Spring Break Post – A Goofy Movie
A Goofy Movie is a feauture length animated-film released by Disney in 1995. It follows the titular character, Goofy, and his son Max as they experience difficulties connecting when Max enters his teenage years. The film is an adaptation of Disney’s tevelsion series Goof Troop, but the characters are now slightly older.
A Goofy Movie follows Goofy’s son, Max, a teenager in his rebellious stage. Max gets in trouble at school for impersonating “Powerline”, a rockstar, to impress a girl named Roxanne. The principal calls home to report Max’s behavior, and Goofy decides to take Max on a father-son fishing trip to repair their relationship and keep Max from going down the wrong path. But the trip only makes things worse, they constantly fight and bicker, sometimes to the point where they aren’t even on speaking terms. After a difficult couple days, the two manage to find common ground and rekindle their relationship. They manage to meet Powerline on-stage at a concert, and Max proudly introduces his father to Roxanne.
The movie is about the differences that many parents and children face as they grow up. Max is constantly embarrassed and angered by Goofy, who usually has good intentions, but nevertheless the two usually find nothing but disagreement with one another. The movie is an interesting look into Goofy’s personality, who we usually seen as a sort of one dimensional character. In this movie, Goofy experiences very human-like and understandable emotions – he isn’t just a silly-voiced klutz who gets into outrageous situations, but he’s also a genuine character we can relate to. Many viewers may find themselves surprisingly attached to Goofy, and may feel very sympathetic to him when him and Max fight, because Goofy always has good intentions, but still finds his relationship with his son deteriorating unintentionally.
This film has one of Disney’s trademark messages – that despite the fact that parents and children may fight as they get older, they still have a fundamental bond that cannot be broken, no matter how different they become. The ending is definetly a pure, clean, happy Disney ending. Everything in the plot is completely resolved: Goofy and Max are close again, Max gets the girl, and Max gets to meet Powerline onstage. I thought this was an excellent examples of a good family-friendly Disney movie, and it remains funny despite the occasional heavy moments that we find surprisingly effective and appropriate.
Post #6 – Calvin and Hobbes
I know we aren’t supposed to do blogs where we just blindly appreciate cartoons without any commentary, but I’m going to have to let my emotions take the best of me just this once. Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite comic strip of all time. I forced my parents to buy me all the books when I was a kid, and I read them religiously. I usually didn’t even understand what I was reading, and I certainly missed the meaning and symbolic message, but I read it with enthusiasm anyway. As I got older, I began to realize how great of a strip it really is, when I understood the witty commentaries and subtle jokes that cartoonist Bill Watterson makes.
Calvin, a six year-old troublemaker and his stuffed tiger Hobbes are the main characters of the strip. Usually, the pair find themselves getting into all kinds of strange and interesting shenanigans, but the strip serves a greater function than just displaying his childish antics. Watterson finds the opportunity to make witty observations with the oddities of modern life in the minutia of Calvin’s. He has a lot of different opinions about many different things, but some common themes include commercialization, sensational journalism, public opinion polls, the enivornnment, and the effect of watching too much television. My personal favorite, however, is Watterson’s critique of the art world.
Calvin frequently builds snowmen in his yard during the wintertime – not to create a figure for fun or out of boredom, like most kids, but to express himself artistically. Calvin creates increasingly ridiculous displays of ‘snow art’, ranging from extremely violent displays, to normal snowmen, all with pretentious grandiose meanings. Watterson is poking fun at what he considers to be the extremely subjective and sometimes loopy values of ‘avante-garde’ art – that good art is something that isn’t something meant to be appreciated by the masses, and that the message means everything. All of these really tickle my funnybone.
Calvin and Hobbes was a very successful and funny strip. I used to just laugh at the silly pictures when I was a kid, but I actually enjoy it more now that I’m an adult. Watterson did a excellant job in intertwining silly humor with interesting intellectual commentaries, and more than ever, I consider this to be my favorite comic strip of all time. It’s too bad Bill Watterson retired.
Post #5 – Davey and Goliath
(video: ”The Kite”)
This week, I wanted to look at the Davey and Goliath animations of the 1960s and 70s. The show followed a boy named Davey and his dog Goliath through a series of wacky misadventures. Usually, at the end of the day, the two would escape unharmed, but would learn a lesson or two. Davey and Goliath was created by the Lutheran Church, and it did promote spiritual life, but it wasn’t particularly preachy or alienating, and was very successful.
