The Belly Of The Beast From Disney's Phineas And Ferb

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For this response paper the modern-day pop culture reference I chose was the episode “The Belly of the Beast” from Disney’s Phineas and Ferb. The episode begins with Phineas and Ferb attending the Danville Harbor Day festival, which is celebrating the day that the Danville citizens drove out the giant shark that had been terrorizing their town. Disappointed by the “shark” that was chosen for the reenactment of this event, Phineas and Ferb decide to create their own giant robot-shark. Naturally, as all Phineas and Ferb episode go, their sister Candace has to stop them! Candace and her friend Stacy enlist the help of Captain Squint and Squint’s boat to chase her brothers in the giant robot-shark. They spend most of the episode chasing the …show more content…

It was interesting that while the episode was definitely different from Moby Dick, the original story was referenced time and time again in such a short time frame. The first reference I noticed was the name of Captain Squint’s ship, the “Pea-quad”, a quick nod to the ship, the Pequod seen in the novel. The next reference in the episode took place during the intense harpooning scene, during Candace’s last effort at catching the giant shark, she yells, “from Danville Harbor I stab at thee; sake of busting I spit my last spit at thee!” This quote is a parody of the last words spoken by Ahab, also spoken during an important scene of the novel, after Moby Dick destroys the Pequod, “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee..”. The last, smaller, reference I noticed in the episode was the nod to the time period in which Moby Dick took place. In the flash-back scene where the town’s people drove off the fiant shark, they were all wearing old styled clothing and speaking in an old-English accent. The citizens attending the festival in present day were also dressed in period-clothing for the celebration. While obviously the episode of Phineas and Ferb differs from the novel Moby Dick a lot, any person who had read the novel would have been able to pick up the direct references and seen the

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