Craptacular cartoons:
The little girl
hops out of bed and scurries out to the T.V. This is what the she waits for all
week. It is the motivation to carry on through the tedious, pathetic doings of
the arduous school days. The T.V. seems to be glowing with some holy light, as if
it, too, has waited for this moment all week long.
It’s Saturday morning, time for the joy of
cartoons…but wait. No Bugs Bunny, Snoopy or even an old version of Superman!
Oh, it’s too terrible.
I bolt awake, covered in a cold sweat. These
nightmarish visions permeate my brain. Ed, Edd, and Eddy, The
Powerpuff Girls and Spongebob Squarepants are just a few of the
demons that haunt the line-up of cartoons today. Oh, horror, horror, horror!
Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee! (Thanks for the line,
Shakespeare).
I remember when such quality programs as Looney
Toons and Tom and Jerry represented quality viewing. Now, it’s all
gone! The hay-day of superior cartoons has been banished into some dense mist
of despair, and all that remains is a hollow shell of prior greatness. It's enough to make Mel Blanc turn in his
grave and prompt die-hard cartoon fans to resort to some perverse brand of
animation atheism.
Now you may ask, "Colleen, why this intense
bitterness? What is wrong with today's cartoons?" Well, to start, the
actual animation quality itself is, at best, poor. This is especially true with such juvenile shows as Cartoon
Network's Ed, Edd, and Eddy. It usually looks like the cartoonists' pens
threw up. That, or the producers brought in some incompetent chimpanzees and
set them to work.
In addition, the writing is equally atrocious (maybe
the producers decided to hire the chimps for all the work). Back in the days of
Looney Toons, Peanuts, and even as recently as Animaniacs,
cartoons not only entertained children with fun, lively animation and great
slapstick, but they also were capable of winning over adults with the witty
dialogue and social commentary.
Characters like Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty had endearingly
vulnerable, loveable qualities that allowed you to relate to them, and Looney
Toons managed to mock the eccentricities of that era’s big stars as well as the
common faults of all people.
The well-done cartoons of the past didn’t talk down
to kids or resort to bathroom humor to fill in story gaps. It makes me ill to
think that such a great legacy has been disregarded. The only really recent
cartoon that was as entertaining was MTV's Daria, but even that class
act was cancelled. If have to hear
Spongebob's irritating laugh, see the Powerpuff Girls' creepy eyes, hear some
disgusting bodily function joke, witness Cartman shoot fire from his rectum or
bare witness to the mutilation of the X-men comic books by the new craptacular X-men:
Evolution cartoon ONE MORE TIME, I'm going to go to wherever it is they
create these monstrosities, stage a coup, and take over programming.
So, dear readers, I implore you, write to your local
cable station and ask "why?" Why must we tolerate these abominations?
Stop the insipid slop they call quality programming! Bugs Bunny once asked, "What's up, doc?"
That's what I'd like to know.