The Mouse and his Child

"Oh, each of us sunk in the mud, however deep, must rise on the propulsion of his own thought. Each of us, must journey through the dogs beyond the dots, into the truth alone."


After finishing Hofstadter's "I Am A Strange Loop" I began to think about my interest in these Hofstader defined loops and I immediately had a Proustian moment and was transported back to the General Cinema theater in Cincinnati, Ohio circa 1977 . In an attempt to escape the oppressive humidity that settled over the valley in the summer my mother took me to see the animated version of Russal Hoban's "The Mouse and his Child"

Hoban's story revolves a mouse and his son who are the two parts of a single small wind-up toy, which must be wound up by means of a key in the father's back. After having been unboxed, they discover themselves in a toy shop where they befriend a toy elephant and toy seal. The child mouse proposes staying at the shop to form a family, which the other toys ridicule. After falling from a counter and becoming broken, they are thrown in the trash. Outside, they become enslaved by Manny the Rat, who runs a casino in the city dump and uses broken wind-up toys as his slave labor force. With the aid of a psychic frog, the mice escape and meet various animal characters on a quest of becoming free and independent "self-winding" toys. They rediscover the elephant and seal, who are somewhat broken down, and manage to form a family and destroy the rat empire.

Along their philosophical quest for self-determinism there is a wonderful scene in which the mouse and his son encounter a philosophical turtle at the bottom of a pond who explains the notion of infinity to them via a can dog food. This can of dog food, obviously modeled on Morton Salt girl, which shows a picture of a dog on hind legs in snappy chef's cap holding up an advertisement of the the self same dog holding on hind legs in snappy chef's cap holding up an advertisement of the self same dog holding on on hind legs in snappy chef's cap holding up an advertisement of the self same...well you get the idea.

I can remember the strange sense of intellectual vertigo that I experienced seeing this scene where the son falls into infinity with his father via can of dog food.

The YouTube clip includes the full movie. The scene I'm talking about starts around 051:52, although I highly recommend, watching the entire film when one has the time.