The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations

Contributed by Rebecca P.

Wildfire’s plot (as brilliantly encapsulated in its theme song) works as a metaphor (probably unintended) of the experience of the baby-boomer children of Holocaust refugees. Sara, the heroine, who is blonde and all-American despite her vaguely ethnic name, lives on a ranch in Montana. She thrives there, riding horses and yellow school buses, and generally living out a materially prosperous and idyllic existence, except for being troubled by bad dreams of a land she cannot remember. (”Go deep within my mind,” says the theme song. “And tell me what I find, or what I might become, if I could go where the dreams come from.”)

At thirteen, she is recalled to Dar-Shan, the fantasy land of her unquiet dreams. Dar-Shan has a generically European feudal structure (with kings and queens, and councilors) and a lot of castles that suggest nineteenth-century follies. While there, the all-American Sara must come to terms with her heritage as a princess in a distinctly un-American setting. The episodes, which deal with different aspects of the fantasy-land of Dar-Shan, are as much voyages of exploration as struggles against the evil queen who has stolen Sara’s throne and killed her mother. In that sense, Sara’s journeys with the magic horse, Wildfire, are akin to those of the American teenagers who backpacked through Europe in the sixties, seeking some shreds of a lost heritage.

The thing that clinches the metaphor for me is the episode where it is revealed that Sara’s “foster” father in Montana is in fact her biological father, a prince of Dar-Shan, who has been forced to lose all memory of his homeland and his late wife. During the course of the episode he remembers and fights to save his daughter from the evil specters who threaten her (the name “specter” suggests once again the ghosts of old evil), but at the end of the episode he chooses to have his memory erased once again, even though he is weeping as he makes the choice. The story provides a magical explanation of this phenomenon, but it rings true as the story of the refugee experience: adults refuse to look back and remember, because it is too painful. It is only through the tentative explorations of their Americanized children that they are forced to acknowledge some of the “dark void [that] was crossed” (again a quote from the theme song) when they fled and took up residence in a new country. Amnesia is the price of safety and prosperity in the new land.

We usually don’t like to post two Ex Sitibus in a row, but several readers sent this one in (thanks!), and it is too good to delay. Derek Zumsteg has written an exhaustively detailed account of the famous Gas House Gorillas vs. Tea Totallers baseball game of 1946 which was featured in the short film “Baseball Bugs.” (For reference, the fermentable Cartoon Brew has posted a video of the film.) Here are two short excerpts:

We next learn that Bunny has taken the lead, 96-95. This means that at some point during the game, the official scorer ruled at least one of the Gorillas’ runs invalid, as we had previously established that they had scored 96 runs when Bunny took over for the Teatotallers. The cause and resolution of the disputed run is not documented in available footage.

Consider that given fifteen outs, Bunny scored 96 times. His RC/27 would be 173. Now of course Bunny could not always face a team so ill-equipped to deal with his high-percentage take-all-four-bases running style and bean-all-nine-fielders hitting ability, but even dramatic penalties placed on him would still make him the greatest offensive player of all time.

Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever >Catena Ex Situ

Keith Pille, via the always aeolipilic McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, gives us two looks into the personal journey of a rank-and-file COBRA recruit. Here’s an excerpt:

June 21, 1986
Awful exciting day today. First we got to do our airborne training. They loaded us up into a plane, and we flew up and then jumped out. Our chutes had the big, scary COBRA symbol on them. It was awesome. But it was hard, because we were supposed to keep yelling “COBRA!” all the way down. It was tough to get enough breath to yell right at first. Sarge says it just takes practice.

