Sunklands

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What’s outside the rectangles with the green entities, then? First, let me emphasis or reiterate that the reasons behind The Flintstone’s Great Gazoo being brought into the present collage are not just because he’s green like Ray Walston’s similarly green clad Martian character or actually green like the Incredible Hulk, although that’s obviously the main surface tie-in between the 3 framed images. No, this is more Tungaske magic in action here, explained in a post from about a month ago called “Town Oddities”. I won’t repeat the information except to state that the Tungaske woman in the photo is also green clad, has the implications of worm *helmet* — accidental in the photo, it seems — and that she shares other characteristics with the live action Gazoo character. It was very natural, given this background, for me as a collagist to transpose the large silver fish from “gloved green helmeted short plump smiling fisher-woman” to “gloved green helmeted short plump smiling Gazoo” and go from there.

Looking at stuff outside the inserted rectangles now, we have the return of 12 Oz Mouse’s Fitz in the center of “Goodwater Goodland 03”, drinking his beer once more. He’s always got at least one or two stashed away somewhere on or around his body in the series, it seems, and can whip it out at any time. Witness this:

Fitz obviously is associated with the other green beings in the collage, starting with the Great Gazoo as explained before in “Boos Interpretation 17” and working out from there. Gazoo’s silver fish can also be seen as booze — two imbibers, then. As far as the Martian and Ray Walston go, we must keep in mind that Tungaske inexplicably has a large Martian crater named after it. And for (Bill) Bixby and The Hulk we must remember that Iron County Missouri, which contains both a Bixby and a Banner (about 15 miles apart), also has an even closer Goodwater and Goodland between them. Bill *Bixby* starred as David “Bruce” *Banner* in The Incredible Hulk show to follow up on his co-starring role in the earlier “My Favorite Martian”. The proximity of Goodwater to Goodland here (also framed by the north and south county lines of Iron) led me directly to Tungaske and this landmark, 611 page history book on the community…

We have a complex interweave of collaged associations building upon clues from maps, TV and film sources, books, photos, Second Life, and more — leading up to “Goodwater Goodland 03”. And we have these actual names culled from an Iron County map in the present collage (bordering the “My Favorite Martian” insert), just like in the former two collages of the set.

Back to Fitz and the center of the collage: Behind the green mouse is the composite Tungaske and Tungaske Cemetery signs we’ve seen in “I Must Be Going. Hello!”, which stand for a town in danger of dying out, leaving only the dead to rule. Behind it is what appears to be a sunset or sunrise, but is actually the top of Lisa Simpson’s cartoon sun-like head. If it is sunset, this could be despair. If it is sunrise: hope. We are going to assume this is a hopeful situation for Tungaske, and that the town and its cemetery will not become “as one” here, since Lisa Simpson keeps appearing in Boos collages to come. She is the ordained savior artist.

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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”.

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* Interesting (The Great Gazoo vs. Marvin The Martian):

http://dev.xversusy.com/challenges/Marvin_the_Martian_vs_The_Great_Gazoo

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We draw back out to see the whole of Tungaske in “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific”, the 20th collage of the Boos series. The title refers to the town’s 2 avenues featured in the miniatures of “Atlantic” and “Pacific” — 2 apiece. And we will return to the same Pacific Avenue house currently for sale in the next set of miniatures coming up. In “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific”, we continue to evolve the various stories building up in the village. An image of Ohio’s former Great Black Swamp has been inserted in its center, roughly situated between the two avenues in question. Boxy Brown with see-through hair is positioned on its upper end from the picture’s perspective, opposite fellow Aqua Teen Hunger Force character Master Shake, also appearing as partially transparent.

This is yet another yin-yang reference, since Shake is very white and Boxy Brown is an abstract representation of an African-American (“black”) man. We’ve seen these same two characters placed on opposite sides of another body of water in the Stonethrow collage “Animation Station”, the first part of the ending tetraptych of that May 2015 series.

Also returning from the May collage is homeless man, already used in collage 09 of the present series (“Goodwater Goodland 01”). Here he is detached from Boxy Brown’s hair and appears below him instead. The sewer top he holds down with one hand now marks the exact spot of a Tungaske labyrinth also referred to in “Wrong Way Whales”, and likewise circular in form. Then opposite homeless man in the the upper left corner is flying Superman from “Superman III” holding Richard Prior in his arms. And then the last collaged-in element to the aerial photo of Tungaske in “Neither Atlantic Nor Pacific” is a central slice of the book cover for “The Ordained”, a mystery novel by Terence Faherty. It appears nearer homeless man in the lower right corner, and in the exact spot of the house featured in “Hucka Homebee”, collage 11 of the Boos series.

The image of the Great Black Swamp is also featured in another Stonethrow collage called “Beware (The) Healers” that we’ve already examined in reference to collage 12. This swamp use to exist just beyond the western edge of Lake Erie. In connection with the present collage’s title, this is then neither Atlantic nor Pacific but more toward the center of America, in the Great Lakes region.

A description of “The Ordained” from Terence Faherty’s site:

The residents of the isolated town of Rapture, founded by an Adventist sect, the Ordained of God, are disappearing one by one. The Ordained believed that the world would end in 1844 and that they would be taken bodily into heaven. Now, one hundred and fifty years after their rapture failed to occur, something very similar is happening to their descendants.

Another small town, another one that’s “losing” people. Only Owen Keane, the book’s protagonist and an ordained minister himself, can save the town by solving its central mystery. I think this ties into art being able to save Tungaske. The fellow “junk” artist who lives in the house of collage 11 becomes the savior archetype, and in synch with fellow deity Lisa “The Vegetarian” Simpson. The overlaid swamp symbolizes the morass, the abyss, a kind of mass grave like a cemetery but also a stand-in for hell, perhaps. Door to The Abyss, then. Richard Prior is black like the swamp, but also he is a “prior”, or one who is stuck in time. Rescue by Superman represents ascent to heaven, or perhaps rapture. The swamp is no longer a threat. All these pictorial elements tie together to present a scene of hope beyond despair, eternity beyond earthly bondage. The town can be saved. The world can be saved. Like the labyrinth, a satisfying mystery novel directs a plot line into and out of a core dilemma.

(to be continued)