Everybody's Doing It

In a whimsical yet incisive commentary on the early 20th-century's burgeoning obsession with physical perfection and ephemeral fads, Bud Fisher's "Everybody's Doing It" unveils the peculiar enterprise of Mutt and Jeff. These entrepreneurial figures operate a Jazz-Shimmy academy, ostensibly a sanctuary for the corpulent seeking a svelter silhouette through the vigorous, syncopated rhythms of the era. The narrative crescendo arrives with one particularly portly patron, whose zealous dedication to the shimmy results in a breathtaking, almost surreal metamorphosis, shrinking him from his considerable girth to the diminutive stature of a mere child. It's a comedic fable exploring the extreme, often absurd, lengths to which individuals will go in pursuit of societal ideals, rendered with a visual wit characteristic of early cinematic slapstick.