The Giant’s a Philosopher: Dadaist Style in The Stinky Cheese Man

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith, could be described as an utter failure of a fairy tale book. Alternatively, it could also be described as a rip-roaring triumph of absolute nonsense. The union of both of these observable truths make the book, and Smith’s illustrations, reminiscent of the early 20th century philosophical and artistic movement, Dadaism. While it is recontextualised to engage with fairy tales rather than the specific cultural and artistic questions Dada was created to ask, the style is nevertheless easily identified in The Stinky Cheese Man.

            In particular, the Giant Story and its corresponding illustration exemplify the Dada disregard for sense and order. In this two page illustration, the Giant Tale is told in collage, a common Dadaist medium. The line between what is text and what is illustration is blurred in this spread, as the ‘tale,’ which is really just decontextualised phrases slapped together, is created in strips of paper that are pasted into the collage. The primary image of the collage is located recto and is comprised of a nonsense man with mismatched body parts on a background of out-of-context fairy tale images and signs. This lack of regard for the expected order of things exemplifies the Dada style, as does the fact the man at the center of the image is not represented in the ‘tale’ verso at all. In his Dada Manifesto, Tristan Tzara writes: “To impose your ABC is a natural thing— hence deplorable” (Tzara 1). The manifesto itself is something of a nonsense work, but the clear idea that imposing even basic language or signs onto art is deplorable is exemplified in this illustration.

            The collage illustration’s Dada style also makes it difficult to describe as a cohesive image at all. The central figure can be seen, but not identified, with its Pinocchio nose, three arms, and torso ending in smoke and a magic lamp, there is nothing significant enough to correctly identify it as a recognizable character. Like most collage art, it lacks depth, but it also lacks context wherein depth could even be perceived. There is no ‘scene’ set, but rather a chaotic backdrop of recognizable images that are rendered meaningless in their proximity to one another A golden egg, a gingerbread man, a slipper, a blackbird baked into a pie, seven dwarfs, a rose, a bespectacled mouse with an amputated tail, a golden harp, a cat in boots, three chairs of increasing size, and most interestingly, a lithograph of Aesop can all be noted. This hodgepodge of familiar things decontextualised and rendered meaningless aligns with the aim of Dadaism to reject the idea that the world has a hierarchy of sense.

The Giant Story uses Dada (non)sensibility effectively in its art, and its use not only embraces nonsense (as does most of the book), but explicitly rejects that there is sense at all. The art is Dada in that “the most acceptable system is on principle to have none.” (Tzara 3).

Works Cited

Smith, Lane. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. Written by Jon Scieszka. Viking 1992.

Tzara, Tristan. “Dada Manifesto” Dada 3. December 1918. https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Tzara_Dada-Manifesto_1918.pdf

Stats: CIP Fall 2022, Laramie Hearn. Installment #1: Artistry. 505 words.