Journal of a New COBRA Recruit >Catena Ex Situ

Journal of a Seasoned COBRA Veteran >Catena Ex Situ

• Here’s a theory you might have missed behind “Casper the Friendly Ghost”.  It goes that Casper is symbolism of homosexuality and the struggle for gays in society.  Casper is a boy ghost or male who constantly seeks the company of other boys or other males.  The boys seem to think Casper is a nice fellow and find nothing wrong with his company. After a short while of cute playing, the friendship is ruined when grown ups, who represent the more “traditional” views of society, intervene. More than frowning on such relationships, they fear it terribly and steal the innocent boy and run away from poor Casper, who is left to seek out the next relationship.
  -Contributed by Dave R.
• In Tex Avery’s “King Size Canary,” a cat and canary compete by “growing” larger with the use a vitamin serum; the bigger one has the edge on the other.  It goes back and forth with no resolution other than running out of serum as they stand on a basketball sized earth.  This is all a metaphor for the US vs. USSR nuclear arms race!
  -Contributed by Dave R.
• There has been a great deal of speculation regarding the fact that Smurfette is the only female Smurf in the entire village. People automatically assume that Smurfette is responsible for the propagation of the entire Smurf population. This is an erroneous assumption, because this theory postulates that Smurfs reproduce sexually. I offer forth the idea that Smurfs reproduce asexually, much like amoebas. I believe that when a Smurf takes off his little white hat, the hat grows a new Smurf, and the old Smurf grows a new hat. In the case of Smurfette, well, there is at least one obviously homosexual Smurf in the village (that being Vanity), so why not two? I submit the idea that Smurfette is simply a cross-dressing male Smurf, and there are no real females in the village. No real female acts that over-the-top feminine. I have converted many unbelievers to this theory, based on the simple logic that it puts forth.
  -Contributed by Natalie.
• For me, the show that brought the whole anthropomorphic vs. realistic animals debate home for me was none other than The Get Along Gang. It struck me as weird to begin with; you stick a moose on his hind legs and he looses something fundamental about being a moose. And Montgomery has antlers, which brings up the issue of whether they could be considered a weapon in his society.
  But the episode that sealed it was the one in which the Gang ends up in a snowy town where they must search for an escaped elephant. A non-anthropomorphic elephant. From the zoo!
  I always thought that if you’re going to create a world of humanoid animals, you might as well go all out and populate your zoo with humans.
  -Contributed by Farnie6.

Contributed by E.L.

I take care of my nephews a few times a week and they love watching Nick Jr. and PBS. I was very fascinated with some of the things that were happening in some of these cartoons, Little Bear, Franklin, and Arthur in particular.

First, I noticed that these animals all take on human characteristics. At least the main character, but others included, all have opposable thumbs. They have the ability to write and pick up utensils–they can do tedious, intricate work even though they are equipped with a paw or wing. When a character does have wings instead of “arms” those characters have the ability to utilize their feathers like fingers, being able to bend and hold things with them, they also generally have one feather that is the place of a thumb and can thus write and hold things like the other creatures. In the case of Little Bear, the character Cat does not have a opposable thumb and walks on all fours, instead of on two legs–this does not limit its ability to stand on it’s hindquarters and to grasp items with its front paws. How it does this escapes me. It has no opposable thumb, per se, yet it can hold and play a tambourine–a naturally sticky secretion perhaps? magnetism?

Along these same lines, the characters (again, at least the main character) lives in an upper-middle class suburbia. Although Franklin and Arthur both have towns or cities which they live in, they live on the outskirts of these. They are equipped with large houses that have indoor plumbing of some sort, furniture of some sort, refrigerators, ovens with stovetops, and plates, forks, knives and spoons and other utensils. In Arthur, some animals live in the city in apartments, but never the main character. In Franklin and Arthur, the characters go to school where they have the capability to learn reading, writing and math. I also find it interesting that in Little Bear and Franklin, few characters are given actual names: “Cat” is a cat, “Duck” is a duck, “Hen” is a hen, “Snail” is a snail. Yet Franklin’s a turtle and in Little Bear the human girl is named Emily, they aren’t called “Turtle” and “Girl.”

