Dream of the Rarebit Fiend
Vorlage:Infobox comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was a newspaper comic strip written and drawn by Winsor McCay beginning 10 September, 1904. It was McCay's second successful newspaper strip, after Little Sammy Sneeze secured him a position on the cartoon staff of the New York Herald newspaper. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was printed in the Evening Telegram, which was published by the Herald at the time. For legal reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name "Silas".
The strip had no continuity or recurring characters. Instead, it had a recurring theme in which a character, usually after eating a Welsh rarebit (a cheese-on-toast dish) has a nightmare or other bizarre dream. The character wakes from the dream in the last panel, usually commenting that they shouldn't have eaten the rarebit. The dreams often revealed the darker sides of their dreamers' psyches—their phobias, hypocrisies, discomforts, and sometimes dark fantasies. This was in great contrast to the colorful, childlike fantasy dreams in McCay's signature strip, Little Nemo, which began the following year in the Herald.
The strip has been the inspiration for a number of films, including Edwin S. Porter's live-action Dream of the Rarebit Fiend in 1906, as well as four pioneering animated films by McCay himself: How a Mosquito Operates in 1912, and 1921's Bug Vaudeville, The Pet and The Flying House.
Background
McCay had begun cartooning in the 1890s, and quickly became known for his lightning-quick ability to draw, which he often displayed on the vaudeville stage, alongside the likes of Harry Houdini and W. C. Fields. He produced a large number of cartoons for various newspapers, and even some of his earlier cartoons showed his interest in dreams that would surface in Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo. Some of his earliest strips had titles such as Daydreams and It Was Only a Dream.Vorlage:Sfn
In 1891, the 24-yeaar-old McCay had married 14-year-old wife, and their marriage was not a happy one. According to McCay biographer John Canemaker, marriage is depicted in Rarebit Fiend as "a minefield of hypocrisy, jealousy, and misunderstanding". Despite the bleak view in the strip, McCay's work was so popular that he was hired by William Randolph Hearst in 1911 with a star's salary. His work was deemed by editor Arthur Brisbane to be "serious, not funny", and he was made to give up his comic strips (including Rarebit Fiend and Nemo) to work full-time illustrating editorials.Vorlage:Sfn
The editor of the New York Herald required McCay to use a pseudonym for his work in the Telegram to keep it separate from his Herald strips, so McCay signed all his Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strips as "Silas", borrowing the name of a neighborhood garbage cart driver.Vorlage:Sfn
Overview
A year before the dream romps aimed at children of Little Nemo, and a full generation before the Dalis and Ernsts of the Surrealist movement unreleashed their subconsciousnesses on the public, Winsor McCay first produced the hallucinogenic comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. The strip had no recurring characters, but only a recurring concept: after eating a Welsh rarebit, the day's protagonist would be subject to the underside of his or her psyche.Vorlage:Sfn In some strips, the Fiend would be spectator, watching fantastic or horrible things happen to someone close to themselves.Vorlage:Sfn Characters would find themselves dismembered or buried alive (from a first-person perspective).Vorlage:Sfn The typically bourgeois urban protagonists of the strip were often subjected to fears related to loss of social esteem or respectability.Vorlage:Sfn
The rarebit, a dish typically made with rich cheese thinned with ale, served melted on toast with cayenne and mustard mixed in,Vorlage:Sfn was used despite its inocuousness—it was not the sort of dish one would likely associate with having nightmares.Vorlage:Sfn In later strips, sometimes a lobster or other food was substituted for the titular rarebit, or sometimes no caue was given for the troubling dreams.Vorlage:Sfn
In comparison to the McCay's better-known Little Nemo strip, the Rarebit Fiend strips had minimal backgrounds,Vorlage:Sfn and were usually done from a fixed perspective, with the main characters often in a fixed position.Vorlage:Sfn In contrast to the highly-skilled artwork, the dialogue balloons, like in McCay's other work, was awkward and could approach illegibility,Vorlage:Sfn especially in reproductions, where the artwork was normally greatly reduced in size.Vorlage:Sfn The stories were self-contained, whereas the story in the Nemo strips continued from week to week.Vorlage:Sfn The dreams in Nemo were aimed at children, but Rarebit Fiend had more adult-oriented subjects—social embarrassment, fear of dying or going insane, and so on—although some of the dreams in both strips were wish-fulfilment fantasies.Vorlage:Sfn Unlike most comic strips at the time, Rarebit Fiend was not humorous or escapist. The strips highlighted our darker selves—our hypocisies, our deceitfulness, our phobias and discomfort. The strip offered often biting social commentary, and marital, money and religious matters are all shown in a most negative light.Vorlage:Sfn
McCay's most famous character, Little Nemo, first appeared in Dream of the Rarebit Fiend during its first year. In 1905, McCay would have the character appear in his own strip in the New York Herald.Vorlage:Sfn
Other media
McCay's work was very popular. It was adapted into several films by McCay and others, and was optioned for Broadway.Vorlage:Sfn
Film
