Hoch Hech!

Is anyone familiar with the Zagreb (Croatia) School of Animation?

I'm sure I've seen that Zagreb Film horse logo before, maybe on a Public Domain video. After which I would presumably have fast-forwarded through the cartoon, expecting there to be a culture and/or language barrier.

I think when most people think of Eastern European animation, they think of this:



From the Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled", where kids' TV show host Krusty the Klown shows a cartoon starring "Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite!" The title, gloomy music and settings (a factory and a bread-line) are clearly meant to invoke images of the austere, work-driven Soviet Union at the time of the Cold War, and the joke is that it is neither entertaining nor comprehensible to anyone who doesn't live east of the Iron Curtain in the '50s.

(As a side note, in another Simpsons episode from the same time, "Mr Plow", Homer tries to buy a car from "Crazy Vaclav's Place of Automobiles", and is told that the car was built in a country which "no longer exists". I like to think this was the same country that produced "Worker and Parasite", whose titles are written in a fictional Slavic language. And the head animator of the Rembrandt Films Tom and Jerry series, animated and scored - but not written - in 1960s Czechoslovakia, was named VACLAV Bedrich! Coincidence?)

Soviet-era Eastern Europe may well have produced animated shorts which bring "Worker and Parasite" to mind. But the Zagreb cartoons from the 50s and 60s I have found have, I think, a universal appeal. They are generally dialogue-free but manage to tell stories through animation and music. I don't know if their creators had American animation in mind when they made them - were they trying to copy the style of U.S. cartoons, or react against it, or neither?

This cartoon, "Ersatz/Surogat", has the distinction of winning an Academy Award (an Oscar to you and me). It's very quirky and doesn't look anything like a U.S. cartoon... well, not a mainstream U.S. cartoon anyway. It's still easy for Western audiences to follow and be entertained by it, but putting it out as an example of Croatian animated film making kind of implies "they don't think the way we do".



The same director, Dusan Vukotic, was also capable of creating cartoons that were much more recognisable to people in the West. This one tells a story of childhood rivalry and ingenuity that's familiar to all who have been children, but still exaggerated in a suitably cartoony way. It's a bit like the final act of "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow", where Buster and Babs fool Elmyra into thinking she's travelled to another planet.



The events from 6:15-6:50 bring to mind the fable of the blind men and the elephant.

Another director, Zlatko Grgic (who previously worked as character designer on Vukotic's cartoons) appears to have had two favourite themes: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" and "I Don't Know How To End This Thing". Here's his "Musical Pig". Watch as the poor pig brings happiness to all around him by his singing, and how his refusal to let them eat him anyway (!) causes conflict, strife, and even war!

Oh, and the knife-eating sound effects are painfully convincing!

Bosko The Minstrel

Those early rubber-hose cartoon characters, with their basic facial designs altered only by the shape of their ears and, occasionally, noses... it can be pretty hard to tell what kind of creature they're supposed to be. Indeed, they made a running joke of it many years later in Animaniacs, where people often wonder what species the Warners are, with their late-20s-early-30s inspired designs.

The Warner Brothers studio's first character, Bosko, fits the usual design pattern - white face, black nose, solid black eyes, and black... hair? covering the rest of his head. But he was apparently meant to be a human character. His ears, the usual species giveaway, look like simplified forms of human ears, compared to the large black things protruding from the tops of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse or Foxy's heads. In fact, he was meant to be a *black* human.

Which seems quite a bizarre claim to make about a white-faced character, but when Harman and Ising took the character to MGM, they made him (and Honey) obviously dark-skinned human characters. I suppose when you think of the stereotyped depictions of black people that were common at the time, Bosko's white face could be seen as comprising large white eyes and large white lips... with the black portion behind his face being his skin.

Certainly, when Bosko and Honey were brought back for an appearance on Tiny Toon Adventures, they were redesigned to have floppy black ears atop their head... making them a more indistinct species like the later Warners on Animaniacs. So, to the people who made that episode at least, there was something controversial about their original appearance.