Davey and Goliath was created by the Lutheran Church in 1958. The Church wanted to a invest $1,000,000 to promote the Church’s message through children’s programming, and contacted Art Clokey (of Gumby fame) to create a stop-motion animation series. The first episode, “Lost in a Cave”, was completed in 1960, and in all, about 65 full length episodes aired between 1960 and 1975. The episodes were given to most television stations for free, and were translated into several different languages.
Davey and Goliath was created to be an entertaining way for children to learn about morality and their relationship with God. Episodes typically dealt with themes of individual morality, such as the conscience, knowing right and wrong, tolerance, accepting authority, speaking out for others, forgiveness, relationship with God, amongst others. Davey and Goliath was definetly progressive-minded – they were teaching racial tolerance early in the Civil Rights movement with the friendship between Davey and his African-American companion Nathaniel.
The show was very successful because it wasn’t particularly forceful or overly preaching. Church attendance isn’t really mandatory, the show doesn’t try to convince people to attend, but instead the individual’s relationship with God is emphasized. The idea was that the show would be an introduction to a spiritual life to many people and children, and that it was more important to get people thinking in more spiritual terms than it was to alienate people by criticizing them. God is also portrayed as a very kind and forgiving figure, and very welcoming to anyone.
Post #4 – Captain Planet and…..Adolf Hitler?
This week’s entry is about a Youtube video I discovered from a 1995 Captain Planet episode. This one is guarenteed to stand out and raise some eyebrows because it features one of the most infamous and hated men through-out all history, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. It warns against the dangers of hatred, as well as the dangers of nuclear warfare. The video embedded above is just the segments with Hitler from the episode “A Good Bomb is Hard to Find”, but if this interests you, the entire episode can be seen on Youtube here.
After travelling back in time to 1945, Dr. Blight is demonstrating her atomic bomb to a group of generals in what appears to be a medieval castle, including a possible Josef Stalin look-alike, and a blatant Hitler caricature. “Hitler” is impressed by a demonstration of the bomb and is to about purchase it, but the Planeteers emerge to intervene. Hitler pulls a pistol on everyone, and tries to steal the bomb from Dr. Blight (who ironically expresses regret that she trusted him). She trips, and accidentally sets off the timer for the bomb. The Planeteers call Captain Planet to intervene, who becomes temporarily paralyzed by the hate and prejudice radiating from “Hitler”. He manages to regain control of himself, and sends the bomb far out into outer space (and cracks one of his signature one-liners/groaners : “I’ve heard of neutron bombs, atomic bombs, even smart bombs, but there’s no such thing as a good bomb!”). Captain Planet returns to see the Americans occupying the castle, and at the end of the clip the gang returns to the present. It’s unclear what happens to Hitler.
One of the most striking things about this clip is obvious: it features Hitler. Well, it isn’t exactly like Hitler – he’s missing the distinctive Charlie Chaplin mustache and he’s never mentioned by name, but for our intents and purposes he’s similar enough to be called Hitler. A exact depiction of Hitler would be too upsetting to too many people, would distract us from the episode’s message, and might even be illegal in some countries. But beyond that, it’s a very unusual episode because it treats prejudice and hate as a pollution of it’s own. Captain Planet‘s episodes generally revolve around environmental topics, like the preservation of the ozone layer, of the importance of recycling. It’s interesting to note that Captain Planet feels physical pain while in the fuhrer’s presence. Hitler’s hate is so strong it is a tangible, destructive threat to Captain Planet. This isn’t the only Captain Planet episode to tackle the ‘pollution’ of hate, but it is certainly the boldest statement about it.
This episode is also very critical of nuclear warfare. After the initial bomb test, a German scientist expresses his concern about that the toxic radiation that will poison the villagers. ”Think of it as the weapon that keeps on killing”, MAL responds. In many ways nuclear weapons are ‘the weapon that keeps on killing’, the long-term effects are usually at least as deadly as the initial 24 hours of a blast, as we observed during the United State’s 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the bombs were only a fraction as strong as the ones produced later during the Cold War. In my personal opinion, the most likely doomsday scenario for mankind would be a nuclear war between two superpowers. Captain Planet definitely nailed this message right on the head.
