Courage the Cowardly Dog‘s world is not too different from our own. The beagle lives with his two elderly owners on a midwestern farm. Add a phantom pharaoh, a talking mound of foot fungus, a fetus-like bugle monster, and many more gallons of nightmare fuel, and Courage isn’t exactly a Grant Wood painting (unless he collaborated with Salvador Dali on American Gothic Horror). Still, the main ingredient of this spoiled slice of Americana is Courage and his family’s farmhouse. Consisting of “built it myself” craftsmanship and an adjacent windmill, the house invokes rural architecture from a bygone era, but did a specific house serve as inspiration?
The Chicken from Outer Space
There would be no Courage the Cowardly Dog without The Chicken from Outer Space. This short film aired on Cartoon Network in 1996 and introduced the characters and setting that would form Courage three years later. In creating the characters, John R. Dilworth drew upon many real sources, including his cat for Courage and a female Scottish acquaintance for Courage’s owner, Muriel.
In creating the setting, Dilworth based much of it on a supernatural experience he had at a girlfriend’s family farm.
“An intense ball of light suddenly appeared, and I was startled by the feeling it was staring at us.”
Although several bizarre true stories and urban legends are said to have inspired the Courage farmhouse, only one has been confirmed by Dilworth himself. “I was traveling out west visiting a farm the family of my girlfriend lived and worked on,” begins the tale he told to Tiger Media Network.
“One late afternoon, we were sitting on the porch having a refreshment. The wheat was rippling from the hot wind. It was like being on the sea. Fireflies turned the grass festive. Admiring the monstrous clouds that dominate the sky out there, an intense ball of light suddenly appeared and I was startled by the feeling it was staring at us. And as suddenly, it disappeared. I asked my hostess, ‘What was that?!’ She replied grinning, ‘Who knows!’ I started writing the story of the alien chicken the next day.”
Dilworth is an eccentric artist, so he may have taken creative liberties with that story. Regardless, he was certainly influenced by midwestern American mythology. “I just felt compelled somehow to explore the American heartland myth of the farm,” he told RebelTaxi, “and it was basically driven by aliens and UFOs and things like that.” His field assistant on this surreal expedition was a Great Depression-era photojournalist.
Dorothea Lange Dust Bowl photos
“I love the icon of the opening of The Chicken from Outer Space,” Dilworth said during a commentary. “That little farmhouse in the field that’s barren, and great photographs from the Dust Bowl…Dorothea Lange is her name…but at the time, I was looking at these photos taken from this great privation…and I thought how wonderful to marry this science fiction/horror [with it].” Lange’s depictions of the Great Depression, especially Migrant Mother, are among the most famous photos in American history. Dust Bowl farm, seen above, was taken near Dalhart, Texas, in 1938.
Like most artistic renderings, the Courage the Cowardly Dog house is a blend of real-life influences, the most notable of which are Dilworth’s former girlfriend’s family farm and the rural desolation captured by Dorothea Lange.