However, Bosko doesn't really read as a "blackface" caricature. Harman and Ising, and their staff, probably forgot that's what he was meant to be in the first place, or discarded the idea. Take a look at the final gag from this cartoon:



A bomb goes off in Bosko's face, covering it with... bomb dust or whatever, and transforms him *into* a blackface character, announcing "Mammy!" So if he had to be turned into a blackface character, what is he the rest of the time?

"You keep using that word..."

How to play Downfall, Kid John V. version.

Load your counters in.
Then, begin! Tug at the wheels to get all your counters down to the trays at the bottom as quickly as possible, at the same time as your opponent is doing the same thing. Use brute strength to move the wheels the way *you* want them to move, while your opponent uses brute strength to do the same thing. And hurry up!

Yes, the link above says that you should take turns to move the wheels, and that's how parents and friends' parents told me I was supposed to play it, but I was unconvinced. For one thing, it didn't seem as much fun as my version. Also, the blurb on the box seemed to support my way of playing the game: it described it as a "strategy" game, and "strategy" quite obviously meant tugging at wheels trying to outdo your opponent. I guess I didn't really know what the word meant, and I was relying on the sound of the word - the "str" beginning must have sounded like "strength", "struggle" and "strain" to me.

That, and that's what I'd have *liked* it to mean.

Nothing but the lies

I know that Captain Pugwash didn't really have crew members called "Master Bates" or "Roger the Cabin Boy". I know that the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street was not renamed the Veggie Monster as some sort of evil plan to indoctrinate kids into eating more healthily.

(Of course, I'm using "evil" sarcastically here. Although a plan to introduce healthy eating to kids could have a morally suspect element to it, if the plan is to make kids healthy enough to form an army of muscle-bound troops to help you take over the world. But I don't think that's on anyone's mind when they whine about the government having the audacity to try to stop their kids from getting heart diseases.)

The Sesame Street one I learned on snopes, the Pugwash one I knew from being familiar with the Pugwash *books* from my kidhood, confirmed by snopes. I have heard both of these claims stated as fact. I could have replied "That's not true..." but they were unlikely to believe me, and if I did convince them I'd just have been a kill-joy. So I kept my mouth shut and let them enjoy their slanderous anti-nutritious fun. Maybe I was right to do so, or maybe that just leads down the path to ignoring other, more important truths and tacitly accepting other, more damaging lies.

Oh, and if you want PG-13 names in Captain Pugwash... well, one of them is called Willy. How snickersome. But his last (or first) name is not Gilligan.

Look out, Itchy! He's Irish!

When I was a kid I read this joke:

"Is this yours? The name's all smudged."
"No, my name is Allsop."

I didn't quite understand it. I assumed the joke must be that the name "Allsop" apparently looked like a smudge of ink, and that Mr Allsop was saying "No, it's not smudged, my name really does look like that."

I also read a similar joke.

"Is this yours? The name's obliterated."
"No, my name's O'Brien."

I am ashamed to say that not only did I not notice the similarity between the two jokes, but I didn't know what "obliterated" meant either. (I'm not sure how old I was at this point) I thought it might mean "has an O' at the beginning" and the joke was that the foolish Mr O'Brien didn't realise his name was indeed "obliterated".

It was may years later, and, actually, many years after learning what "obliterated" really meant, that I noticed the similarity of the two jokes (some things just come to memory like that) - they were really just versions of the same joke: Person 1 is expressing that he can't read the name, Person 2 thinks that Person 1 *is* reading out a name similar to Person 2's real name.

Of the two, I think that the "O'Brien" version works better, as it's more plausible that someone might think "O'bliterated" is a real name than that they might think "Allsmudged" is. The only problem is that it's potentially insulting to Irish people, as it seems to belong on the same genre as the "Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman" or the "Pat and Mike" jokes, where a character's Irishness is used as a signpost that he is meant to be stupid.

The thing is, I don't think the joke is offensive unless you're already aware of the "Irish = stupid" tradition in so many other jokes. The guy isn't called "O'Brien" because it's a name befitting a stupid character, he's called "O'Brien" because it sounds vaguely like "obliterated". But unfortunately, because of all those *other* jokes, we have to put up with the "Allsmudged" version or risk offending someone. If it weren't for those jokes we could tell the "O'Brien" one to anyone we wanted and have a good old laugh together.

