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What was up with Observer in "Pumaman"?
I was very disturbed by the generally refined, intelligent Observer's behavior in the super-stinker "Pumaman". He runs onstage to greet Ortega with a baseball cap on backward and scarcely a trace of his accent. This is not the Observer I know at all.
After a thorough investigation, I think I may have found the answer. Another un-Observer-esque thing about the scene was his apparent lack of a brain through out. In "The Thing that Couldn't Die" (::moan::), one of the Observers mentions that they can be up to 50 yards away from their brains. I would think that reception would start getting a tad fuzzy after a bit, and by the time he was across the castle from the thing...well...he'd be well on his way to "Space Mutiny" level IQ. Ugh.
But where was his brain? I *know* he wouldn't just leave it somewhere, and I read the transcript of "Phantom Planet" -- Pearl didn't do anything to it and he seemed fairly normal. So, what happened? Curious, I checked the "Werewolf" transcript and from the 22 words he said, he seemed like the same old Observer. After viewing it, however, I noted that he still didn’t have his trusty gray matter anywhere in sight.
Maybe they simply lost the prop or something. I don’t know. But I think it's safe to say that *something* occurred here that The Brains aren't telling us.
Between the Godzilla Genealogy Bop and Fantasia 2000, I’ve started to wonder:
What’s up with the anthropomorphic duck genealogy?
I believe we’ve already discussed the anthroed Disney character thing in this section, and F2K’s “Pomp and Circumstance” segment backs this theory up fairly well. But according to this piece, every anthroed duck in the Disneyverse is directly descended from Donald and Daisy. Drake, LP, Huey, Dewy, Louie, Uncle Scrooge…
Make sense? Didn’t think so. According to Sherrie', the old Carl Barks comics establish that Donald’s nephews, or those that Duck Tales would have us think are his nephews, are actually his sister, Della’s kids. And one can assume that Uncle Scrooge is quite simply his mother or father’s brother. This would make Scrooge the triplet’s great-uncle, and that checks out. Fine. But throw the F2K theory into the mix. What does the voice say? (I couldn’t help myself) How could Donald possibly be on the ark when Uncle Scrooge wasn’t? Unless the flood came after Duck Tales. In which case St. Canard would have been completely wiped out and…and now I’m just depressed.
And where were the other anthroes while this was all going on? Shouldn’t there have at least been some quasi-anthroes running around half-evolved? Certainly they’re not going to claim that the ducks evolved before the mice. Daria knows that Mickey is their spokesperson, after all.
::sigh:: Get your facts straight, people.
I already have input! Lily Potter writes:
Lily wants to know:
And this goes beyond the typical "It's just a mask. He still looks and sounds the same," argument. She's really thought this one out.
Do the writers really expect us to believe that, between the level of curiosity expressed in "A Duck By Any Other Name", the multiple times he's been in jail, and the hospital visits in Dead Duck, Bad Luck Duck, and others, when he showed up, and was apparently operated on, in full costume. Do medics routinely perform surgery without finding out the patient's name? Just how did LP fill out the multitude of forms those nights?
Alright. So there’s the Darkwing-verse, the Nega-verse, the Alterna-verse, the “Uni”-verse, whatever verse Bonkers resides in, the Neitherworld, the Discworld, the Everworld, the Realm of That One Superhero Team, and many, MANY, more where those came from. Lily and I have been pondering them for sometime now and have come up with a series of questions.
The first few are rather obvious: Are there actually other verses floating around out there? Where does one end and the next begin? Can one travel between them? Is the portal to the Nega-verse, in fact, in a toilet in New England?
But once you’ve scratched the surface with questions like these, it becomes necessary to explore further. Let’s assume that there are two verses - the human-verse and the anthro-verse. So, we see cartoon characters (the antroes) as two-dimensional with very few details. Is the anthro-verse inhabited by three-dimensional, life-like anthroes who sit around watching cartoons of two-dimensional humans with little detail (think Lucky Piquel)? And while we’re on the subject, could there be a place where toons and humans co-exist? Furthermore, do some of these anthroes wish they were humans, in much the same way certain helpless fanatics wish we…er…*they* were anthroed-ducks?
