironic juxtaposition. The fish also has the word “BOOS” across it, acting as a kind of forward projected buckle for the Gazoo’s belt. This seems to imply that the fish also represents booze, and that the Gazoo is imbibing too, just like the little ghost.
Notice the very similar color of the animated Gazoo and 12 Oz Mouse’s Fitz in these images; I just happened to save them in the same folder on my computer:
Fitz is also an imbiber of alcohol. In fact, he’s always at least a little drunk in the show. So I think it’s safe to say that Gazoo and Fitz the Mouse are supposed to be overlapped in this collage, given that a duplicate of Gazoo’s right arm holds Fitz’s letter to the left. The green-blue hummingbird is a dart. Gazoo’s helmet even has the shape of a inverted hummingbird feeder of sorts. But what of the fish? I guess this is as good a place as any to remark that in collage 3, another green being (Hulk) — seen through the doorway of the Boss, MO rock house also appearing in collages 1 and 2 — has the head of not a fish but a bird between its teeth…
… and I was conscious of the association at the time, since collage 3 was actually finalized after collage 22 here. Bird and fish are suppose to be tied together, leading in from the “Can You Be More Pacific?” miniature, or collage 21b as it were.
Collage 23, “Goodwater Goodland 03”, contains the same image of the Gazoo, so we can just continue our analysis by examining that work. The collage is unusual in several aspects. One is that it shares the same name with two earlier, proximate collages of the Boos series, or “Goodwater Goodland 01” (collage 09) and “Goodwater Goodland 02” (collage 10). The unusual part here is it comes a full 13 collages after the latter of that set. Why the reappearance of an already dispensed name? It’s because we have much of the same pictorial framework in place for the present one: we have the return of the mural picture from collage 10 in particular, with rectangles removed that depict smaller representations of the same mural seen from different angles found in collage 09. In Boos Interpretation 07, I describe how this flipping of background and foreground stands for a tajitu situation, where yang and yin energies have interchanged.
“Goodwater Goodland 02”
Instead of the rust colored funerary book appearing “behind” the rectangle areas removed from the Tungaske mural, we now have 3 separate pictures of *green entities*.
Of course there’s Gazoo again at the top (sans fish this time), then part of a DVD cover for the show “My Favorite Martian” to the left, another 60s TV staple like The Flintstones, and then the return of Bixby and his Incredible Hulk character in the last rectangle to the right. Bixby just happened to be the co-star of the earlier “My Favorite Martian”, alongside star Ray Walston (who played the Martian of the title), and I included his full name in the culled image to make the Martian-Hulk association more open. The Great Gazoo, although not technically Martian (although sharing the same general color, shape, and *helmet* as a true Martian from another cartoon classic)*, certainly fits in as another related, green alien. To complete what we see in the rectangles, Gazoo also has “Lisa Simpson eyes”.
(to be continued)
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* Interesting (The Great Gazoo vs. Marvin The Martian):
http://dev.xversusy.com/challenges/Marvin_the_Martian_vs_The_Great_Gazoo
Sunklands 