by Max Burbank

Semiotics is a difficult field, not least because I only sort of know what the word means. Well-intentioned Ivory Tower friends tell me it is “The Study of Signs”, but I think what they really mean is that I never finished college and they did. Actors speak of ‘subtext’; numerologists see the ‘hidden secrets’ contained in the words of sacred texts, even your most casual acquaintances may hint broadly at agendas lurking beneath the surface of seemingly unconnected events, if you get a few drinks in them.

That’s all very good, but I wish once and a while the so-called ‘learnified’ classes would shut the hell up and make room for a guy like me. I think it is high past time we reevaluate an unappreciated genre – cereal mascots. Long regarded as mere advertising shills, a closer examination reveals the kind of depths generally thought reserved for episodes of the original Star Trek, which I bet you didn’t know were actually morality plays about Vietnam and stuff. Except for “Spock’s Brain”, which just sucked.

Sonny the Cuckoo bird is “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.” Like Prometheus forever pushing his Sisyphean rock uphill, Sonny tries desperately to ignore the cravings that gnaw at him constantly. The tragedy lies in the inevitability of his backslide. In the thirty seconds usually allotted his commercials, Sonny endures the spiraling madness of withdrawal. How can he resist the chocolatey, crunchy goodness? Sadly, he cannot, and goes ‘cuckoo’. He becomes a creature of pure need, unwilling and unable to see the swath of destruction left in the wake of his violent, narcissistic drive to ‘fix’.

“Silly Rabbit! Trix are for Kids!” For nearly a generation, industrious, smiling, Teutonic youths have prevented the rabbit (rabbi) from consuming Trix, which here stands not only for all the foods Jews deny themselves, but also for the manifold benefits of society that anti-Semites would deny them. The industrious Rabbit constantly tries to disguise (assimilate) himself, but never fools the hyper-vigilant Hitler Youthesque children for long. But the story of the rabbit is our story, be we Jew, Seventh Day Adventist, bespectacled fat kid, or any other marginalized, vaguely distasteful group. We are all “rabbits” longing for “Trix”.