I’m proving these points because there was something, in Arthur and Franklin mostly, the disturbs me slightly. In these worlds, where animals are the ones in charge, not all animals are equal. As a world wide community, we may have racial discrepancies and prejudices–which are unfortunate–but a human is a human. Period. These shows obviously take place in an America like setting, where democracy is the ruling practice and the citizens have to abide by laws. In America, we no longer practice servitude and slavery. No one will argue that point–things aren’t equal by any means, but we don’t force others into a slaveship. In these cartoons, they show the characters with pets, generally a dog or cat or a fish. I find this wrong. I realize that they are merely illustrating humans through the animals, but by giving the animals pets, they are saying that not all creatures are allowed equal rights.

Arthur has a pet dog named Pal. What makes Arthur and his friends and family above the species of dogs? Why was the puppy not enrolled in preschool with the rest and given the chance at an education? Why was enslaved into being a stupid mere animal without the higher thinking capacities and motor functions? In Franklin, a similar thing happened: Franklin passed a store window that had a puppy in it. What did he do? He talked to his parents about getting a pet. Again, why was the dog forced into the position of pet and not given the chance to make something of himself? We don’t look at a certain denomination of humans and decided that they will be our pets–our slaves. That doesn’t happen in today’s society. Why would these shows want to present the idea of equality among the species–except for those who will be pets. I doubt kids will see this and think, “oh, that Aardvark has a puppy as a pet, how cruel!” They see it as a reflection of human society in reference to owning a pet.

Also, there are no problems with the animals being carnivorous. In one episode of Little Bear, “Duck Soup,” they jokingly made a duck soup. They had Duck sit in a large pot while they put in other ingredients. Cat and Little Bear and the others added in this and that while duck swam around in the water. Why is the idea of eating another fellow animal all right? They play and get along with their friends, yet they have no qualms in eating another animals’ flesh. In our human society, yes, we eat animals, but we don’t eat other humans. Being a cannibal is highly looked down upon, except in cartoons, where a second thought isn’t given.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but I feel that in a society where animals prevail, either there should be a definite hierarchy of animals where the strong eat the weak and it reflects upon nature or all animals should be given the same rights and privileges, and should be vegetarian. In cartoons like Franklin, Little Bear, and Arthur, they gain nothing by having the characters be carnivores or by having them own other animals as pets. It breaks down the idea that we are equal and all have certain rights, even though we may look different and have unique strengths and weaknesses.

Contributed by Lucas R.

A gorgeous, well-crafted and charming piece of cinema. The design was rich and warm and it made me feel nice and happy just getting to watch that world. All of that is really fantastic and worth more than the price of admission, but on top of that I realized while I was watching, and delighted in the realization, that the movie was a metaphor for Pixar!

Alright, let me explain (or try to explain, because I tried telling a lot of this to the friends I saw the movie with, got a bit carried away and jumped all over the place, and mostly got smiles and nods).

First, we’ve got Gusteau, the almost mythic chef who became a well-known phenomenon because of his work, and because his work was so loved he grew and thrived and made an empire. The empire lost some steam and with the help of some critical voices pointing out the plateau, the momentum was lost and with that momentum gone, the head of the empire died, but his empire kept on. So Gusteau was Walt Disney.

That empire reached far, and despite the energy behind the chef’s message had died, his work had spread and the message itself still inspired, even inspiring someone far away with a love for the same art to learn and grow their skills. That energy, conviction and the excitement of challenges and creation sounds a lot like Remy is Lasseter, discovering his raw tools at the beginnings of Pixar, amongst people who are supportive but have no idea what he’s doing, and folks who realize he’s got something but want to steer it to fit their interest. Remy’s testing for poison while exploring some ideas of food combination, Lasseter’s testing software and testing some character interaction and storytelling with new and developing technology. So yeah, Remy is Lasseter.

