Director(s): Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett”)
Summary: Porky and his girlfriend, Petunia (the one that’s actually nice to Porky instead of the one from “Porky’s Romance,” who only likes Porky because he had chocolates and flowers for her) go on a picnic near the zoo, and Porky must keep an eye on Pinky, Porky’s mischievious nephew, who keeps trying to cut off a squirrel’s head with a pair of scissors (yeah, that’s beyond mischievous and straight up “sign you’re raising a future serial killer.” At least by today’s standards. Back then, no one really cared).
Fun Facts:
- This short is the first time since “Porky’s Romance” that Petunia Pig (Porky’s love interest in the same vein as Minnie Mouse or even Honey from the Bosko and Honey cartoons) was shown, though she was seen in “Scalp Trouble” as a picture on Porky’s wall and she would have been in “Porky’s Party,” but Bob Clampett uninvited her.
- Unlike Frank Tashlin’s version, this version of Petunia Pig is actually likeable, but incredibly bland (much like Porky himself in these shorts where he’s not paired up with someone crazy like Daffy).
- The 515 train in this short is the same one from “Porky’s Railroad” and this Tex Avery color cartoon called “Streamlined Greta Green.”
Letterboxd Says The Darndest Things: Feelings about this cartoon range from “It sucks” to “It’s fairly standard, but has its moments.” Tim Brayton combines those two sentiments into one somewhat verbose review with a two-and-a-half-star review tacked on:
Not without its compensations: there are some interesting staging choices, including the needlessly complex and artful use of translucent foreground elements at one point, and the short has exceptionally clear designs on the comic possibilities of Porky's stutter leading him to words that are, by all apparent logic, more complicated than the one he couldn't spit out. But more than any of Bob Clampett's sleepy, disposable "I grow weary of this guileless pig" 1939 Porky cartoons, this feels like we're actually watching the animation, storytelling, and gagwork regress in real time: this feels just so extremely much like a cartoon from the first half of the '30s (it feels like multiple specific cartoons, in fact), from the scenario to the languid pace of the gags to the way that the cruel and selfish Petunia Pig, whose torment of Porky was funny because it was mean, has been rebooted as a nice cartoon girlfriend who is way too close to Cookie, paramour of the dreaded Buddy, for comfort. Anyway, I know where this is all going because it's 84 years later and the Looney Tunes would spend the decade after this transitioning from "the funny animal cartoon series put out by Warner Bros." into "an American institution and one of the greatest bodies of work in the history of comic cinema", but if I were a cartoon fan watching this as they came out in '39 (if indeed such beings existed in '39), I strongly feel that this is the point I'd be bailing out on Porky.
Sc8lo’s review focuses more on Pinky Pig’s unsettling penchant for comic animal abuse, brings up a strange choice in story beat that most wouldn’t notice immediately, and steals my bit on revealing where the cartoon is available uncut (if it’s available on home media at all):
What starts out as a cutesy short winds up being a bit maniacal thanks to the inclusion of Pinky Pig in his second and final appearance. His inclusion does throw up a lot of questions. What is his relationship to Porky here and why is he going around trying to decapitate squirrels like Cropsey from The Burning?
Why does Porky offer to take Petunia on a picnic only to go straight for a nap as soon as they arrive?
This short is available on Porky 101.
Finally, we have Horse Man Jack, who expresses his dislike for the short and brings up a good reason (one of many, actually) why I don’t consider the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons child-friendly:
I’ll always find it funny how much the Looney Tunes shorts hate children considering that they’re, you know, popular with children. Unfortunately this one isn’t funny and the classic Ye Olde Cartoon “throw in a blackface gag for no reason” moment sours the mood.
To be absolutely fair to Horse Man Jack, the Looney Tunes shorts weren’t “meant for children” when they were in theaters. That only started to happen thanks to television reruns and being put on Saturday morning, weekday afternoon syndication, and cable, where they were edited to make them child-friendly. At least the home media releases had them uncut and, later, they were made for both family viewing and for collectors who want the shorts uncut, uncensored, and with a warning about how some of the jokes and scenes haven’t aged well, but will be shown as a reminder of our less-enlightened past so we can make a more enlightened future (I don’t know how that’s going to work, but I admire their optimism).
The Channel(s): Nickelodeon and syndication (WKBD in Detroit, Michigan during the 1980s)
Part(s) Edited:
- The WKBD version that aired back in the 1980s took a chunk out of the first two and a half minutes of this short — definitely for time reasons/more commercials, but the scene of Pinky detaching the side car from the motorcycle and him and Petunia racing dangerously down the road and nearly getting hit by a train could be seen as a content cut for dangerous, imitable behavior (if that were true, then why weren’t the running gag of Pinky trying to cut a squirrel’s head off with scissors and scenes of Pinky wandering off to harass the animals at the zoo cut?) and scenes of peril and threat (even though the peril and threat has a reassuring outcome). WKBD also shortened Petunia kissing Porky as a reward for rescuing Pinky, not because it may be seen as sexual, but because Porky had mud on his face and when Petunia kissed him, it transferred onto her and put her in blackface because her lips weren’t covered in mud.
- Nickelodeon’s version left in the beginning, but also aired two versions where the blackface kiss was edited: the computer-colorized version where the kiss was shortened (so, same version as WKBD) and a redrawn-colorized version where the scene in question was left in, but the lips were also colored brown so the blackface just turns into a face covered in mud, though, if you look at the scene closely, you’ll see that there’s one frame when Petunia pulls back where the lips are still white. In fact, here's that frame now:
What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Not much for the “blackface kiss” part, since that’s justified. However, I would like to add that, despite Cartoon Network’s and Boomerang’s histories of editing out outdated depictions of African-Americans and black people in general (which includes blackface), that scene wasn’t edited or altered in any way. I understand The Bob Clampett Show version not doing it, since that show had most of their shorts unedited (or close to it), but “Porky’s Picnic” was shown outside of that series on installment shows like The Looney Tunes Show (2003 edition), Bugs and Daffy, and The ACME Hour. What’s that about?
WKBD cutting the first two and a half minutes of it — yeah, there’s no excuse for that, except for wanting more time for commercials. The first two and a half minutes do lay out a lot of exposition for this short (however thin it might be) and cutting it just ruins it.
Video Comparison:
Availability Uncut: As of this writing, the only place you can find this uncut, uncensored, but not restored/remastered on physical media is on the Porky Pig 101 DVD set, which came out in 2017.
Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: It was on streaming from 2021 to 2023 on Warner MediaRIDE (which was only available as a streaming service in Honda cars). After that, it was gone. It’s not even on Tubi, which I don’t understand. The blackface kiss could have squeaked by unnoticed and there are a lot of cartoons besides this that have kids behaving badly, so what makes this one so special that it’s not allowed to be shown? Maybe it’s because it’s not that well-liked.
‘Til next time, Stay Looney and Be Merrie
