Some cartoon thoughts

Because I need to think about something happier.

I watched a bit (I couldn't pay full attention; was getting ready for church) of the new DuckTales yesterday. It's really pretty good.

Initially, I couldn't get used to Alan Young not being Scrooge; that's how used to him voicing the character I got (But of course, Alan Young has since gone on to his reward). What actually got me to try out the show was finding out David Tennant was doing Scrooge.

He does a good job. It's a good combination of exasperated, crotchety, and manic.

I also liked how they gave each of the nephews a more distinct personality in this one. And they changed Webbigail for the better - I remember her from the original DuckTales as being kind of a prissy, "I'm gonna tell!" type girl; here she is the weird kid who has a very particular set of skills.

(And yes, I know, the more men's-rights inclined types have complained that "why do all girls in shows have to be smart and tough, now" Well, my bros, it's because in LIFE you have to be smart and tough to survive, both for boys and girls, but ESPECIALLY if you're a girl a lot of the time, and arguably, that is partly something you bros have wrought in the world. So there. You don't like that we're suspicious of your motives? Stop doing stuff that makes us suspicious of your motives, and teach your brothers to be the same way).

Anyway. Webby is maybe a little bit Lisa Simpson (without the pacifism), a little bit Mabel Pines, a little bit Louise Belcher, but she's also the weird kid who doesn't fit in and I kind of like that. I can relate to her.

Anyway. And I got to thinking about the different cartoon-and-similar stables out there:

Among the Disney "main characters," I always preferred Donald to Mickey. Mickey was too much of an everyman, and by the time I was on the scene (the 1970s), he had kind of morphed into a Gary Stu type character, that made him less interesting. Donald, on the other hand - Donald got mad, and threw tantrums, and perhaps even cursed some times, though you couldn't understand him. I think a lot of kids related to Donald, to that sort of impotent rage at the world because things don't work the way they SHOULD.

I liked Minnie and Daisy well enough, but again, at the time I was watching Disney, their characters had been flattened down a little bit - sometimes Daisy came across as a bit vain and mean-spirited, perhaps to match Donald, and that made her more interesting than Minnie.

(Though really? I liked Chip and Dale better)

Among Looney Tunes, Bugs was kind of the Everyman, except he had more of an edge to him. I still remember my Great Books professor, lecturing on the idea of the Comic Hero (I think it was the Decameron we were reading at the time? Maybe?) and the point he made was that we like comic heroes because they brave great dangers, and do it often with a flip remark on their lips, and they win in the end - and we want to see them win, because we want to believe that we can be like that, too.

There was one cartoon - later remade with Daffy with better success - where the animator, from behind the fourth wall, tormented Bugs - erasing bits of him, drawing him funny, and so forth - and Chuck Jones (I think it was) commented he thought that cartoon never really worked with Bugs, because we want to see Bugs come out on top, and with the godlike animator having complete control over him - well, he can't win. And we need to see Bugs win. And the cartoon, when re-made with Daffy, works, because Daffy is kind of a jerk. Even as we acknowledge we are a little like Daffy, he is kind of a jerk - boastful, and self-centered, and prone to pick fights. (Bugs pretty much is content to live and let live until someone messes with him - most of the Elmer Fudd cartoons I remember start with Bugs peacefully reading a book in his burrow, and Elmer shows up and starts trying to shoot him).

I guess I liked Daffy better than Bugs as a kid - again, it's the "jerk who is really kind of like me, deep down" thing. Daffy gets irrationally angry at stuff, he's kind of a coward even though he's prone to run off, half-cocked, into some situation that Bugs would have the good sense to leave alone.

I also liked Wile E. Coyote as a kid, but I just find the cartoons painful to watch now: too much failure.

The third "cartoon like" thing with a sizable stable of characters was The Muppet Show. Again, Kermit was kind of the Everyman character, and again, I related to him less. I liked Fozzie better - and now I think of it, really, wasn't Fozzie kind of desperate for attention and success? And I also liked Gonzo, even though now as an adult, the "masochist" schtick is a little weird and uncomfortable (knowing more now than I knew as a kid).

Funnily, I didn't really like Miss Piggy all that much. I suppose she was the "token female character" (though there were a few others - Janis, for example, and Piggy Sue, a short-lived "competitor" for Miss Piggy's role). I think as a kid I either didn't fully understand her, or I did on a subconscious level and she scared me a bit.

Because Miss Piggy was what the cool kids now call "extra." She was big, she was loud. She wanted attention - shoot, she TOOK attention. I think what I maybe disliked about her when I was a kid was that she really wasn't all that talented* but she ACTED like she was all that. And I think that bothered me.

As an adult, though, I look at her and, in a weird way, I admire her (as much as one can admire a fictional character). She is the very definition of "Never look back, walk tall, act fine" - she puts on a good show of believing herself to be "all that" out among her co-workers - but somehow, I suspect she cried, by herself, alone in her apartment (or even her dressing-room, which would have been more risky: perhaps her dresser or make-up artist knew and was sworn to secrecy).

And really, isn't that kind of what being a functional adult is? Going out to do your job, standing tall, acting like everything is cool and you have a handle on it, but maybe in the privacy of your own home or office crying a little bit because you're tired, but also because you KNOW you aren't "all that" and you're afraid other people know it, too? (Though in reality, most of the other people are probably so worried about YOUR knowing THEY aren't "all that" that they don't even think about it)

(*Really, weren't most of the Muppets kind of giant screw-ups who weren't very good at what they proposed to do? Rowlf and his piano-playing being a possible exception, but - the "actors" like Link Hogthrob were terrible scenery-chewers, some of the singers couldn't sing, Fozzie wasn't very funny, The Swedish Chef never made an edible dish....)

I don't know. Jim Henson once commented that he could "say" things through Kermit the Frog that people would never accept him, as a human, saying. And the idea of animals-as-models-of-humanity goes at least as far back as Aesop.

I just wish I were better at channeling my inner Miss Piggy - or at least the part of her that could keep walking without reacting when feeling slighted, or acting as if she was a big deal.