Worker and Parasite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Worker and Parasite title card from 1959.

Worker and Parasite (Рабочий И Паразит) was a fictional cartoon in The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled." When the popular cartoon Itchy and Scratchy, featuring a very violent cat and mouse, leaves the Krusty the Clown Show for Krusty's new competitor, Gabbo, "Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite," was a cheap replacement. According to the title screen, it was made in 1959, while the Khrushchev regime was in power in the USSR. Simpsons creator Matt Groening maintains that their appearance on the show is one of the best parts of the series.

The cartoon opened with some Cyrillic-looking credits, which account for nothing in real cyrillic. The cartoon itself was quite unintelligible, featuring a crudely drawn cat and mouse chattering incoherently and bouncing around to the tune of random, depressing background music. Worker and Parasite are first seen in a factory (where a wrench and sickle are visible as well); they then move in front of a line of identical, miserable-looking peasants who are lining up for supplies of some sort, and then within a nest of squiggly lines. The cartoon concludes with the screen reading "ENDUT! HOCH HECH!" Afterwards, Krusty's on-air response (before a vacant studio) was shocked silence, a limp cigarette hanging from his mouth, then promptly, "What the hell was that?!"

Coincidentally, the idea bears some similarity to the rather unusual set of Tom and Jerry cartoons (on which Itchy and Scratchy is based) produced in Prague by animator Gene Deitch.

Worker and Parasite has not appeared on the show since, but they have made a few appearances in Simpsons comic books, this time speaking somewhat intelligible English.

[edit] Other references

Worker and Parasite in front of the miserable peasants

The title of the cartoon Worker and Parasite is a reference to social parasitism, which was a crime in the Soviet Union.

There has been some speculation as to what "Endut! Hoch Hech!" means. The Season 4 DVD audio commentary for the episode however claims that writer John Swartzwelder had no intended meaning for the phrase in question.