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The Dodo's significance as one
of the best-known extinct animals and its singular appearance has led
to its widespread use in literature and popular culture.
Books
and magazines
The first use of the Dodo in popular culture was
in Lewis
Carroll's Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland, in 1865.
The book features a Dodo character simply called Dodo. The character
represents the author himself, as he frequently doubled the
do at the beginning of his real name, Dodgson, due to a
stutter.
"Dodos are forever" is a book by
popular children's author Dick King-Smith.
In Fantastic Beasts and
Where to Find Them by J.K.Rowling, a fictional school book of
Harry Potter,
the dodo is featured under the name "Diricawl". It is described as
having the ability to disappear and reappear elsewhere. According
to this book, Muggles
(non-magical people) wrongfully assume that diricawls/dodos are
extinct, and wizards keep their continued existence a secret
because their supposed extinction taught Muggles to be more careful
about slaying animals.
The underground humor magazine at the
United States Air Force
Academy is called The Dodo, a play on the Academy's official
mascot, the Falcon. Its on-line version, the eDoDo, is maintained by Academy
graduates and its bulletin boards are frequented by graduates and
cadets.
In the Thursday Next books written by Jasper Fforde, Thursday
has a pet Dodo named Pickwick. In the universe of the Thursday Next
stories, Dodos are created as pets through cloning from usable DNA.
Four pages in
Thomas
Pynchon's sprawling novel Gravity's Rainbow are devoted to
the Dodo. Pynchon makes mention of Frans Van der Groov, a mad
Dutchman who arrives at Mauritius sometime in the 17th century with
a boatload of live hogs and ends up "systematically killing off
the native dodoes for reasons he could not explain." This can
be found on pages 108-111 in the 1987 Penguin edition of
Gravity's Rainbow.
Howard Waldrop's short
story The
Ugly Chickens describes a 20th-century ornithologist's mad
chase after the last living dodos. He succeeds, and he finds them.
In a way.
Comics
DC Comics published a comic series from the 1940s
through the 1960s entitled The Dodo and the Frog,
featuring the characters Dunbar Dodo and Fennimore Frog. Dunbar was
portrayed as something of a simpleton, and often fell for the
schemes of Fennimore. The two made a later appearance in the 1980s
comic series Captain Carrot and His
Amazing Zoo Crew.
In the Dutch comic series Douwe Dabbert a Dodo
was featured as his traveling companion, leaving him eventually for
the last female Dodo.
Movies and television
Gogo
The 1938Bob Clampett-directed
Looney
Tunes cartoon Porky in Wackyland has Porky Pig chasing the last
Dodo across the surreal
Wackyland. The Do-Do Bird is somewhat insane, as is his
environment, but he is still able to escape capture from Porky for
most of the film.
One of the Doctor's companions in the third
season of Doctor
Who (1966) was
nicknamed Dodo. She had a bright and happy, if
unsophisticated, personality, somewhat reminiscent of the Dodo
bird's traits.
The 1990s
cartoon Tiny Toon Adventures featured a
dodo character named Gogo Dodo, who was the son of the dodo bird
portrayed in Porky in Wackyland. Gogo's personality in the
series was quite wild and bizarre, often embracing surreal and
nonsensical elements.
In a 1996 episode of the animated series The Simpsons (entitled
Homer the Smithers), Mr. Burns orders
Homer to
prepare him a Dodo egg for lunch. This is part of a running joke of
the show, which consists of making the character of Mr. Burns as
out-of-touch with modern world developments as possible.
A dodo
named Dodo is one of the major characters in the 1997 animated TV
series Animal
Crackers
The 2002
movie Ice
Age features an army of Dodos, who are trying to survive
extinction by stockpiling only three watermelons. The watermelons
are destroyed in the movie, along with a number of Dodos trying to
protect them, thus dooming the species to extinction. This
rendition plays into the stereotype of the Dodo being a simpleton
animal.
An episode of The
Goodies had Bill Oddie discovering the reason for the
extinction of the dodo---the fact that "they're delicious!"
In
the later episodes of the Dutch-Japanese cartoon series Alfred J.Kwak, Alfred encounters the secret
underwater habitat (named after and based on the mythical
Atlantis) where the
Dodos fled to save their species from extinction.
In the episode of Superman: The Animated
Series entitled "The Main Man," a villain named "the
Preserver" has a living dodo bird in a simulated Earth environment.
At the end of the episode, Superman takes the dodo back to his
Fortress of Solitude.
In 2006, the
Dodo is set as an example of the documentary Flock of Dodos
highlighting the "evolution intelligent-design circus". There are
screenings at select universities and a public release may be in
early 2007.
Several dodos appeared in Episode
Four of the ITV series,
Primeval. They were shown as being
relatively fleet of foot, and their supposed "stupidity" was
explained as a general fearlessness of mankind.
Music
In
1981 the band Genesis featured a song on the Abacab album entitled
"Dodo/Lurker".
The David Bowie Box Set "Sound Vision" released in
1995 contain a previously unreleased version of the song "1984"
which included a sub-song called "Dodo". The song was originally
recorded in 1973 during the "Diamond Dogs" recording sessions. The "Sound
Vision" box set was re-released in 2003.
In 1999, Aimee Mann featured a dodo on the cover of her
album "Bachelor No.2, or, the Last Remains of the Dodo."
None of the songs mention the dodo, however.
Dave Matthews'
2003 album
<i>Some
Devil</i> begins with a track called "Dodo," a soft,
harmonic song with lyrics that muse on the possible feelings of the
last dodo alive on earth.
The N.Dodo Band (Nenoneonewneoneonosolonadadatodododo
band) was a new wave band (1975-1979) during
the New York music scene playing such clubs as CBGB's, Max's Kansas
City, Great Gildersleeves, Tier 3, Privates, Trudy Hellers,
etc. Their motto was "todo mundo es dodo" (whole world is
dodo).
The "Punk Rock Song" single by Bad Religion features a
song entitled "The Dodo".
The Shins reference Dodos in their
2007 single "Australia" and the fact that they are birds, yet
cannot fly.
In
the 2001 video game
Grand Theft Auto III, an aircraft
named the Fully-winged Dodo can be seen flying over
the city. Although this plane cannot be flown, a shorn-winged
version, simply called Dodo, can actually be flown (with great
difficulty) by the player. The Dodo can be found at the Liberty
City Airport. This is of course a joke, mocking the fact the Dodo
was a flightless bird. The Dodo reappears in Grand Theft Auto: San
Andreas, and is available at the Las Venturas Airport.
In the video game Blazing Dragons, one of the villans of
the game resorts to using a "ground-delivery dodo" to take
Flicker's steam-engine plans to the castle of Sir George after his
"air-delivery eagle" flies straight out the window without taking
the plans with him.
The time-travel card game Early American Chrononauts
includes a card called Mating Pair of Live Dodo Birds which time
travelers can symbolically rescue from the year 1598.
There is
a Pokémon character
named after the Dodo bird, Doduo which possesses two heads, and its three-headed
evolution, the Dodrio.
Despite their names, however, they more closely act like and
resemble large, multi-headed Roadrunner.
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