The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 94

The Saber
“in hopes of giving retailers and the
economy a boost.” 61 Warner Bros. creators
aimed to entertain and provide an
escape for their audiences, but they also
didn’t want to ignore the world outside
of the movie theater.
One of the most poignant cartoon
shorts about the Depression created by
Warner Bros. was 1938’s Porky’s Spring
Planting. The story is a spoof of “back to
the land” ideas espoused in many other
cartoons of the time and “capitalized
not only on the characteristics of the
genre but also on Porky’s ‘country boy’
background” which made him a “hard
working pig of the land.” 62 Porky represented
a parody of the American ideal
of being happy, busy, and working hard
for ways to improve his life. He’s shown
working the land and showing how easy
it is to produce a “swell garden.” 63 But
his wisecracking farm dog Streamline
isn’t buying it. Streamline is shown taking
a bone and burying it in a locked
safe underground, saying “none of this
‘share the wealth’ business from me.” 64
The “Share the Wealth” initiative was
created by presidential candidate Huey
Long for those who felt left behind by
Roosevelt’s New Deal. But many Americans,
like Streamline the dog, preferred
to keep their self-reliance—unless the
US government offered assistance.
Streamline goes on to comment how
the new Social Security program didn’t
give him the benefits he had hoped for,
but in reality, “the promise of assistance
after the losses inflicted by the Depression
gave many Americans hope.” 65 Porky’s
Spring Planting exposed a counteridea
to the “wholesome, innocent
world” of the back to the land movie
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