Comments on: When animation trash gets called art

By: Thomas TimberWolf

Thomas TimberWolf — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:24:34 +0000

[...] the same time that you could see some truly crappy cartoons on TV — not that things have improved nowadays — you could also see some wonderful and [...]

By: Marilyn Terrell

Marilyn Terrell — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:55:57 +0000

I’m glad you like Animaniacs too!

I’ll have to check out “The Groucho Letters”– watching their movies has become a family holiday tradition in our house. They just get better the more you watch them.

By: Raoul

Raoul — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:28:31 +0000

How could I forget about the Animaniacs! I loved that show as well, and thought the writing and characters were very good. In spite of the fact that Dot was a girl, I thought the three animaniacs were modeled nicely on the Marx brothers, whose humor is still funny after all these years. Incidentally, I’m reading “The Groucho Letters” now, and they’re hilarious. (I’ve also amended the list of my favorite cartoons to include them.)

By: Marilyn Terrell

Marilyn Terrell — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:43:34 +0000

I also despise Ren and Stimpy. Ugly, crude, not funny. I never let my kids watch it. I like your list of favorites, but I’d also vote for the brilliant “Animaniacs”: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105941/

It had clever writing, a marvelous sense of the absurd, funny songs, and well-drawn, unforgettable characters. There was Katie Kaboom, a teenager with an unpredictable temper; Pinky and the Brain, the two lab mice who try to take over the world; Buttons the unlucky watchdog that babysits the impossible toddler Mindy, who insists on calling her busy working mother “Lady.” Chicken Boo, who wants to be accepted as a human, the irascible Slappy the Squirrel, and the high-energy Warner Brothers (and Sister) Yakko, Wakko and Dot. Alas, no longer on the air.

By: Raoul

Raoul — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:24:36 +0000

Not quite. Yes, you can do that, and I would encourage parents to do that, but that’s not the point. We can’t absolve TV channels and cartoon creators of any blame when they put out trash. They have a responsibility, because of their large audience and venues, to produce quality stuff, particularly on kids’ channels.

If cartoon creators insist on making crap, then they should not get the large venues. They should have to work hard at getting an audience like the rest of the cartoon creators out there, by putting out their animation on their websites or on YouTube and gathering slow, organic support. Then their cartoons would have to stand on their own merits, and we’d see then how far they’d get…

Basically, no one should get a blank check to inflict their crap on children. There should be a rigorous vetting process in place.

By: James

James — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:10:35 +0000

Well I can always take the road of - it’s the parents job to look at what kids watch, we didn’t have cable in my house growing up, I’m only 32 so it was fairly common for my friends to watch MTV. If there isn’t anything on tv, your kids should read, play outside or watch a video.

By: Raoul

Raoul — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:49:13 +0000

That’s just the thing, James. That’s what bothers me about them. They were shown on a kids’ channel, and were geared toward children by choice of venue. It’s the same thing with Beavis & Butt-head. They were shown on MTV, which one could argue is a channel meant for adults, but we all know its overwhelming audience is made up of children, tweens and teens.

Their creators and fans can argue all they want that they were meant for adults, it still won’t fly with me, when I know it was mostly kids who watched them… It’s such a travesty that it stinks to high heaven.