Somewhere within my family's vast collection of abysmal-quality VHS recordings from the late 1980s, there lurked a broadcast of the 1952 Disney short Two Weeks Vacation. As a child, I found myself drawn to this recording over and over, in part because the narrative cut-off point, where Goofy, in the midst of his quest for a fortnight's respite from the demands of the 9 to 5, settles down into a secluded motel bed, only to have the headlights of an approaching train blaring directly into his eyeballs, seemed such a baffling and arbitrary place to wrap things up. The appearance of the train, never explicitly explained with the dialogue, unnerved me, but what unnerved me still was the realisation that Goofy had never gotten anywhere with his travels. He had clearly taken the wrong turning somewhere or other, and having wandered too far down his precarious path, the film seemed content to leave him there. You see, the title of the short is actually a lie. The time frame is a little nebulous, but the bulk of the story appears to take place across a period of roughly 24 hours, not the promised two weeks. More crucially still, no vacation ever materialises. The effect of the short very much hinges on the discrepancy between what you're sold and what you're actually stuck with.
I later discovered that I had been deceived in quite another way. Unbeknownst to me as a child, the broadcast I had on tape had severely truncated the short, shaving off the entire last minute of the narrative (which I'm going to assume happened out of time constraints as opposed to anything within that final minute being considered objectionable). I never caught another TV broadcast of this short, so for years I was none the wiser. It wasn't until The Complete Goofy was released on DVD in the early 00s that I had the opportunity to see how it actually ended; it came as something of a revelation to discover that the scenario ran on for an additional 60 seconds, rounding things off on what felt like a more obvious punchline, but offering little additional closure in narrative terms. Still Goofy did not get his vacation. Not really. The title of the short remained as vexing as ever.
Directed by Jack Kinney, Two Weeks Vacation occurred toward the end of Goofy's initial run of theatrical outings, at the point where he had long abandoned his role as a comic foil to Mickey and/or Donald, and was living under the assumed identity of "George Geef", an everyman (everydog?) having to navigate his way through the trails and tribulation of mid-century suburbia (with those shorts touching on Geef's misadventures in parenting providing the basis for the character's redefining as a modern single father some four decades later, with the arrival of Goof Troop and its feature-length sequel A Goofy Movie). Two Weeks Vacation follows the familiar formula, the humor dependent on the contrast between the string of physical mishaps Goofy endures and the voice-over narration (here supplied by Alan Reed), which puts an incongruously buoyant spin on each and every calamity. It envisions Goofy (aka George, voice of Pinto Colvig) as an office worker, contributing fifty weeks per year to the capitalist grind in the beholden knowledge that he's been allocated two weeks in which to ditch the office walls and get back to nature. The central gag being that the vacation itself never gets underway, as Goofy gets bogged down with the insurmountable task of getting there; once he's traded in civilisation for the lure of the open road, he finds himself upon the fast-track to nowhere. There isn't a scrap of vacation to be had out there for the put upon everydog.
I'd dare suggest that Two Weeks Vacation would make ideal companion viewing to Steven Spielberg's Duel, in that it also deals with the perils of leaving the (relative) order of the urban world and venturing out into the vast unknown, which operates according to a vastly different set of rules. Naturally, the results are more comic in tone than in Spielberg's film; in place of a hulking great truck, Goofy finds a recurring nemesis in the form of a motorist with a camper trailer hitched to their vehicle, who seems entirely indifferent to everything going on around them and unleashes a deluge of unending inconsiderateness Goofy's way. The trailer becomes an omnipresent menace, its obstructive form effectively indistinct from the hands that keep it in motion (we see the driver, but never get as up close and personal with him as we do the great hindrance at his rear). Compared to Duel, where the truck, with its mostly invisible driver and their seeming lack of a motive for the all-out war they declare on Dennis Weaver's character, embodies the nature of the open landscape at its most frighteningly unknowable (at least to the city dweller who has wandered too far outside their comfort zone), the trailer's owners (it becomes apparent that, in addition the driver, there's actually a whole multitude of them hanging out within the trailer itself) potentially serve as a warped shadow to Goofy's own intentions. They are, presumably, fellow holiday-makers, their fault being that they are inclined to make themselves a little too at home in a land that they are merely passing through. It is unclear if their ill-mannered habits constitute an overspilling of the city's excesses, as the landscape is swallowed up by crass tourists for their own recreational use, or a reflection of the looser morals of the road. At any rate, we're given no reason to believe that the archetypes who regularly reside there are any more benevolent. The roadside is populated by types who range from the exploitative (the mechanic who fleeces Goofy for a new motor, before abandoning him to take a vacation of his own, although it is hard to say if this is done out of crookedness or incompetence) to the hostile (the eloquently-spoken drifter who curtly refuses Goofy's offer of a ride when his vehicle fails to meet his exacting standards) to the downright sinister (the unseen motel owner, who arguably makes the short as pertinent companion viewing to Psycho as it to Duel). Even nature itself appears to conspire against Goofy in one scene, a rain cloud parking itself directly above his vehicle so as to ensure that our hero can't enjoy even a little time basking in the sun while immobilised by a stop sign.
