| Friday, January 7, 2005 |
11:24 - Perils of a Golden Age
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As deliriously awesome as the Adult Swim era is, with its real-time bumps being created every day to introduce specific episodes of favorite cutting-edge animated shows with the self-awareness of a DJ, and incorporating direct viewer feedback and online forum participation as much to mock the viewers mercilessly as to involve them... it's not without its bittersweet casualties.
Only a few years ago, Cartoon Network was a channel full of Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Popeye, and other Golden Age of Animation troves—often presented in an academic and nostalgic manner, as with the "Toon Heads" show that packaged old Chuck Jones and Tex Avery material with historical narration that helped the animation buff arrange it all into a chronologically accurate tapestry, including many now-controversial episodes that would never air on their own. These classics coexisted with the newer shows, the mid-90s flowering of talent from the Tartakovsky-McCracken axis in their "Cartoon Cartoon" round-robin presentation, the "What A Cartoon" show that seemed to present a new possibility for a runaway hit culled every week from the CalArts grads' pitch boards. Between Dexter's Lab, The Powerpuff Girls, their predecessor 2 Stupid Dogs, the first season of Johnny Bravo, and one or two other memorable entries intermingled with all the respectfully prime-timed Golden Age classics, the late 90s seemed like the best thing any animation fan could have hoped for.
The best part of it all, though, was the weird offshoot genre spawned by the unlikely success of Space Ghost Coast to Coast: the ultra-limited-animation phenomenon that showed the world that a show didn't even have to be more than cheekily lazy clip-art to be funny, provided that the writing and the premise were good enough. And as fun a ride as SGC2C was, it couldn't last forever; it was destined to fizzle. But not before doing three things that can never be undone: 1) it created the genre of institutionalized self-mockery in the animation industry (particularly of all the miserable 60s/70s creations that Cartoon Network, as the modern incarnation of Hanna-Barbera, owns the rights to, and which certainly aren't going anywhere on the pop charts in their original conceptions), leading directly to the rich smorgasbord of today's Adult Swim, with everything from frenetic Space Ghost-style clip-art shows (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021) to fully realized, richly animated parodies of the original source material (Venture Brothers, Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law). ...And b) it spun off a weird little sideshow called Cartoon Planet, starring the same basic nexus of characters from SGC2C, minus Moltar and with the magical addition of Brak. This show, which consisted mostly of little random pointless skits that did nothing but let the characters interact and sing and revel in their limited animation, is all but forgotten now. But it was the thing that perhaps did more to solidify the unprecedented, inexplicable atmosphere of the late-90s Cartoon Network than anything else. The skits and songs were typically set to montages of classic animation, playing to the nostalgic glee of the people tuned in to watch Elmer Fudd or Red Hot Riding Hood. And they inspired Cartoon Network to fill the commercial airtime with little blocks of padding called "Groovies" and "Shorties", which were similarly constructed little music videos featuring recut classic animation and composited new stuff. Some were lame, but many were pure gold. And now, like the Adult Swim bumps that disappear into the ether after each night of air, no matter how inspired or hilarious—they're lost to history.
At San Diego Comic-Con 1997, Andy Merrill, C. Martin Croker, George Lowe, and others from the Space Ghost cast had a panel discussion scheduled in one of the upstairs meeting rooms at the San Diego Convention Center. They'd only booked one smallish room, and hadn't expected to fill it. Who could be interested? But my friends and I got there early; by the time the clock reached ten minutes before the panel begun, the line to get in had reached several hundred people in length, and extended from the conference room door down the hallway all the way to the top of the escalators, and continued at the bottom in the main lobby. Andy came out with a video camera and stopped dead: he had no idea so many people would show up. He slowly raised the camera and began filming, right next to us at the front of the line; as he panned down the length of the queue, I heard him breathe an unplanned voice-over: Oh my God.... look at all the people!
Needless to say, it was standing room only. And every three-word character impression coaxed from the panel members sparked roars of laughter that shook the walls.
The third thing that these guys accomplished was to kick off a section of the Cartoon Network website dedicated to the Cartoon Planet universe; it featured home pages for Zorak and Moltar and Brak, written as though done by them, and reviews of pop-culture ephemera like hair-band compilation ads that aired on late-night cable (that's right, they got to make fun of their own advertisers), intermingled with reviews of actual movies and music. This self-awareness, executed with some real quality comedy writing and top-notch character development that went on as much on the website as in the shows over the years, cultivated the sense of audience participation in the whole process. This was all something these guys were making up as they went along, flying blind, trying whatever came to mind and finding that for some reason, most of it stuck. The fans felt like a part of the action. And that's what has led directly to Cartoon Network's embrace of that atmosphere in the Adult Swim block, where enough bitching on the forums will bring back the "Old School Bumps" for a week, or cancel a bad show, or bring well-loved ones back. It's these forum goons who stamped their feet until Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Space Ghost came out on DVD, and whose earnest zeal at buying full-season compilations are bringing Family Guy and Futurama out of production limbo.
It's all exhilarating; it's been a wild ride. We never know what prank they're going to pull on us next (like "Perfect Hair Forever" or the yet-inexplicable Super Milk Chan); we never know what will become the next giddy cult hit. And yet... and yet there are times when I notice that something's missing. Something has died.
Namely, if I turn on Cartoon Network at any other time than the Adult Swim block, I notice that the old late-90s lineup of adoring nostalgia is gone. No more classic-animation blocks. No more Bugs Bunny, no more Tom & Jerry. No more Toon Heads, Tex Avery Show, Chuck Jones Show, Popeye... it's all gone. Time was that that stuff aired around midnight, but that's the audience that Adult Swim picked up. Now, while our attention has been drawn elsewhere, the rest of the Cartoon Network day has slowly been subsumed by high-schooler dreck. Okay, so Megas XLR and Teen Titans have some charms of their own, I'll grant, and McCracken's Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is pleasantly lavish in its animation's smoothness if lacking in PPG-esque punch. There's always Samurai Jack, though it seems strangely hard to find these days. But the fact remains that the current lineup outside the Adult Swim block has slowly been slipping into the "I'd rather not spend my time watching this" realm.
I would give real money for a DVD compilation of some of the ephemera from the Golden Age just prior to the current Golden Age: the Groovies, the Shorties, the Toon Heads, the Cartoon Planet episodes. And oh, what I'd give for an archive of the old CartoonPlanet.com site. (One that works better than this, I mean.) It seems churlish to demand yet more perfection from the offerings they're dishing up today, with all the effort they're putting in to serve the viewer more directly than I believe has ever been done in the history of TV. Yet if there's anything Cartoon Network has demonstrated, it's that they do indeed spend an obsessive amount of time and effort listening to what people want, and if enough people were to ask for the late 90s to be frozen for us in carbonite, they'd probably be right on board with us.
It's worth a shot.
UPDATE: Invaluable insights with Andy Merrill, via Keith & Fred.
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Brian Tiemann
