What is the deal with Goofy and Pluto?
Oddly enough, last week I just finished watching The Complete Goofy two-disc set (in the Disney Treasures line). Goofy is most certainly a dog–if I recall correctly, his original name was “Dippy Dawg.” However, over the course of his solo acting career he becomes increasingly anthropomorphized, adn his apperance from year to year lacks consistency when compared to the other Disney animated stars. (Sometimes Goofy is drawn without ears that hang down on either side of his face, for example.) Finally in the early 1950s, he becomes a staid middle-class suburban homeowner who actually owns a dog at one point (see the short “Man’s Best Friend”). Two things are worth noting here: (1) In the shorts in which Goofy behaves most as a human, it’s made clear that he lives in a world whose intelligent beings are all males of the same Goofy species (with the important exception described in (2) ). Not only are there no other humans, but there are no other talking animals. Pluto appears in a cameo i
