A character on the
Warner Bros. cartoon,
Animaniacs.
Chicken Boo is a
giant rooster that stands about six feet tall. His
theme song goes :
Chicken Boo, Chicken Boo,
Chicken Boo what's the matter with you?
You wear a disguise to look like human guys,
but you're not a man, you're a chicken boo.
Chicken Boo does as his theme song describes ; he dresses as a
human man and tries to pass himself off as a real person. The fact that he speaks no
English and makes only chicken noises doesn’t seem to bother him or the people he has fooled. Some of the guises he has attempted are movie star and
Civil War general. The Chicken Boo shorts on Animaniacs all follow the same general pattern. The
hero appears (Chicken Boo, looking obviously like a dressed up chicken). Someone denounces the hero shouting, "I'm telling you, he's a giant chicken!! " This nay-sayer is laughed at and nobody takes him seriously. Chicken Boo then saves the day in one way or another but in the process he loses part of his disguise and is revealed to be nothing but a giant chicken. Boo is chased out of town by a mob maddened by
species discrimination and the nay-sayer is vindicated.
These cartoon shorts make a valid point about
human nature. Despite the fact that Chicken Boo accomplishes many heroic or admirable acts while disguised, as soon as he is discovered to be something other than he seems he is reviled and sent away, regardless of the irrelevance of his species. Sometimes people care more about who you are than what you do.