So, since the death of Gusteau/Disney, the empire still exists, but isn’t in the hands of the person who began it. It is being run now in a largely totalitarian way by a man without the creative and inspirational vision of the creator, but with a mind for keeping things afloat and profiting on cheapening and exploiting the name and image of the company’s past in mostly cheap and easy ways. In the movie, that’s Skinner; at Disney, that’s Michael Eisner. So yeah, Eisner/Skinner is chugging along, riding high at the helm of another’s empire and keeping many things running without any change and discouraging talk of change, while at the same time making deals behind the scenes to merchandise everything he can plaster the name of the now long-dead Gusteau/Disney onto.

Next, we get a seemingly harmless and ineffectual remnant of the old days who Skinner/Eisner lets on, but dismisses out of hand and sets up in a place where he figures the guy can’t do much/any harm. This new guy turns out to have ties to Gusteau/Disney though, and starts to make some waves after he begins a relationship with a little-known outside party that makes a splash out of nowhere with their first big creative endeavor. Linguini is Roy Disney. Roy staked himself to secure a relationship with Pixar and when Pixar hit big with Toy Story, the eyes were on him, largely like how Linguini could’ve stayed ineffectual and bullied into impotence but found the potential greatness in a small outsider. To the majority of the outside world, this new, great creation belonged to the empire of Gusteau’s/Disney, while within Disney it was Linguini/Roy Disney making a stir and the real power behind it all was Remy/Pixar.

The challenge to replicate the first success and the scoffing that “meh, you can do it with soup/toys, but let’s see if you can do it with something even Gusteau/Walt couldn’t ever seem to pull off: a bug movie!” But by sticking to what he knew to be best instead of trying to simply recreate what was done before, Remy/Pixar pulled it off again and now people wanted more.

During this time, Linguini/Roy Disney falls for Colette, who has worked very hard to get in and stay at the kitchen/Disney studios and who thinks that the only way to work is to tenaciously stick to the classic formulas and rules and immediately jumps in with warnings that deviation can lead to disaster. She does clue Remy/Pixar into some technical aspects of their work that do improve his skill, but he blows past Colette because of his experimentation and sense of artistry, and Linguini/Roy Disney is left in the middle trying to be supportive of Colette while still providing an outlet for Remy/Pixar and being pulled all around in the process. Colette is Disney Animation (the department and the animators). She viewed Pixar/Remy as a threat and an anomaly at the beginning, and eventually had to bite the bullet and join in to be able to really make anything worth making by the end of things. But I digress, back to where we were in the story.

Roy/Linguini was now riding high, but didn’t really understand his relationship with Remy/Pixar and was even trying to steer them along himself, even though it was done pretty innocently. Eisner/Skinner saw things slipping away and was grasping at straws to find a way to keep control. He even tried to trap Remy/Pixar (Skinner with a literal trap, Eisner with contracts) so he could take advantage of what they were succeeding with and force it into his cheap merchandising plans, but Remy/Pixar fought around that and finally got Linguini/Roy to realize that for his relationship with Remy/Pixar to really work, he’d have to take the support role instead of the leader/sponsor role and give them the chance to be the force they are. Still, when Remy/Pixar finally enters into Gusteau’s/Disney, the people who were there running the machine left and Remy/Pixar found that they had to rally their own forces with the reluctant Colette/Disney Animation. In the end, Remy/Pixar finds out that they can’t just continue in the shell of a former empire, they have to take the good from that and make something new if they’re going to be able to succeed.

Finally, Anton Ego represents the critics of animation in general. People who figure it’s all been done to death already, but if you think you can impress them, then go ahead and hit them with your best shot, because they don’t know what they want out of animation, just that they don’t think they can be impressed by it any more. With that challenge, the people in the studios figure they should bank on something flashy and new and shiny, but Remy/Pixar goes for something simple and nostalgic with enough of their own twist to make it theirs without taking away from what makes the subject matter belong to the audience, and instead of trying to make their audience like something completely new, finds new ways to remind their audience about something they already loved. It’s not so much a formula as a recipe that Pixar has used well and continues to, and it’s the kind of meal that stays with you and really satisfies.

