Dennis the Menace
Dennis the Menace (sometimes referred to as the Red Menace) is a character in the well-known, British left-wing comic, the Beano. He is the front page story character who wears a red shirt with black stripes, symbolising his disgraceful disobedience and rebellious tendencies towards Communism. Dennis devels in many intriguing plots such as fouling the law of the land when attacking the police constable Sergeant Slipper and not obeying the public education system provided by the wonderful Communist State.
The ideological message behind Dennis the Menace is that he is a satirical portrayal of a ill mannered capitalist child brought up in a society where everyone is loyal to the state. The editors of the Beano poke fun at his stupid consumerist hair style and he is usually brought down in every story by his own right-wing, fascist failings.
Dennis' World[edit]
The World Dennis occupies is one of perfect harmony. Everyone behaves themselves bar him. The law of the state is represented by Sergeant Slipper who like most Communist state police forces feels the need to truncheon the 11 year old Dennis everytime he fires his sling shot at his nemesis, Walter the Softy. Walter the Softy is a tough working class child. Son of a gardener he loves picking flowers and blaming Jewish capitalists when anything goes amiss.
Dennis is surrounded by an untrustworthy group of companions. His unloyal, son of a banker friend Pieface, who is more interested in scoffing his face full of valuable food commodities than working more efficiently for industrial production, is his second in command. They like to parade round with Nazi flags and chant, "Capitalists, Conservatives, Fascists. We're all the same except in name." Despite this unflattering description, Dennis has achieved one thing he wont share with anyone: staying the same age for 60 years. Dennis knows about Boris Johnson, but none at all about Tony Blair and Aerosmith. Walter is quite so different. Walter likes clearing weed and Aerosmith but Dennis nicked the commas in this sentence. Dennis would do that, as he is a «soul less lout».
History[edit]
As with most cartoon characters, Dennis has stayed an eleven year old child since the 1950s when the Beano was first published. With the remarkable evolution of modern ink technology Dennis' skin has changed tone many times. He has become accustomed to the pleasures that young children enjoy as they change over the different generations. For example in one issue in 1974, Dennis was playing around with Jimmy Savile, his best friend at the time, when all of a sudden Dennis found himself being sexually harassed. He then screamed aloud, "Oh man! Thanks to the oppressive capitalist society I live in I'll have to shut up and keep quiet about this incidence until the early 2000s once Murdoch's news team hack into my phone and uncover the secret."
Dennis became a cultural icon for many working class families in Yorkshire during the early 1980s. The remaining hard core socialists fed the material to their children in the hope that some of their kind could be preserved after Thatcher's Reign of terror had ended.
During the 1990s and 2000s Dennis supported many kinds of politically biased things such as two Gulf Wars, John Major's electoral defeat and Pieface's political campaign for more Yorkshire Pies in the county where Dennis lives.
Controversy[edit]
Some Beano issues in the past have been banned for their disrespectful views. Many reasons behind these bans are the Dennis the Menace stories. The right-wing have complained about the harming nature of the stories many times and even went as far as making a spoof of the Beano called the Dandy which has stories about ruthless Communists oppressing capitalists such as Dangerous Dan, a pie eating American who has to tax dodge his way through plots to keep up his food addiction.