The content of the sketch is a television interview with a scientist who is able to enlarge his own body parts using breathing techniques.
[4] As is usual in Loriot's animated films, Häubling's and Gilling's mouth movements are synchronized with their spoken words.
In contrast to the cartoon, the first names Gillings (Hartmut) and Häubls (Wilhelm) as well as the University of Tübingen as the seat of the Chair of Pneumatic Plastology are also mentioned here.
[11] The DVD collection The Complete Television Edition from 2007 also contains this version of the cartoon as part of Loriot's Clean Screen.
While he wore a dotted tie on the MAZ tape from Radio Bremen, it was striped in a film from Loriot's archive.
in response to Häubl's simple statement that pneumatic plastology is based on new findings in the psychosomatic field also illustrates Gilling's only very superficial approach to the subject of the interview from the point of view of Germanist Uwe Ehlert, who dealt with the representation of misunderstandings in Loriot's work in his dissertation.
According to Uwe Ehlert, Häubl's assertion that Gilling could apply his method himself without prior knowledge showed his overestimation of his own abilities as a scientist.
[18] In addition, Uwe Ehlert points out a logical error in Häubl's argument, because research "in the service of humanity" also presupposes that the results are useful.
[19] In addition to parodying television and science, faulty communication plays such a central role in the studio interview that the German scholar Felix Christian Reuter describes the cartoon in his dissertation on Loriot's television sketches as "a veritable treasure trove of communication errors".
This is the first time the sketch is interrupted in the TV version, which resolves the disruption and the two can continue their conversation undisturbed in the next part.
There are some similarities in the phrases in their conversation that suggest a supposed response to the other ("Capricorn and fish go quite well / I used to have two long-haired dachshunds, that didn't work at all").
[23] Felix Christian Reuter sees Gilling's questions about various people from his circle of acquaintances as a parody of the rhetorical trick of name-dropping, in which the speaker tries to enhance his own status by mentioning prominent names.
Gilling's subsequent question as to whether he could do this with any part of his body echoes the clichéd desire of many men for a larger penis.
He hosted the television series Cartoon, according to the subtitle "[e]in Streifzug quer durch den gezeichneten Humor".
In the beginning, the series was primarily conceived as a documentary program to present humorous drawings and cartoonists from Germany and abroad.
In the course of his television career, the cartoons were increasingly replaced by real film sketches and were later limited to the depiction of animals or abstract or absurd situations such as the "studio interview".
The subdivision of the film in the television episode was an innovation which, from Stefan Neumann's point of view, enabled Loriot to avoid length and also to make the passing of time, which is important for the sketch, clear.
In addition to the studio interview, most of the other contributions, including the well-known sketch The Lottery Winner, also dealt with television.
Like Häubl's ability to enlarge his body parts using only breathing techniques, these sketches were also characterized by the depiction of the impossible.
From Felix Christian Reuter's point of view, Loriot used these depictions to express his criticism of the belief in progress and his doubts about the feasibility of all things in the field of science and technology.
[30] Stefan Neumann also sees a connection between this type of sketch and the blind faith in science that prevailed at the time of their first broadcast and has persisted to this day.
This theme is a central motif in Loriot's work and characterizes not only his portrayals of public television appearances, but also those of private discussions, especially between men and women.
Everything that I find funny arises from crumbled communication, from talking past each other, from the problems of expressing oneself, but also from understanding what is being said.
"[34] Uwe Ehlert used the "almost inexhaustible pool" of examples of problematic communication in his dissertation on the "Representation of misunderstandings in Loriot's work.