A friend recently sent me this link to 42 things you'll only see in China. Number 19 caught my attention because I know full well who that is. That, my friends, is none other than Pleasant Goat.
Pleasant Goat is the star of Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf, a Chinese cartoon that is available (in Cantonese or, thank the lord, English) on Cartoon Network in Hong Kong.
Now I find calling a cartoon character "Pleasant Goat" hilarious for a start. This is a brilliant example of how Chinese to English translations often end up using English words in really awkward ways. I'm sure that, in the original Chinese, "Pleasant Goat" conveys the essence of the character. In English, you may as well call him "Blandly Inoffensive Milquetoast Goat".
Maybe it is just me, but every time I hear Pleasant Goat, I feel an irresistible urge to start making up other characters for the series. Passive Aggressive Pig, Bigoted Rooster, Surly Sheep and so on and so forth.
Luckily, the actual cartoon backs up the initial weirdness of the name with a wonderful premise. Pleasant Goat is a goat who lives in a pasture and attends school under the tutelage of Steady Lamb, the village elder. Why the village elder is still a lamb is not explained. Maybe there's a Children of the Corn-thing going on, maybe it's an ironic nickname, I'm not sure.
Grey Wolf (the big and bad wolf of the title) lives in a nearby castle with his wife, Red Wolf. Grey Wolf is the Wile. E. Coyote of the piece, constantly trying to catch and eat the lambs via a series of increasingly intricate plans (but of course never succeeding, so as not to traumatise viewers). So far, so generic, as you would expect from a PRC government-authorised production.
What is most fascinating about Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf, however, is the relationship between Grey Wolf and his wife, Red Wolf. To quote Wikipedia on the subject of Red Wolf:
"Red Wolf is somewhat impatient and enjoys making her husband do all the work. She never tries to catch the goats herself, but always yells at her husband. She likes fashion and behaves like a modern female adult. She knows nothing but lamb and she loves to hit Grey Wolf with her frying pan."Now, as we all know, domestic violence is hilarious and certainly not the sort of thing anyone is going to object to in a children's cartoon, particularly when perpetrated by a goat who sounds like Peggy Bundy from Married With Children. (What I particularly enjoy about this description is the statement that she "behaves like a modern female adult" being immediately followed by the observation that she frequently belts her husband with a frying pan.)
So it turns out that Grey Wolf's key motivation to pursue the goats is to avoid being yelled at and receiving a potentially fatal beating from his wife. This adds the sort of subtext to proceedings which Wile. E. Coyote never had. Just imagine if there was a scene every time he fails to catch the roadrunner where his spouse berates him for being a miserable middle-aged failure. I have to say, I think Warner Bros might have missed a trick there.
