The cartoon. Today’s Zippy strip is a translation of an everyday family drama into a surreal Dingburg version, in the household of Zippy and Zerbina and their children, the boy Fuelrod and the girl Meltdown:
Image may be NSFW.
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“Eat your Froot Loops, Meltdown, or th’ force field will remove your topknot”
Just think of that as how Dingburgers say “Eat your spinach, kid, or the lack of iron will make you weak” — but much much more dramatically. Or as the song “You’ve Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby” (from the 1936 movie Poor Little Rich Girl) puts it:
You’ve gotta eat your spinach, baby
That′s the proper thing to do
It’ll keep you kind of healthy too
And what it did for Popeye it’ll do for you
The song (sung in the movie at first by Alice Faye and Jack Haley, though little Shirley Temple is about to come along and object to the advice in the song) frames the direction to eat your spinach as a statement of obligation — it’s what you’ve got to do — backed up by reasons — it’s the proper thing to do, and it will keep you healthy, and it will do for you what it did for Popeye (namely, make you strong). But there’s no explicit because; the statement of obligation is followed by a series of assertions, which we’re to understand as reasons for fulfilling the obligation. This is the way conversation works; a great deal of the action is implicit.
The action can be made somewhat more explicit by making the connection between the obligation and the reasons explicit in a conditional:
if you eat your spinach, it will keep you healthy / you’ll stay healthy; if you eat your spinach, it will make you strong / you’ll get strong
This states things positively, but the connection can be framed negatively:
if you don’t eat your spinach, you won’t stay healthy; if you don’t eat your spinach, you won’t get strong / you’ll get weak
Meanwhile, the statement of obligation is meant to function, indirectly, as an injunction or instruction to fulfill the obligation — that is, to eat your spinach. That instruction can be made more explicit by framing the advice as an imperative. Stated positively, as a prediction or promise:
eat your spinach, and it will keep you healthy / you’ll stay healthy; eat your spinach, and it will make you strong / you’ll get strong
Or stated negatively, as a warning or threat:
eat your spinach, or it won’t keep you healthy / you won’t stay healthy; eat your spinach, or it won’t make you strong / you’ll get weak
And now, in eat your spinach, or you’ll get weak, we have reached the Popeye-spinach parallel to eat your Froot Loops, or the force field will remove your topknot. The place where Shirley Temple in the movie and Meltdown in the cartoon are united.
The movie. From Wikipedia:
Poor Little Rich Girl … is a 1936 American musical film directed by Irving Cummings and starring Shirley Temple, Alice Faye and Jack Haley. The screenplay by Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman, and Harry Tugend was based on stories by Eleanor Gates and Ralph Spence, and the 1917 Mary Pickford vehicle of the same name. The film focuses on a child (Temple) neglected by her rich and busy father. She meets two vaudeville performers and becomes a radio singing star.
The song in the movie. Available for view on YouTube here. The whole text of the lyrics, which are far from fabulous, though they are entertaining; note the early monitory couplet If you want me to be like I want you to be / Follow this carefully.
You’ve Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby
[Jack Haley & Alice Faye:]
I want your cheeks to be rosey
Your lips like the color of wine
Darling the way that people will say that
“My but you′re looking so fine”
OOOOOOOOhI want you strong as Apollo
A sturdy and masculine sheik
Darling the way that people will say that
“My What a gorgeous physique”
If you want to be like I want you to be
follow this carefully:You’ve gotta eat your spinach, baby
That′s the proper thing to do
It’ll keep you kind of healthy too
And what it did for Popeye it’ll do for youYou′ve gotta eat your spinach, baby
It′ll give you lots of TNT
For whenever you’re caressing me
Cause you′ll need lots of vitamins from A-Z
Please take my advice
Kissing is dangerous doctors all agreeI’ll take your advice
But don′t ever kiss anybody but meYou’ve gotta eat your spinach, baby
If you do you can′t go wrong
‘Cause it’s gonna make you nice and strong
And the stronger you are the longer you′ll live
And the longer I′ll have to love you[Shirley Temple intervenes:]
Pardon me did I hear you say Spinach – Spinach
I represent all the kids of the nation
Who sent me to see you about it
I bring a message from the kids of the nation
To tell you we can do without itKindly listen to me
I’m not alone in my plea
There are dozens and dozens and dozens of us
Nephews and nieces and cousins of us
They want me to say – Hallelujah HallelujahNo Spinach, take away that awful greenery
No Spinach, give us lots of jelly beanery
We positively refuse to budge
We′d like lollipops, we like fudge
But no Spinach Hosanna[now it becomes a tug of war between Faye & Haley and Temple:]
You’ve got to eat your Spinach, baby
No No No No, I′m singing to you
No No No No Hallelujah
Spinach stay away from my doorWe’ll tell the bogey man
The big big bad bad bogey bogey man
Oh that′s just a bluff
You know we don’t believe that stuffYou gotta eat your Spinach, baby
Children have to do as they are told
Yes Sir, yes Ma’am
Children shouldn′t be so very bold
Yes Sir, yes Ma′am
Or you’ll grow up to be a meanie when your old
Yes Sir, yes Ma′amI’ve want to tell all the kids of the nation
Who sent me to see you about it
Children have to do as they are told
Children shouldn′t be so very bold
Or you will be a meanie when you’re old
So okay – Spinach
Faye & Haley do a nice job with this number (and they both had fine — and complex — careers after this movie), but Temple really shines.
(Oh yes, the threat of the big bad bogeyman in the song is mirrored by the threat of removal by the force field in the cartoon.)