I don't know why, but this Tweet keeps coming true.
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2020
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Cartoon Research Laboratory Recap
In the grim mid-morning hours of a Saturday in June, a dozen dedicated scholars in varying degrees of chemical disrepair met to attempt important work: deconstructing funny cartoons.
Cartoon practitioner/Rocket 88 baker Emily Gable greased the wheels of our investigation by providing an ample spread of lovingly-crafted blueberry donut holes. Blackberry yogurt in shortcake cups was available to soothe hungover tummies and a vast vat of coffee was offered to quiet the mind.
Aimee Brown led our investigation with a series of animated shorts teasing out the distinctions between cityfolk and country bumpkins. Refined hounds in monocles and wedding wear escorted their backwoods kin through the glossy smorgasbord of sensory delights that is The City. Unlikeable hillperson Snuffy Smith squared off with equally unlikeable, business savvy counterpart Barney Google. At least one academic present at the event overidentified with the champagne drunk faux pas of the Country Mouse in Silly Symphonies' "Country Cousin." And the legendary corrupting affects of urban life on a simple couple in love were played out in the grotesque and tidy melodrama of the Tex Avery-directed Warner Brother short "The Hick Chick."
Although this portion of the program was beset by some internet connectivity issues, buffering periods facilitated longer periods for productive discussion.
Economics is common sense made difficult. To decode its finer points, I turned to cartoons.
My first selection "We're in the Money" featured Warner Brothers' most feckless protagonist, Bosko, a humanimal of indeterminate taxonomy. It also reflected one of my favorite cartoon tropes: Night in the Store. "We're in the Money" dares to dream that when the doors are locked and the lights are out, objects in a department store can truly live. Disembodied overcoats wiggle away aside empty, animate oxfords. Gems under glass spin and genuflect in the jewelry case's reflective light.
This cartoon, like most of its kind, is light on plot--the way I prefer my media. But it also alludes to issues of materiality. Objects have agency. Faces on coins plead to be spent. And the frantic title tune reminds the listener that the success of an economy is contingent on keeping currency "rolling along."
"Heir Conditioned" was one of three Warner Brothers shorts commissioned around 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloane Foundation to teach children about capitalism in the midst of the Cold War. This cartoon features some opportunistic trash cats eager to share Sylvester's newly inherited wealth. His economic advisor, Elmer Fudd, warns him against altruism and urges him to invest. After an unfun and didactic lesson, the trash cats get Stockholm Syndrome and refuse to accept Sylvester's handouts.
This set was rounded out with "Norman Normal," a bizarre late-period Warner Brothers' short of psychedelic nightmare capitalism. This existential tale of a salesman urged by his boss to take advantage of his client's drunken weakness at a kooky cinematic party doesn't seem to have been picked up as a recurring series. Perhaps 1968 TV execs passed on it due to confusion about the target demographic for animated psychological investigations.
Confusion about a cartoon's target audience was a theme which extended across the afternoon's offerings, most notably including "Po-Po-Tan," Bethy Squires' submission for this month's CRL.
This cartoon starts simply enough, when a young boy runs face first into a large pair of naked breasts.
Anime Review explains: "Beautiful sisters Ai, Mai, Mii, their android maid Mea and slippery pet ferret Unagi make an amazing journey together through time and space without ever leaving their beloved mansion behind! Following the clues of the strange dandelion-like “Popotan,” the girls are theoretically seeking the person who has the answers to their most personal questions, but they seem to have more than enough time to take side trips, meet new friends, visit hot springs and occasionally operate the X-mas shop they keep in the house along the way!"
The adult nature (upskirts, soft focus tits) of PoPoTan did seem to clash with the shrill child voices and sentimentality of the storyline.
"How am I supposed to jerk off to this?" posited Squires.
Few answers, more questions at this month's CRL.
Bring your theories and more topics for investigation to the table next time on Saturday, July 18 at 11AM at General Public Collective.
https://www.facebook.com/events/601278900014410/
Cartoon practitioner/Rocket 88 baker Emily Gable greased the wheels of our investigation by providing an ample spread of lovingly-crafted blueberry donut holes. Blackberry yogurt in shortcake cups was available to soothe hungover tummies and a vast vat of coffee was offered to quiet the mind.
Aimee Brown led our investigation with a series of animated shorts teasing out the distinctions between cityfolk and country bumpkins. Refined hounds in monocles and wedding wear escorted their backwoods kin through the glossy smorgasbord of sensory delights that is The City. Unlikeable hillperson Snuffy Smith squared off with equally unlikeable, business savvy counterpart Barney Google. At least one academic present at the event overidentified with the champagne drunk faux pas of the Country Mouse in Silly Symphonies' "Country Cousin." And the legendary corrupting affects of urban life on a simple couple in love were played out in the grotesque and tidy melodrama of the Tex Avery-directed Warner Brother short "The Hick Chick."
Although this portion of the program was beset by some internet connectivity issues, buffering periods facilitated longer periods for productive discussion.
Economics is common sense made difficult. To decode its finer points, I turned to cartoons.