Film pioneer Edwin S. Porter produced a seven-minute live-action film adaptation called The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend in 1906 for the Edison Company. The Fiend was played by John P. Brawn, who was tormented by imps in his bed, which flew through the air, eventually leaving him hanging from a steeple (a scene similar to that of one of the early strips).Vorlage:Sfn
McCay produced four hand-drawn animated films based upon his Rarebit Fiend series:
- Put together in December 1911, McCay's second filmVorlage:Sfn (also known as The Story of a MosquitoVorlage:Sfn) is one of the earliest examples of line-drawn animation. A giant mosquito with a top hat flies in through a window to feed on a man in bed, who tries in vain to defend himself. Eventually the mosquito drinks itself so full that it explodes.Vorlage:Sfnm Rather than expanding like a balloon, the mosquito fills up according the its body's structure, in a remarkably realistic fashion.Vorlage:Sfn The idea for the film was taken from a 1909 Rarebit Fiend strip. McCay biographer John Canemaker commends McCay for his ability to imbue the mosquito with character and a personality.Vorlage:Sfn
- Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville (1921)Vorlage:Sfn
- A fantasy in which a tramp comes out from a group of meticulously drawn trees, announcing he is sleepy. He falls asleep after saying, "[C]heese cakes are bad", as they give him strange dreams. Against the backdrop, a series of bugs put on performance after performance, against highly-detailed and realistic backgrounds.Vorlage:Sfn The performance comes to an end when a spider grabs the silhouetted member of the audience (who had been visible throughout the performance) and eats him whole. Vorlage:Sfn The film is presented as if a vaudeville show, though it does not make use of the human–animation stage interaction that McCay famously used with Gertie the Dinosaur.Vorlage:Sfn
- Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet (1921)Vorlage:Sfn
- Inspired by a Rarebit Fiend strip from 8 March, 1905,Vorlage:Sfn the film depicts a couple who adopt a mysterious animal with an insatiable appetite. It consumes its milk, the house cat, the house's furnishings, rat poison, and passing vehicles, including airplanes and a blimp, growing larger and larger all the while.Vorlage:Sfn
- Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House (1921)Vorlage:Sfn
- Against the backdrop of the rapidly urbanizing United States of the 1910s and 1920s, one house from the artificial grid of modern, planned America takes flight in the dream of a woman who has feasted on Welsh rarebit. The house is rendered in the meticulous realistic detail for which McCay was famous. The house is conventional in every respect—until the viewer reaches the attic, where the woman's husband is seen tending an enormous engine. He attaches a propeller to a shaft out front of the house, and tells his wife that his actions are in reaction to their landlord's intention to evict them over nonpayment. He plans to "steal the house", and they fly away to find a place where their landlord will never find them—a swamp, the ocean, even the moon, where they are chased off by the Man in the Moon with a flyswatter. The film self-consciously directs the viewers to notice the quality and accuracy of the animation when the house takes of into space, calling attention to the "remarkable piece of animation which follows", accurately showing the revolutions of the Earth and Moon and the "beautiful constellation of Orion". The woman becomes anxious that they will become "lost in the sky". The house is eventually struck by a military rocket, bringing the nightmare to an end with the woman awakening in her bed.Vorlage:Sfn
Music
The Edison Military Band performed a piece called "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" on an Edison cylinder (Edison 9585) in 1907,Vorlage:Sfn written by Thomas W. Thurban. The piece was likely inspired by Porter's 1906 film, and may have been intended to accompany it. The piece was written for 18–20-piece band, and has been recorded numerous times.Vorlage:Sfn
Publishing history
The first strip apeared on 10 September, 1904, in the New York Herald, a few months after the first appearance of McCay's Little Sammy Sneeeze.Vorlage:Sfn It was McCay's second successful newspaper strip, after Sammy Sneeze landed him a position on the cartoon staff of the New York Herald. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was printed in the Evening Telegram, which was published by the Herald at the time.Vorlage:Sfn
The strip appeared three times a week: twice during the week in a two-tier format, and on Saturdays in a four-tier format.Vorlage:Sfn
Collections
The earliest collection, under the title Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, appeared in 1905 from Frederick A. Stokes, reprinting 61 of the strips. This collection was reprinted in 1973 in a 10% enlarged edition by Dover Publications, with new introductory material. The Dover edition was missing the final strip from the original collection, however, as it contained ethnic humor that the publisher believed would not be to the taste of a 1970s audience.Vorlage:Sfn
Daydreams and Nightmares (Fantagraphics, 1988/2005), a collection of miscellaneous work by McCay, has a chapter devoted to Rarebit Fiend.Vorlage:Sfn Checker Books began a series of Winsor McCay: Early Works, which reprints all the Rarebit Fiend in several of the volumes: Volume 1 (ISBN 0-9741664-0-5), Volume 2 (ISBN 0-9741664-7-2), Volume 3 (ISBN 0-9741664-9-9), Volume 4 (ISBN 0-9753808-1-8), Volume 5 (ISBN 0-9753808-2-6), Volume 6 (ISBN 1-933160-05-5), and maybe in volumes 7 and 8.Vorlage:Cn Checker also reprinted many Saturdays in the book Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays.Vorlage:Sfn
