Wallaby Wednesday: Heffer made G.I. Jimbo an American Guernica

Only an Andy Warhol lookalike can settle the score over a disfigured G.I. Jimbo doll’s artistic value. (Hat tip to YouTube user x1mastershake1x for assuring this author he is not alone in seeing that semblance.)

For most of Rocko’s garage sale in “Junk Junkies,” the unnamed customer stands alone, staring at Heffer’s contribution. He says nothing, and his expression leaves his take on the badly melted action figure ambiguous. Although, in retrospect, his lingering and gaping for untold hours bodes well for a sale.

Going in, however, a sale is made to seem out of the question. When Heffer unveils the character doll, Rocko’s rationale matches that of Andy Stitzer in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

A high-profile item like that is only a sound commodity as long as it stays in mint condition. Having seen repeated action on Heffer’s kitchen stove, this G.I. Jimbo appears to have long lost its collectibility.

Heffer’s counterpoint is weak, as he merely offers an implied G.I. Jimbo theme song. But at the 11th hour for Rocko’s pizza bill — the garage sale’s premise — the customer speaks and secures an upset. Not to mention, his offer of $500 single-handedly relieves Rocko’s debt.

For a kid who has yet to take an art history class, this twist may come across as humorously nonsensical. How could anyone declare a melted, misshapened action figure “brilliant,” let alone worth $500?

But when one absorbs the customer’s words, then considers a powerful Pablo Picasso painting, the sale is a no-brainer. To the more educated eye, the childhood mirage of ridiculousness gives way to a genuine reflectiveness.

Guernica, Picasso’s 1937 commentary on the Spanish Civil War, cannot help coming to a cultured mind here. Even without any references to the painting, the same idea has clearly sunk in for Heffer’s customer. Overwhelmed, he takes the toy to Rocko and touts “The humanity! The anger! The pain!”

Picasso conveyed those same themes when he illustrated a war’s impact on his homeland’s military, civilians and livestock. Per pablopicasso.org, “Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.”

In his reckless child’s play, Heffer has unwittingly done the same, albeit with the image of an American soldier.

Through constant burner exposure, G.I. Jimbo’s mouth and at least one nostril have shifted to his left. His left eyeball has dropped to divide said mouth and what appears to be melted cheek fat. Both of his legs rise the way one’s arms ought to at a rave. His left arm (or at least the arm positioned to the left post-melting) breaks off after another “crash.”

Likewise, in Guernica, people and animals alike bear out-of-sync limbs and facial features. Of particular note, an onlooking bovine figure’s horns have shifted to the right of its crown while one ear sits directly above its left eye.

Guernica’s human figures variously gape at an off-panel horror, sprawl in pain or try to carry on through visible wounds. In two cases, neck-breakingly tilted heads mark one hint at lives being turned upside down. Others suffer more bluntly with the still-visible presence of weapons or uncontrolled fire.

With his limbs literally turned upside down by a stove’s flame, G.I. Jimbo signifies a war-weary country and fighter. Heat-induced chemical changes to the doll’s configuration illuminate a veteran’s lasting internal scars. Although, based on the lauding purchaser’s string of paradoxical comments, it arguably conveys a soldier’s pride and perseverance as well.

Anyone who knows Heffer can conclude he was not considering the potentiality of anyone interpreting the wreckage that way. When he dismisses Rocko’s statement that the toy is “broken,” he overlooks the depreciation and focuses on the brand. In his view, G.I. Jimbo can bounce back from anything and remain a “cash cow.”

But an item’s collectability differs from a work of art’s value as a thought-provoking symbol. As flattered as he must be by the substantial offer, Heffer looks as perplexed as Rocko when the customer walks away saying, “It’s frenetic, yet calm. Emotional, yet slightly pragmatic. A never-ending, twisted enigma of pain and joy.”

In that sense, as ludicrous as this will also sound on the surface, Heffer shares one common thread with Picasso. The Guernica painter had insisted that he was not steering specific interpretations of his choice of imagery.

As quoted in PBS’ Treasures of the World, the artist said, “If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”

Similarly, Heffer gets G.I. Jimbo to its $500 state by playing with the toy for what it was. It is an on-duty soldier, so he sent it to combat in any dangerous, adverse setting he could get away with.

He never meant to, let alone thought he would, affect its saleability that way. Before and after the shape-shifting stove tours, he sees no gore, only glory. Even after the sale, he breaks into another song about G.I. Jimbo’s heroics and invincibility.

Regardless, in a serendipitous sequence, he has taken a toll on the toy to the point where it wins over a man moved by antiwar art. For once, the image alone does make an adequate substitute for words before they come.