Back in March of 2000, The Humanist magazine published an article by Lucia K. B. Hall entitled “Toy Stories for Humanists?” This interesting article presents thematic elements in both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 from a humanistic perspective. The author is convinced that each movie contains “a carefully thought-out and detailed humanist message.” Here’s an excerpt:

Seen as such an allegory, Toy Story becomes a carefully wrought description of two opposing world views: naturalism and supernaturalism. Woody and the other toys in the playroom represent the naturalistic world view. They are mechanisms–material objects that have a material source, a real-world history and origin (Mattel or Playskool or such), and no function other than to be just what they are. Woody embodies basic American Pragmatism. He’s a toy, a mechanism, a material being; he knows it and is content with it.

The article itself is hosted at The Free Library, and is linked below.

>Catena Ex Situ

The editors here at J. Cart. Overanal. can’t help but notice the influx of new readers recently. To you, we say Hello! and Welcome, enjoy your stay!

This site thrives on reader submissions. The editors are well-respected in the over-analyzation community, but are notoriously lax in publishing their own work. And there is only a finite number of archived articles. So, we’re beseeching you, the student who put off writing their 10-page paper entitled Fight Club vs. The Turn of the Screw: An Oral History by watching episodes of Ben 10. And we’re beseeching you, the engineer who sneaks away to watch TiVo’ed episodes of Spongebob Squarepants while the wife puts the baby to bed. And we’re beseeching you, the audience: send us your half-baked theories and misguided essays! (They don’t even have to be long, that’s what Mini-Analyzations are for.)

overanalyzation AT gmail DOT com

Contributed by Lady Bast.

He-Man revolves mostly around bestial relationships rather than sexuality (although it’s there), hence all the human/animal crossovers (e.g. Beastor, King Hiss, Cobra Khan, even the Sorceress). Some are even cybernetic, brandishing nasty little built-in devices (e.g. Trap-jaw and Hordak if you want to cross into She-Ra). Most of these are the bad guys because we want to underline their bestial natures, but some, like the Sorceress, are good guys. The difference is that good guys get to “bond” with animals that are admired and not feared.

Again, this is a Medieval-type society even though technology also seems to be at a high. Most people seem to have mechanical equipment of sorts and many use blasters though He-Man uses a sword to underline his sexuality. Skeletor also uses a sword (it is supposedly the “other half” of He-Man’s) to mirror the hero, but this happens rarely. Usually, Skeletor uses a magical staff with a ram’s skull on it. This is probably meant to represent evil (i.e. horns of the devil - bestiality).

In keeping with this theme, He-Man (as He-Man) is a big, hulking, Mr. Universe kind of guy with a California tan and blond hair (really big with the girls at this time). Adam, though pale, is also a big, hulking, Mr. Universe kinda guy. The difference is that He-man wears reds and browns and golds (and no shirt) because he’s a manly man whereas Adam wears pink and lavender. In the 80s, He-Man equalled a “real” man. Adam was a pasty-faced, pastel-wearing pansy.

He-man rides this big cat, right? Looks like a tiger. Green. Why doesn’t he ride a lion? Only male lions are really associated with masculinity, most other cats are associated with the female persuasion, as is the colour green which is usually a symbol of fertility. This one’s tough to prove, because the colour might just have looked good on the background. And tigers are rather ambiguous sexually: they are not directly associated with the male, but they are muscularly powerful and this one does have a male voice, and they’re not directly associated with the female, though most cats are by default. The nitty gritty details are just something else to think about. Male or female, a cat was used because the cat symbolism was big in the 80s. Especially the big cats because they had the power of the beast and the sleekness of the sexual.

And She-Ra rides a horse. The unicorn horn had nothing to do with She-Ra’s sexuality (or lack thereof), it was there because unicorns would sell. The key here is that She-Ra rode a male horse and we all know what a woman riding a mustang represents, yes?

A word on stereotypes: women are always wimps and/or ditzes in He-Man. Teela is supposed to be this great fighter, right?, but she’s always the one who gets to sound like a total idiot with that whiny “Adam, where’s He-Man?” (or vice versa) thing that she does. And if the Sorceress is so powerful, how come she spends so much time moaning and groaning about this and that and needing He-man to rescue or “help” her (as in he does all the work)?