On a completely different note, a couple things about this episode really bothered me that I feel obligated to criticize. First: this episode also gets on my nerves because the Americans are incorrectly seen invading Hitler’s castle, instead of the Soviets. I also found the fact that Hitler is seen ruling from a castle to be fairly annoying. In the writer’s defense, setting the episode in Hitler’s bunker wouldn’t be as versatile and would probably be a bit too depressing, but using a medieval castle instead is a little too silly.
Also, why did Captain Planet throw the bomb into outer space without any second-thought or remorse? That may have been the most simple and obvious solution at the time, but he expresses absolutely no remorse that his solution to preventing the radioactive fallout from falling on Earth was to instead chuck it off into space for someone else, somewhere else to eventually worry about. It seems to completely contradict everything the show stands for. There could be a whole Captain Planet episode in the future devoted to convince people against doing what Captain Planet did.
It may surprise many people that one of the most hated men history is the subject of a Captain Planet cartoon. Indeed, Hitler’s name incites a lot of strong emotions from a lot of people, and seeing him in a childrens show obviously appears to be extremely controversial and unlikely. The writers took a massive gamble, but this episode turned out to be a very tasteful and bold critique against the dangers of excessive prejudice and nuclear warfare.
Post #3 – The Great Gazoo
(video: a segment from “The Great Gazoo” -the full video is non-embeddable on youtube)
This week, I thought it would be interesting to look at a controversial character from The Flintstones¸ an alien from the planet Zetox named ‘The Great Gazoo’. Gazoo was a little green alien who only Fred and Barney could see, who would grant them wishes. He became a permanent addition to the series, and shortly afterwards, the original series was cancelled. Gazoo’s addition is widely considered to indicate the decline of The Flintstones¸the moment when it ‘jumped the shark’.
On October 25, 1965, Gazoo made his first appearance, halfway into the sixth season of the original series. Fred and Barney first discover Gazoo at his crashed spaceship. Gazoo has been kicked out of his home planet, Zetox, for creating a doomsday machine, and his punishment is to serve Fred and Barney. Gazoo is a quasi-magical alien, with the ability to grant any wish that Fred and Barney can think of, but he can’t be seen by anyone else, except for children and animals. Fred and Barney decide to take advantage of their new abilities to treat their wives to a fancy dinner at the ‘Chateau Rockinbleu’, a high-end French restaurant. Unfortunately, they spend all of their money before the $225 bill comes, and when they need more, Gazoo is taking a nap and doesn’t come when they summon him, forcing them to wash dishes to pay off the debt.
Gazoo became a permanent addition to this series after this episode. His appearance is widely considered to be the time when the series ‘jumped the shark’. Indeed, a futuristic alien has little to add to the series – the appeal of The Flinstones comes from the fact that it is a modern day society in a prehistoric world. It’s funny to see the people running around on a car made of rock, or see Fred use a dinosaur as an industrial crane, and Gazoo didn’t really build upon or fit into this successful dynamic. More often than not, he served as a crutch for the writers to fall back on in lieu of more relevant and clever jokes.
Characters like Gazoo can stand as an important lesson to writers in the entertainment business. It is important to remember the basic, fundamental aspects of the show, and if you start to get desperate and reach out into creating ridiculous and unlikely plots, than you have a pretty good sign that things may be going downhill. Sometimes, if you feel like you’ve exhausted all possible plot lines, it may be better to end things earlier on a high note, than to end things on a sour note.
Post #2 – Schoolhouse Rock!
Several generations of school-aged children have seen a Schoolhouse Rock! short at one time or another. The first Schoolhouse Rock! shorts were created back in 1973, but I had seen many of the original shows in elementary school as part of my curriculum even in the mid to late 90s. These cartoons are a fun and informative look into many different subjects, and due to their simplicity, they are useful to everyone, from elementary students to a college professor who needs a quick brush-up.
The idea for Schoolhouse Rock! originally came from a man named David McCall who worked in advertising. He noticed that his children struggled to memorize mathematical tables, but they could easily memorize song lyrics. Putting two and two together, he decided to write catchy tunes about math to make it more fun and easier to remember. He recruited some co-workers and some musicians to create “Three is a Magic Number”. One of McCall’s coworkers remarked that the songs would probably be well-suited for animation, and the team brought their idea before Micheal Eisner (then the ABC’s Vice-President of children’s programming). Eisner was impressed, and allowed the Schoolhouse Rock! shorts to be aired during ABC’s Saturday morning cartoons.
