Le Cochon Danseur (The Dancing Pig)

Description

Le Cochon Danseur (in English, The Dancing Pig) is a 1907 play from Vaudeville, a French theatrical company.

In this mute, 2 minute, black and white clip is a young woman in traditional early 20th century attire. She sits down at a table to enjoy a picnic, as she opens her basket, a large pig dressed like a gentleman walks over and rudely interrupts her from eating, begging for food. Attempting to get food from the girl, she pushes him away. Again, the pig walks up to her, this time proposing engagement in order to persuade her, but she refuses and throws her handkerchief at his head. The pig is relentless, and tries to persuade her again, but fails only getting a taste obtained from his hoof, licking it off in frustration. The pig loses his sanity and grabs the girl from behind, but only to get his clothes torn off in humiliation, covering up his crotch. The pig finally gives up.

Shortly, the two make up and decide to dance together holding canes with bows tied to them, they do this through a majority of the play.

The most noticed part of the play is the last 20 seconds, showing the pig flailing his tongue and laughing showing his sharp, scary teeth. Most people thought this was rather disturbing and focused mainly on this part because of it. Other then that, the rest of the clip is the pig winking and boggling his eyes in strange ways.

Spread

The play ended up a hilarious success in France and throughout the years slowly, but surely spread worldwide as a funny film for all ages thanks to the birth of television. The first meme of the 20th century.

In the 21st century with the internet, this eventually brought it to be a highly popular animated GIF appearing frequently over forum discussions around 2007, YouTube, and other web applications.

According to IMBd, the film is actually 4 minutes long when the released version is only 2 minutes long, this lead people into conspiracy. The rumors of the film being cut because of something not to be shown to anybody else pondered the web as something with morbid reasoning, like Creepypasta. Till this day, the GIF remains a shared taste of as some call it “nightmare material”.