Train of thought

Ever been to the Museum of Transport in Glasgow? As a kid, obviously the preserved steam engines are the highlight. As a former kid, they still look impressive and are still, along with the other exhibits, great as a way of looking back to a past age, but their bright colours of blue, yellow and green somehow make it hard to imagine them being real. Maybe it's because most times one sees a steam train nowadays is in an old black-and-white film or photo, it's as if they really were monochromatic.


I know that pretty much every kid has at least a passing acquaintance with certain brightly coloured fictional locomotives, but I guess, subconsciously if not consciously, it seems as if their bright colours are as much a fantasy as their big grey faces.

Now, despite some momentary lapses on the part of some of my fellow students of 18th century Scotland, I think most people would think if a train showed up in a film set in 1745 they'd realise this was wrong. And yet, there was a railway *line* near Edinburgh from 1722, and one of the battles of the 1745 Jacobite uprising was fought along one! The line was used not by locomotives but by horses pulling wagons.

So, if someone made a film which included the battle, it would be more *accurate* to include the railway line, but it would be more *believable* not to... unless the film also included a scene with a horse pulling a wagon along the line. Which is more important? To portray history as it really was and risk people being pulled out of the film when they think you've made a mistake, or to change the facts so the audience will think you're remaining historically accurate?

Eels!

It seems that this old copy of "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" has a couple of pages missing. That's a bit annoying. Maybe I should try and find another one.

In the meantime, here are some thoughts regarding Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, specifically the infamous banquet scene.

In the extra features on the DVD, we hear Lucas and Spielberg saying how they wanted the scene to be full of old-fashioned slapstick comedy. Meanwhile, the scriptwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz express their interest in Indian culture and Hindu religion. No-one suggests there's any sort of clash here, but I think there might be. Huyck and Katz wanted to make a film which takes place in 1930s India, while Lucas and Spielberg wanted to make a film which takes place in a fictional India which might be found in a 1930s film.

You ever seen this early draft of the script? It's discussed in this great article "Raiders of the Lost Drafts", but there's a few things the article doesn't mention but which I think are worth calling attention to. The banquet is there in all its glory, but it's followed by a scene with Indy and the English colonial officer. Indy reads the "bizarre choice of menu" as a clue that Pankot Palace is not what it seems, as "a devout Hindu would never touch meat". That may be a generalisation but if so it's a lot closer to the truth than the implication made in the film - that live eels served in the body of a snake, soup full of eyes and chilled monkey brains are representative of Indian cuisine.

Of course, this short scene doesn't appear in the film. My idea is that Lucas and Spielberg devised the banquet scene without really thinking about whether it was "accurate" or not, because they weren't really thinking of it as taking place in a real version of India. Huyck and Katz, with their genuine interest in India, tried to explain the strange food by calling attention to it as being a sign that Pankot Palace did not follow usual Hindu beliefs. But Lucas and Spielberg didn't feel that the banquet needed any explanation and so, with their powers as executive producer and director, they cut it.

(You'll note I refer to "Lucas and Spielberg" throughout this post, as I'm not sure which person was responsible for each decision)

So, who was "right" then? The writers or the producer/directors? Well, I've read posts on forums by a few people identifying themselves as Indian, some who like the finished film and some who feel offended by it. So I guess there's no one answer. But I think the portrayal of the Indian characters in any version of Temple of Doom is better than the portrayal of the African characters in the proposed "Monkey King" film, which contains an "ADORABLE" pygmy named Tiki, who is studied by a zoologist and lives in a zoo cage.

(Note: Although the online version of the script indicates it was written in 1995 as a potential fourth film, it was later found out that it was actually written some time earlier as a potential *third* film -- you can see some elements in the script which wound up in Last Crusade)

And if you'd prefer that I defended my own culture instead, well, I can do that too. I'm not from the Highlands myself but even I can tell that the supposedly Scottish characters in the opening scenes of Monkey King are not at all like anyone you might find in this country, bearing names such as "Seamus Seagrove" and "Bottomley", using expressions like "truer than an angel's kiss" and "like you've seen a screamin' banshee" and dropping their 'H's all over the place. The only positive thing I can say about these ridiculous Irish stereotypes is that they aren't supposed to be Irish characters...

