Tex AveryJERKY TURKEY Comment for teachers

Thanksgiving / Turkey Day

Tex AVERYJerky TURKEY (le dindon de la farce) 07 / 04 /1945

Plot summary :

The Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock and found a colony. A very large number of Pilgrims can be seen standing in line... for their cigarette rations. A Pilgrim goes hunting for Thanksgiving dinner. He meets a black market turkey, one who sounds like Jimmy Durante. The turkey sells himself to the Pilgrim, but a chase ensues... The turkey can deflect machine gun bullets... when dressed as Superman. The two declare a truce and decide to eat together at Joe's Diner...

Details:

Pilgrims’ brown costumes with white collar and cuffs

The landing of the Pilgrims in 1620 7/8

Ye Navy Gun Crew

The Mayflower arrives amid(st) modern air-craft carriers = “liberty ships”, built by Henry John Kaiser * (nom inscrit sur le bateau) , 1882-1967, during WWII.

Ye crow’s nest with crows in it!

Plymouth Rock: the Mayflower came from Plymouth in Cornwall and the American landing place is named after the homeport.

(multi-read fiche + texte)

Was this trip really necessary?

Who could have asked this question?Why?

First settlement in the snow, divided in two parts: Ye Democrats on the left and YeRepublicans on the right

Pilgrims queuing in front of a shop Ye cigarettes today: tobacco comes from America

2 streets:: Hollywood Boulevard + Vine Street: 2 most famous places in Hollywood, where it all began. Before these were vineyards of California.

Ye Town Cryer who really cries …. But who’s supposed to announce all the events to the settlement’s population

Caravan made out of a plane Lockheed: pilgrim’s home

«Hollywood l’usine à rêves” page 96: Hollywood se retrouve géographiquement au coeur du conflit (mondial du WWII), vivant dans la psychose d’une offensive japonaise sur Los Angeles, qui sert d‘étape aux troupes partant vers le Pacifique. La légende veut que les patrons de la Warner, inquiets d’être voisins des usines Lockheed, aient envisagé de faire peindre sur les toits du studio une gigantesque flèche portant les mots «Lockheed, This Way».

4F: Draft rating indicating that one was physically unfit for military service. The Wacky Worm warns the audience in Greetings Bait (Freleng, 1943) that those with weak stomachs and 4-F constitutions should not watch his fight with a crab. In Holiday for Shoestrings (Freleng, 1945), a shoe with a fallen arch which is labeled 4-F has its arch fixed, and its classification changed to 1-A (the rating indicating physically fit for military service). The horse in The Draft Horse (Jones, 1942) is rejected by the U.S. Army and is classified as 44-F. Bugs, after surviving a near-death experience in Falling Hare (Clampett, 1943), had a heart pounding in his chest labeled 4F. The little version of Daffy Duck that appears in The Blue Danube sequence of A Corny Concerto (Clampett, 1943) gets rejected by the buzzard with a big 4F sign attached to his rump.

Ye house of seven gobbles to gobble = noise made by turkeys (glouglou); a gobble = a male turkey (dindon)

Turkey says: «A customer», and opens the BLACK (the building is black) Market shop, hidden behind a screen

White / dark meat / wishbone (fer à cheval) / I’ll wrap it as a gift (exercice livret)

The turkey gets undressed and wraps himself in the paper saying «happy Thanksgiving»

A label is hanging from the parcel saying «Use no hooks»

Gun PowderPilgrim walking with a crutch

Fox Hole: hole in the ground used as a shelter against enemy fire and as a firing-point ( = abri individual)

No vacancies

Bazooka: most effective, rocket-propelled anti-tank weapon during WW2

Eat at Joe’s on a board carried by a sandwich-bear, who appears 4 times

Instead of the feathers of the turkey, there’s an Indian behind the trunk who says: «Who’re you?»

Half-breed (half-blood = demi-sang) with picture holding a board saying «Heap Corny Gag» (vous ne vous y attendez pas à cela, n’est-ce pas)

Suit une série de gags habituels chez Tex Avery:

Traffic-lights

Shooting: cartoon shot at the end of WWII

Anachronisms = mistake in dating

Chasing

Painting a wall to make it look different

End of pavement just in front of a precipice

A la fin de la poursuite, et pour introduire le dénouement de l’histoire, ce dialogue:

Turkey: «You won’t catch me for Thanksgiving dinner. Therefore why don’t we eat at Joe’s?»

Pilgrim: «Allright, we’ll eat at Joe’s.»

- Anticipitation: What can possibly happen now?

Picture:

JOE’S

STEAKSCHOPS

Noises: what could have happened?

- What really happened? make a sentence using «instead of» and passive voice

Instead of eating at Joe’s, the pilgrim and turkey have been eaten by Joe!

- What made you laugh? by what you saw, read, or heard (voir fiche “humour”)

- What’s similar with Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas?

Theme: the Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower

Tex Avery’s «techniques»:written comment on boards

Anachronisms

Chasing, shooting cartoon shot in 1945 at the end of WW2

Traffic-lights

* Henry John KAISER1882 – 1967

Industriel américain, constructeur de routes et de barrages géants. Il mit au point, pendant la SGM, les jeeps et les «liberty ships» = cargo d’une dizaine de milliers de tonnes, fabriqué en grande série.

L’importance de la musique

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