The interlude at the motel was always the segment of the short I found most fascinating, since it's here that Two Weeks Vacation veers closest toward the territory of horror and we get our clearest glimpse of the haunted underbelly of the ostensibly carefree road. As darkness sets in, Goofy faces a fresh challenge in locating a refuge for the night, and his status as an outside attempting to fit into an unwelcoming and treacherous domain becomes all the more pronounced. Goofy is now alone on an all-lit and abandoned road, where nary a sign of life is stirring, except for - at the most inopportune moment - his old nemesis the trailer owner. By sheer fluke, he ends up outside a motel, just slightly off the beaten track, with a vacant cabin, but soon discovers that it conceals an unpalatable secret...one that, in practice, amounts to little more than yet another mundane travel inconvenience, but that plays out as its own miniature nightmare. As Goofy attempts to settle, he discovers that the motel is situated right beside a railroad track - apparently at a turning, so that the train initially appears to be headed directly for him, before swerving and causing the cabin to vibrate so violently that Goofy is given no choice but to bail out. (Here, a small plot hole - Goofy had run out of gas before arriving at the motel, so it's never explained how he manages to get out.) There is something unsettling about this whole set-up - the inspired sight gag in which the cabin's picturesque front is revealed to be a fake, obscuring the more decrepit building right behind it, works on two levels, comically puncturing through the assumption of the roadside venue as a place of hospitality for the traveller, and having the distinct aura of a trap, of something more sinister stirring behind the romance. When Goofy arrives at the motel, nobody answers the door, with Goofy finding his own way into the cabin; the motel seems utterly deserted, the powers that operate it non-existent. The looming train that immediately shatters Goofy's prospects of a peaceful night's sleep is a nocturnal force that reveals itself only when the world is at its darkest and Goofy at his most isolated and vulnerable. Like the truck from Duel it is a raging beast stalking across its natural habitat, as seemingly devoid of human (or anthropomorphic canine) agency. Itself a mode of transport, the train represents an ostensible connection between two ports of call, yet once we've slipped into that ominous void in between there is an overwhelming sense of detachment from wherever we came from and wherever we thought we were going (at this point, Goofy's intended destination barely seems to matter any more, as his journey devolves into a case of navigating from one horror to the next). The train, much like everything else out here, is another force chugging aggressively onward, relentless in its opposition to us ever finding our way back out from the void.
As to whether Goofy ever finds his way back out from the void, I would say that he only marginally succeeds. Two Weeks Vacation does not resolve with the ending we'd be primed to expect, ie: a cyclic one, in which Goofy makes it back to the office with a newfound appreciation for the order and formality of the fifty working weeks ahead. Instead, much like Weaver's character from Duel, Goofy is left stranded in the hostile beyond, the restoration of the familiar never coming, although perhaps by the end he has (somewhat) made his peace with this. Following his stopover at the motel, Goofy gets in one last showdown with the trailer; its occupants are indulging in some kind of wild party, and nearly get Goofy killed in a manner reminiscent of one of the truck driver's tactics in Duel. When Goofy manages to overtake the trailer, he discovers that the driver has absconded (although how is not exactly clear, given that he was glimpsed in a preceding overhead shot), allowing the trailer to completely subsume his identity. Through another sheer accident, Goofy ends up taking a hold of the absent driver's wheel, giving him the chance to grapple physically with the omnipresent and exert some degree of personal control over the all-out chaos around him - at which point the law, whose presence seems immediately out of place in this domain, chooses to rear its head. For Goofy, this represents a victory of sorts - up until now, a lawlessness has pervaded the open road, and just to reconnect with law and order comes as a relief, even if he finds himself on the wrong side of it. Last seen in a police cell, Goofy becomes boxed in once more, and he accepts this as as close as he's ever going to get to a proper vacation. Enclosure is equated with security, and maybe that's substitute enough for the office building from whence we strayed. The message that the real refuge is to be found in containment is present after all.
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