The only exception to this, as far as I can tell, is Evilyn. She’s one of Skeletor’s lackeys and I can’t remember a single sucky thing she might have done. Mind you, I may be wrong. I don’t remember too much about her because they didn’t use her nearly enough, probably because the presence of a female in the bad guys’ camp removes their illusion of “sexlessness” (i.e. they’re all beast).

This applies to She-Ra as well. The “evil Adora” was much more effective than the “good Adora”. When she was working for evil, Adora was respected as a general in Hordak’s army. As a good guy, she’s a wimp and needs to transform into She-ra to do anything effectively. Notice that She-Ra’s voice is deeper than Adora’s, probably to make her sound more masculine. Female heroes (I don’t use the word “heroine”, a hero is a hero no matter what the sex) are often portrayed as “men with breasts,” a sad affliction that still surfaces occasionally. In fact, the only way to make her seem feminine is to give her these empathic/telepathic animal communication and healing powers. Like a woman absolutely has to be nurturing and healing. I think that all these extra powers succeeded in doing was to make her look weaker than her brother (she needs more power to do the same job). Although I’ve often thought that He-man got the short end of the stick because his sword doesn’t change into other things (Sword to Shield!). That’s like the ultimate Swiss Army Knife.

Other aspects of this stereotype manipulation are all the supposedly strong females in She-Ra who swoon over the male ones (as Glimmer did with He-man in “Secret of the Sword”) and let them take over, or who surrender/run away when confronted with a male opponent (e.g. Catra of the Horde who wimps out every time she loses her mask). Again, only Shadoweaver is of any interest although why she doesn’t just kill off Hordak (who’s too stupid to have been Skeletor’s mentor, I don’t care what the movie says) and take over is a mystery to me. The only really great female characters Filmation comes up with are almost never used… such a pity.

As you can see, He-Man and She-Ra don’t walk the sexual/bestial barrier that Thundercats does. It does use a greater amount of stereotypes, though I’m sure they thought they were quite advanced in using female fighters and lead characters.

Again, I don’t want to imply that the animation companies were trying to project these messages or used such symbols on purpose because they didn’t. And it certainly isn’t what us children picked up on either. The creators of these shows just used the images that were popular at the time, symbols that were created and used by advertisers/designers to represent the facts that already existed and those facts were that people in the 80s really, really wanted sex and bestial imagery and that, in this case, we haven’t yet obliterated all the stereotypes.

• “I don’t know if Disney has a house rule about which animals can speak and which cannot, but guidelines seem to be emerging. The rule is, if you are a predatory carnivore, you don’t talk, but if you are a pacifist, a vegetarian or cute, you do. In Tarzan, the apes spoke, but the leopards didn’t. In Dinosaur, all of the creatures speak, except for the vicious carnotaurs. A Faustian bargain seems to be at work: If you are an animal in a Disney picture, you can speak, but only if you are willing to sacrifice your essential nature.”
  -Quoted from Roger Ebert’s review of Dinosaur >Catena Ex Situ
• A black & white Betty Boop in Who Framed Roger Rabbit was employed a cigarette girl at the Ink & Paint Club circa 1947. She bemoaned how “work’s been kind of slow since cartoons went to color”. Perhaps Miss Boop forgot about her starring role in the 1934 Fleischer Color Classic “Poor Cinderella.”
  -Contributed by Brendan S.
• In Ratatouille, whether Remy walks on all-fours or on two feet depends on his mood:
  “If he feels exuberant, he tends to be more upright, and his hands pulled back. Later on, when he feels shame in front of his father, and [his dreams] have all turned into disaster, he folds back in again. It’s not just a mannerism. It’s a thing that helps tell the story.”
  -Quoted from an L.A. Times interview with Brad Bird >Catena Ex Situ