Kids think the darnedest things, part one

I remember when I was a kid I enjoyed a game of Junior Scrabble. That's the version of Scrabble where the words are already spelled out on the board, helpfully illustrated with pictures, and you just have to cover them over with identical tiles.

For some bizarre reason I thought that the non-junior version of Junior Scrabble was "(A Question of) Scruples". I must, at some point in my kidhood, been told that "Scruples" was a "grown-ups game" or something, and, because the name sounded kind of like "Scrabble" I assumed it was the grown-up version of the same game.

Kids' minds work in weird ways, don't they? Or maybe it's just my mind that works in weird ways.

Saccharine?

While in general I think that Bryan Talbot's "Alice in Sunderland" is great, there's one claim he makes in it which I take issue with. He says that some people only know the Alice story through "the saccharine Disney version."

It's the use of the word "saccharine" which I object to. The term, when used metaphorically like this, would normally refer to an over-concentration on cuteness or lightness in tone, and when, as in this case, describing an adaptation of another work, suggests that the harsher elements of the original have been downplayed or removed entirely.

Is this really the case with Disney's "Alice in Wonderland"? Well, one of the most famous omissions from the film is the "Pig and Pepper" sequence where a small boy is shaken violently and eventually turns into a pig, but on the other hand, the Disney version does make some of the other scenes a little crueller than Carroll wrote them.

One such scene is where Alice has turned into a giant (one of many times) and is stuck inside the White Rabbit's house. The Rabbit sends a lizard named Bill down the chimney. In the book, Alice gives the chimney a kick and Bill shoots out and lands in the garden, to be promptly nursed to health and appear later in the story. In the film, Alice sneezes, causing Bill to soar into the sky... and never be seen again!

Maybe it's "saccharine" that film-Alice is not intentionally responsible for what she does to Bill, unlike book-Alice? On the other hand, it seems perfectly in-character for book-Alice to behave the way she does in the film, and not desire to cause Bill any harm.

Later in the film, some of the card painters are seen being dragged away to be executed following the Queen of Hearts' famous "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" command, and we are to assume that her orders were carried out. Carroll makes it clear that they are not beheaded -- Alice hides them out of harms way, and later is told that the Queen "never executes nobody" (although this double-negative may be one of Carroll's semantic jokes -- she doesn't execute *nobody*, she executes *somebody*.).

One fairly morbid incident occurs in both versions - the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter, who lure oysters away from their homes and eat them. It's a different sort of case though, I guess, as even within the book or film it features as a fictional story, less "real" than the other events.

The animal characters in the film are also distinctly lacking the huge eyes and long eyelashes which characterize many of the studio's animals.

If Disney's Alice film is to be criticized (and it's a film I've always loved since before I can remember) then I don't think "saccharine" is the right criticism to make. Maybe "dumbed-down" might be a little more appropriate... Carroll includes a lot of clever verbal humour which is Disney and his writers leave out, and the book-Alice never, unlike her film counterpart, says that she would rather that books contain "nothing but pictures"!

Although I like the film considerably better than he seems to, I would say a more valid objection would be the one expressed by John Grant in "Masters of Animation", where he uses terms like "wackiness" and "zaniness" to describe what Disney made of the story.

The problem is, though, only an expert can citicize a Disney film for being "wacky" or "zany" -- to the casual person, Disney is never wacky or zany, it is twee and cutesy, while "everyone knows" that Warner Brothers had the racket on madcap humour.

As a general rule, that might well be true, but Talbot isn't talking about talking about general rules, he's talking about Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" film. And it seems like his only reason for calling it "saccharine" is because, well, it's a Disney film. And you don't need to actually watch a Disney film to form an opinion on it.

Kind of a shame really. It's obviously not as big a deal as forming prejudiced opinions about people because of the colour of their skin, the place they come from, their religious beliefs (or lack thereof) etc., but it's still kind of a shame.

Any thoughts or opinions?