Oogli Yawabooby Razzle Dazzle Root Beer: Racism in Howdy Doody

In the 1950 Howdy Doody comic No.6, one of the stories titled "Adventurers Club" from Dell Comics show friends Howdy Doody and Dilly Dally overhear an offer being made to whoever can produce the most unusual creature of the year, and decided to go on a voyage to the Golly-Wolly Islands to discover it. Unfortunately, the captain of the ship brings Howdy and Dilly to the wrong island, which is inhabited by cannibals.The issue (pun intended) with this comic is mostly the cultural priorities that are outlined in the Comic Code Authority of 1954 go into detail about what is unacceptable for the public to be reading, however, when addressing racism or things of the like, it is one vague blanket statement that reads “Ridicule or attack on any [...] racial group is never permissible.” But the content present in the Howdy Doody comic doesn’t necessarily identify a racial group, but creates one within the Howdy Doody universe which depicts islanders as more animalistic than human. Granted, the Comic Code Authority of 1954 was outlined four years after the publication of this Howdy Doody comic, but the real underlying issues are not fixed to the extent that other issues, like keeping the sanctity of marriage or prohibiting the use of the words “Horror,” “Crime,” and “Terror.”

The comic does not explicitly identify the ethnicity and/or race of the islanders of “Golly-Wolly Island” but seem to still perpetuate gross stereotypes of non-western island peoples. There are plenty of examples of this shown within the comic. First, we can see a form of black-face in how the islanders are stylistically drawn with overly wide and large lips. They seem to take up most of the islanders faces. This is similar to how black-face was used in Minstrel shows. The hair and costume of the islanders is primal, with the use of bones and various piercings as accessories. The islanders are also cannibals, as to add to the already animalistic characteristics they were given, they also seem to be not as smart as Howdy and Dilly, the main characters whose stupidity is the main focus of the comic series.

There is also a panel in which an islander, who we are meant to assume is some sort of shaman or spiritual figure within the population, wearing a ritual mask, chanting “Oogli Yawabooby… Razzle Dazzle Root Beer!” When asked what it was all about, a islander explains that he is asking the ancestors if they approve of Howdy and Dilly as a meal. This is an obvious play on non-western ritual practice, especially the importance on spiritual relationships with ancestors. From here, an actual gorilla appears, and, aside from the amount of body hair on the gorilla, there is very little difference in the way the islanders and the gorilla are depicted.

Popular culture has a role in perpetuating these stereotypes, especially in these comics. They seem light-hearted and for satire, but even comic books depicting dark-skinned, misshapen bodies in contrast with the white men and women depicted in all of the comics create a harmful divide between “us” and “them.”

GO Warriors*... no really... GO!

People often ask me why it is I am studying what it is I am studying. Why am I working on a thesis that explores the intersection of Education Policy, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI)--or Native American--culture, and Pop Culture? What is the point? And each time someone asks me this, my head explodes just a little bit. These questions are Hegemony at work!

One of the common analogies I bring to the table when I am asked, is the following:

"How would you feel if someone were to wear Blackface to a costume party?" and I get the expected answers, something along the line "who would do that?", "That's fucked up!", "Only a racist would do that!" or something along those general lines.

And so I ask them, "Well, why does that offend you?" To which I get some variation of: "That is obvious, you don't do that, because that is racist behaviour, just like you don't use 'The N Word'".

So, then I ask, "Well what if a kid wears blackface out on Hallowe'en? Is a five year old racist?" Then I get lots of eye-rolls.  I am often scoffed at for proposing such a ridiculous idea because "what parent would let a child dress up that way? Who would encourage that?"

And this is the point I have led them to and I go one step further: "Well is it ok for a child to dress up as an Indian Princess/Indian Warrior?" and this usually gets the answer "Well, why not?"

So, it's ok for someone to dress up in Redface but not Blackface; what is the difference?**

This usually gets the answer, "It is just make believe", " Everyone does it" or my personal favourite, "It's celebrating Native culture". SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!

We live in a society that was built by the process of colonization--both in Canada and the USA--on the premise of eradicating a culture for the purpose of acquiring the land and its resources. Stereotypes were deliberately perpetuated to ensure that if not a hatred, an ambivalence towards a population was firmly entrenched into mainstream culture.

Consider we have a white dominated society legitimizing mascots, and products that persistently marginalize a population of people that continue to reside in North America. Author Thomas King discusses the idea of Live Indians and Dead Indians. Dead Indians "are the stereotypes and cliches that North America has conjured up out of experience and out of the collective imaginings and fears" (King, 2012, p. 54).

King goes on to describe war bonnets and fringed deerskin as examples for the reader. These examples act as signifiers. These signifiers have in essence created a simulacrum; a false reality that we assume is reality, that we can no longer recognize as false.*** Dead Indians are found at rodeos, PowWows, movies, and television. King refers to Live Indians as those who did not die out. "Live Indians [are] neither needed or wanted. They [are] irrelevant, and as the nineteenth century rolled into the twentieth century, Live Indians were forgotten, safely stored away on reservations and reserves... out of sight, out of mind" (King, 2012, p. 61). And society is completely okay with that.


We know that when settlers first arrived, encounters were positive and harmonious, and yet at some point, as the governments' demands for more land continued, relations turned ugly as the ideals of the government perpetuated the savage. Those ideas persist today.

This past week we saw the new budget in Canada revealed and after the breakdown, and despite promises of the Trudeau government to remove inequities, Live Indigenous students in Canada are still receiving less per student than their non-Indigenous Canadian counterparts. So I have to ask: how could any child feel good about about themselves when they are still worth less because of their ethnicity? That mainstream continues to accept this reality, downplay it, and say "it's ok, at least it is better than it was" is Hegemony at work in today's society.

* Get rid of the concept of the Native American "Warrior" in the war bonnet. This is such a stereotypical image! The "warrior" in traditional Mohawk culture refers to the responsibilities of the men to follow the dictates of the War Chief and protect their community from threats. The War Chief followed the dictates of the Clan Mothers (Cross & Sévigny, 1994). (Yes, the women made the decision as to whether or not the community would go to war, not the War Chief, and not the warriors).

** Interesting to note that as I typed this in the Blog Dashboard, Blackface is a recognized term, however Redface is marked as a typo.

***check out the movie The Matrix; Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is featured prominently in the opening scenes. Baudrillard's post modern theories figure prominently in the movie.

Works Cited:

Cross, R. and Sévigny, H. (1994). Lasagna: The man behind the mask. Vancouver, British Columbia. Talonbooks

King, Thomas (2012), The Inconvenient Indian. Canada. Anchor Canada.