Revisiting some of these old favorites as an adult has been eye-opening. Sometimes, as a child, you’d notice the adults around you chuckling at your shows, and in those moments you’d simply assume that they were laughing at the same joke you were. Well, maybe they were. But it’s also likely that there was something in that joke that you, at age six, were completely unaware of.
With Looney Tunes this was essential, since they were originally shown as part of the rotating reels at cinemas between the features and the news bulletins and whatnot, very much before televisions were ubiquitous--or even invented. The cartoons had to appeal to the whole audience or risk losing patrons between parts of the showing. They often served a dual purpose as well, advertising the purchase of war bonds, or recruiting for the armed forces, or propagandizing the enemy, or issuing public service announcements. Obviously today we see all sorts of dated ideas presented in those old Looney Tunes shorts, but we also see the things we missed as children, not having had the worldly knowledge we do as adults.
Whether we were watching Yosemite Sam fight off the amorous advances of a jail cell mate or catching Bugs with some naughty literature, it’s all there--and you don’t even have to look too hard.
Like most ‘90s kids, Warner Brothers’ Animaniacs was a staple of my after-school viewing. A couple of years ago, Netflix got the rights to the whole series and had all 99 episodes available to stream.
Friends, my jaw hit the floor more times than could possibly be healthy.
“I was watching this?! The censors let that through?!”
Cue much short-circuiting of the brain.
Possibly the most cited piece of adult humor from Animaniacs is the one pictured above. I certainly didn’t know what it was all about at age 8, but holy cow, do I ever know now. Yikes.
Now, when I was in college, I would schedule all my classes in the mornings, go home and nap, then have my late afternoons and evenings free for homework and rehearsals (drama major, remember?). At some point, I started watching Cartoon Network as a way to pass the time on slow afternoons. I have always appreciated animation as an art form, and in the mid ‘00s there was a spate of truly creative and unique animated shows, but my favorite by far was called Chowder. Sadly short-lived, it lasted only three seasons before it got shunted off into the siding. The show is an example of one of the most diverse variety of mediums used in a single series--ink and paint, computer animation, static backgrounds, watercolors, stop-motion, claymation, puppetry...the list goes on. Artistically it held my attention, but it was also wonderfully whimsical and madcap and had some fabulous built-in opportunities for boundary pushing. One character, Schnitzel, spoke entirely in the word ‘radda’, which allowed for interpretation by the other characters, and on more than one occasion another character would have a pearl-clutching moment as the result of something Schnitzel said, the meaning of which was only ever hinted at. Coming to this show as an adult (mostly) offered me the ability to see it the first time around through a grownup lens, which turned out to be just as much fun as seeing it once as an impressionable young innocent and then again later in life after an excess of bitter, jaded worldliness wormed its way into my psyche. Possibly my favorite exchange in the entire series, though not as filthy as some, is:
“Okay, great, so why are you chuntering on about this, exactly?”
I don’t know. Because subversion is fun? Because it’s nice to have one up on the kiddiewinks and share knowing glances with the other grownups in the room? Because after a while it becomes like a treasure hunt, and you start actively seeking out media you partook of as a child and searching through it with a fine-toothed comb looking for the naughty bits? Because it’s a welcome distraction from this garbage fire of a world we live in?
Maybe I just think that everyone should watch more cartoons.
::shrugs::
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