In July 2007, German art historian Ulrich Merkl self-published a 43.5cm x 31cm, 464-page volume called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, reproducing 369 of the strips in full size.Vorlage:Sfn Previous reprintings of the strip had reduced the strips to about a third of their originally published size, resulting in loss of detail and making the lettering hard to read. The size of the book made automatic binding impossible, so it had to be bound by hand. The book was limited to 1000 copies, and a DVD was included with scans of all 821 known instalments of the strip. The sources of the strips were from both Merkl's personal collection, the Cartoon Research Library of the Ohio State University,Vorlage:Sfn and microfilms purchased from the New York Public Library containing the complete New York Evening Journal run of the strip.Vorlage:Sfn Merkl has said that, on average, six hours were required per strip for scanning and restoration.Vorlage:Sfn The book also featured two essays by Italian collector Alfredo Castelli.Vorlage:Sfn
Influences
Scholars such as Claude Moliterni,Vorlage:Sfn Ulrich Merkl, Alfredo Castelli and others have hunted down what they believe to have influenced McCay's work on Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Amongst the possible influences are Edward Lear's popular The Book of Nonsense (1870),Vorlage:Sfn Gelett Burgess' The Burgess Nonsense Book (1901), Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (particularly the pool of tears scene, which seems related to the flood of sweat in one early Rarebit Fiend strip), and the various dream cartoons and illustrations that appeared in various periodicals with which McCay was likely familiar.Vorlage:Sfn
Reception and legacy
Comics scholar Jeet Heer called Rarebit Fiend "perhaps the most bizarre newspaper feature in American history".Vorlage:Sfn Its has presaged ideas and scenes in Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'Or, King Kong, Dumbo, Mary Poppins, and the 2005 Tim Burton take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.Vorlage:Sfnm
In 1991, Rick Veitch began producing short comics based on his dreams. Beginning in 1994, he put out 21 issues of Roarin' Rick's Rare Bit Fiends from his own King Hell Press.Vorlage:Sfn
References
Works cited
- Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-516729-0 (google.com [abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012]).
- May R. Berenbaum: The Earwig's Tail: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-Legged Legends. Harvard University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03540-9 (google.com [abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012]).
- Stephen R. Bissette: Dream of the Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: An Interview with Ulrich Merkl (with Three Addendums). Myrant, 23. Juli 2007, abgerufen am 27. Juni 2012.
- Scott Bukatman: The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit. University of California Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-520-95150-1 (google.com [abgerufen am 28. Juni 2012]).
- Hillary Chute, Marianne Devoken: The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-51337-1, Comic Books and Graphic Novels, S. 175–195 (google.com [abgerufen am 28. Juni 2012]).
- Daniel Eagan: America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide To The Landmark Movies In The National Film Registry. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2977-3 (google.com [abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012]).
- Joshua Glenn: Waking Dream of the Rarebit Fiend In: The Boston Globe, 31. Oktober 2007. Abgerufen am 28. Juni 2012
- Joshua Glenn: The Dream Artist In: The Boston Globe, 11. November 2007. Abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012
- Daniel Goldmark: Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. University of California Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25070-3, Before Willie: Reconstructing Music and the Animated Cartoon of the 1920s, S. 225–245 (google.com [abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012]).
- Robert C. Harvey: The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History. University Press of Mississippi, 1994, ISBN 978-0-87805-674-3 (google.com [abgerufen am 24. Juni 2012]).
- Jeet Heer: The Dream Artist In: The Boston Globe, 8. Januar 2006. Abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012
- Steven Heller: The Rarebit Fiend Dreams On: An Interview with Ulrich Merkl. AIGA, 13. November 2007, abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012.
- Adrian Hill: Daydreams and Nightmares with Winsor McCay. 11. August 2011, abgerufen am 27. Juni 2012.
- Don Markstein: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Toonopedia, 2007, abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012.
- Winsor McCay: Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend. Dover Publications, Inc., 1973, ISBN 978-0-486-21347-7.
- J. P. Telotte: Animating Space: From Mickey to Wall-E. University Press of Kentucky, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8131-2586-2 (google.com [abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012]).
- Earl Theisen: A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Telivision. University of California Press, 1967, GGKEY:6ZBS232TCDQ, The History of the Animated Cartoong, S. 84–87 (google.com [abgerufen am 25. Juni 2012] [1933]).
- Bob Williams: A Review of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays by Winsor McCay. Compulsive Reader, 2007, abgerufen am 27. Juni 2012.
Further reading
- Ulrich Merkl: The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904-1913) by Winsor McCay 'Silas'. Ulrich Merkl, 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-020751-8.