Over 65 episodes of Schoolhouse Rock! have been produced since 1973. The earlier episodes covered topics such as multiplications tables, grammar, science, and American politics/history. In the mid-1980s, there were episodes that covered the new invention of personal computers. In the 1990s, the team created episodes about money, and most recently, in 2009 they created 12 shorts about the environment.
Let’s look at the embedded video above for an example. This clip is from a 1977 Schoolhouse Rock! short that deals with using pronouns, titled “Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla”. The lyrics of the song deal with the redundancy of repeating Rufus’s unusually long and tongue-twisting name, and instead using a pronoun to save time. Throughout the video, more people and animals are introduced, including the narrator, in a similar fashion. The music structure of the song is extremely catchy, and so are the lyrics. As usual, this Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon is effective because it is a fun and memorable way to learn about something many people may have trouble understanding, in this case, pronouns.
Schoolhouse Rock! was significant because it brought some fun into learning new and sometimes intimidating things. It may be very difficult for a youngster to try to understand completely foreign concepts such as interjections, or the role of the judicial branch, or why it matters. But thanks to Schoolhouse Rock!, these children are able to understand these ideas in a more engaging format. It’s likely that many children learned more about some things from Schoolhouse Rock! than they did when they were presented in school.
We remember Schoolhouse Rock! with fondness because it was a fun introduction to something we didn’t know. Instead of turning to Wikipedia to try to understand how laws are passed, we can instead watch “How a Bill Becomes the Law” and find a fun, easier to understand run-down of the basics. We can search Schoolhouse Rock!’s catalog and learn a lot of new things. It may be true that I have a limited understanding of how the electoral college works, amongst other things, but luckily Schoolhouse Rock! has a quick, fun, and easy to understand introduction to many of these poorly understood topics.
Post #1 – Plane Crazy
For my first blog post, I thought it seemed logical to start at the beginning (or close to the beginning) and look at Disney’s Plane Crazy, Mickey Mouse’s 1928 debut short. Many people assume that Steamboat Willie was Mickey Mouse’s first cartoon, but Plane Crazy was actually created six months earlier. Although Disney didn’t achieve the same level of overwhelming success with Plane Crazy that they found in later cartoons, it’s interesting to look back at this debut short to see how Mickey Mouse evolved to become one of the most recognizable figures in the world.
At the start of the cartoon, we see Mickey Mouse admiring a picture of “Lindy”, Charles Lindbergh, the famous pilot who flew from New York to Paris a year earlier in 1927. He attempts to fly a self-designed plane, which crashes shortly after takeoff, to his disappointment. Unfazed, Mickey begins to modify a Model T-esque car, when Minnie Mouse enters and contributes the tail feathers of a massive turkey to use as a tail rudder for the plane. Mickey and Minnie manage to get the plane flying, but Mickey falls off, leaving Minnie alone to ride in the plane precariously, which continuously lunges at Mickey in increasingly ridiculous ways. Mickey finally regains control of the aircraft, and fails to solicit a kiss from Minnie as a reward. He decides fly the plane recklessly to shake her up, and then he kisses her forcefully. Minnie slaps him and jumps out of the aircraft, using her underpants as a parachute. Mickey steps out of the aircraft to go after her, and after looking down, he falls down into a tree and gets injured.
Plane Crazy did not initially have a soundtrack, which may have contributed to its lack of success in comparison to Steamboat Willie, as it was harder for it to really stand out of the pack and find an audience. Mickey is also less stylized in his first cartoon; he is much less detailed and much thinner than he is in Steamboat Willie. In fact, at this point, Mickey Mouse wasn’t even called Mickey Mouse, but instead ‘Mortimer Mouse’. Apparently, at the insistence of Disney’s wife, the name was changed to ‘Mickey’.
Even though Mickey Mouse’s true debut may not have been as well remembered as his later cartoons, Plane Crazy remains an interesting look into what was then a unknown and undeveloped character. It’s remarkable to see how much different and more attractive Steamboat Willie looks, not to mention how well the sound effects were incorporated, even though it was produced only six months later. It really speaks to the work ethic and level of innovation these animators had, that they were able to improve their cartoons so rapidly in such a brief period of time. It was very interesting for me to view these earlier Mickey Mouse shorts, not just because I hadn’t seen them, but because it helped show me how much animation has evolved since way back in 1928.
leave a comment