My first selection "We're in the Money" featured Warner Brothers' most feckless protagonist, Bosko, a humanimal of indeterminate taxonomy. It also reflected one of my favorite cartoon tropes: Night in the Store. "We're in the Money" dares to dream that when the doors are locked and the lights are out, objects in a department store can truly live. Disembodied overcoats wiggle away aside empty, animate oxfords. Gems under glass spin and genuflect in the jewelry case's reflective light.
This cartoon, like most of its kind, is light on plot--the way I prefer my media. But it also alludes to issues of materiality. Objects have agency. Faces on coins plead to be spent. And the frantic title tune reminds the listener that the success of an economy is contingent on keeping currency "rolling along."
"Heir Conditioned" was one of three Warner Brothers shorts commissioned around 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloane Foundation to teach children about capitalism in the midst of the Cold War. This cartoon features some opportunistic trash cats eager to share Sylvester's newly inherited wealth. His economic advisor, Elmer Fudd, warns him against altruism and urges him to invest. After an unfun and didactic lesson, the trash cats get Stockholm Syndrome and refuse to accept Sylvester's handouts.
This set was rounded out with "Norman Normal," a bizarre late-period Warner Brothers' short of psychedelic nightmare capitalism. This existential tale of a salesman urged by his boss to take advantage of his client's drunken weakness at a kooky cinematic party doesn't seem to have been picked up as a recurring series. Perhaps 1968 TV execs passed on it due to confusion about the target demographic for animated psychological investigations.
Confusion about a cartoon's target audience was a theme which extended across the afternoon's offerings, most notably including "Po-Po-Tan," Bethy Squires' submission for this month's CRL.
This cartoon starts simply enough, when a young boy runs face first into a large pair of naked breasts.
Anime Review explains: "Beautiful sisters Ai, Mai, Mii, their android maid Mea and slippery pet ferret Unagi make an amazing journey together through time and space without ever leaving their beloved mansion behind! Following the clues of the strange dandelion-like “Popotan,” the girls are theoretically seeking the person who has the answers to their most personal questions, but they seem to have more than enough time to take side trips, meet new friends, visit hot springs and occasionally operate the X-mas shop they keep in the house along the way!"
The adult nature (upskirts, soft focus tits) of PoPoTan did seem to clash with the shrill child voices and sentimentality of the storyline.
"How am I supposed to jerk off to this?" posited Squires.
Few answers, more questions at this month's CRL.
Bring your theories and more topics for investigation to the table next time on Saturday, July 18 at 11AM at General Public Collective.
https://www.facebook.com/events/601278900014410/
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Summer of CRL
The Cartoon Research Lab splices onward.
June 20 will be the second public iteration of the Saturday morning screening room, and the bar is set high after the May edition at General Public Collective.
Garish pink pastries from Rocket 88 rounded out an ample breakfast spread alongside Tex Avery-inspired exploding eyeball yogurt parfaits, recontextualized sugar cereals, and fussy cheeses scavenged by city mice in residence.
Lab Rats saw to it that baseline coffee levels were met by all present so they could turn their energy toward higher concerns:
Cartoons!
Relevantly, the first theme examined was starvation. Marx Shoemaker curated a set of clips showing cartoon protagonists driven to strange psychological states from hunger. Each cartoon was interspersed with an animated commercial for bullshit 80's snacks (Cheetos, Dunkaroos) that amplified the noisy derangement of a dieting Pink Panther's hallucinations, Sylvester the Cat's neurotic smoking, and Donald Duck and Goofy's violent betrayals of one another in pursuit of food.
This blog's author handpicked a set circling around the theme of Nightmares starting with "Pigs is Pigs"-- a truly disturbing cautionary tale of a punished (and ultimately unremorseful) piglet with a memorable force-feeding scene paying homage to Modern Times.
This was followed by "Pudgy Picks a Fight," a waking nightmare to rival Crime and Punishment in which Betty Boop's dog is plunged into denial and despair after assaulting her mink stole. The set ended with "The Big Snooze," a chaotic short in which Bugs Bunny invades Elmer Fudd's dreams--smearing him with nightmare paint, forcing him into drag and trotting him in front of a gang of lusty wolves, and otherwise wreaking havoc.
Bree Gerard provided a welcome deviation from the running vintage theme with a block of weird contemporary animation. She screened spaced out and surreal cartoons with idiosyncratic timing (Paper Rad's "Alfie") and immersive future(?) worlds (Cartoon Hangover's "Manly"). Appropriately, one video was a selection from Childgod996, an indie video game with a rich fantasy world being developed by a Bloomington, IN resident.
Bethy Squires of Bloomington's Sitcom Theater fame finalized the event with the most specifically focused set. Her selections followed the recurrence of "ear horns" as comedic devices and culminated with a beautiful, nearly silent Warner Bros. short directed by Chuck Jones called "Now Hear This."
These antique hearing aids seem to have no real life referent other than as examples of antique technology in cartoons, making a bizarre closed set of information: cartoons reflecting cartoons while cartoons reflect a weirdo version of the world at large...
A heady topic that the Cartoon Research Lab is uniquely qualified to address.
Come join the next round of discussions:
Saturday, June 20
11am-2pm
at General Public Collective
1060 Virginia Ave
Indianapolis IN
Coffee and exciting snacks are available for donation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