This should get you started. Right now, I have a composition to write and piccies to draw. But I shall leave you with this: Mainecoon once suggested that inspiration is merely a tapping into the life of another somewhere in space and time (think Twitching Channels). In that case, does it work both ways? Is someone writing about YOU every time you get an idea for a story?
Note: There are no spoilers in the following text. In fact, it’s not even really about the movie itself. The movie in question could just as soon be about homicidal geese, as far as the plot is concerned. This pondering is about a moral conflict. And it’s not really much of a pondering, anyway. It’s mostly just another essay. Only shorter. And I didn’t have anything else written. So here it is. Oh, yes. I wrote it the weekend that it was released.
I’ve waited for this moment for quite some time. I’ve dedicated the past two years of my life to convincing the world that animation is not just for kiddies. The past 13 months have been devoted to clearing up the common misconception that Disney is the only animation studio in town and, more specifically, have primarily been concerned with promoting DreamWorks when ever possible. And this movie has only reaffirmed my conviction that these beliefs and values are entirely valid.
So, what’s the problem? Well, quite simply, I feel…strangely dissatisfied. After all of the bickering, the strange looks, the evil Blockbuster/theater workers. After all of my favorites have been brutalized by critics and ignored by the general populous, here is finally an exceptionally good animated film that gets the piece of the pie it so rightly deserves. And I couldn’t be happier for the movie, the characters, the company, the people who spent two entire years of their lives designing Fiona’s hair… They deserve it.
But, again, I feel dissatisfied. Even a bit betrayed. I feel quite like Daria in “Quinn the Brain.” “…you didn't want this identity, but if they take it away, you've got nothing. What do you do?” If the whole of civilization starts invading my territory, my being an outcast animation geek, who am I? What am I left with? Hold on. I feel another analogy coming... I feel like…Doug in that one episode where everyone in town starts wearing his outfit and they don’t believe it when he says he’s NOT conforming and he has, in fact, ALWAYS worn the outfit, and he feels he’s got to change his look, and, even though it eventually blows over, he still feels really, really violated. Yes. I feel like Doug. I’ve been violated.
And, possibly even more so, I’m kind of irritated that El Dorado didn’t get any of the glory. While not having quite the lesson in morals or values, I still hold the conviction that El Dorado was grossly mistreated. But I suppose I’ll just have to be contented with being proud that my little Shreky-weky did so durn well and with the knowledge that this will all blow over eventually and that I still get to be one of El Dorado’s very few die-hard fans.
Congratulations.
I've been thinking about how Sweet is the first African American character to appear in a Disney animated film. This train of thought lead me to the question:
Do they anthropomorphic toons practice racial discrimination?
It would be nice to think that discrimination just doesn’t exist in the toon realm. That just seems a little far-fetched, though.
Animals, we know, are naturally prone to discriminate. Anytime a hamster chooses cheddar cheese over American, it has discriminated between the two. Discrimination is, after all, merely a preference for on thing rather than another.
So, let’s assume that anthroes do discriminate. One first thinks of racial discrimination. So, that’s brown dogs against black and white against auburn. But, then again, wouldn’t pitting breed against breed be more fun? Terriers vs. spaniels, retrievers vs. Dalmatians. So, speciesism should be twice as fun, right? Dogs vs. cats vs. mice. Interspecieal marriages were probably frowned on until the ‘90s. Come to think of it, if Maid Marion was King Richard and Prince John’s niece, should she have not been a lioness? But, no! We can’t have a fox and a lion get married! Even so, almost 25 years later, Binky and Herb Muddlefoot, a chicken and a duck, are happily married with two kids. Why stop there, though? There’s genusism, family rivalries, heck! We’ve got a whole classification system to work with!
See, we don’t have this problem, as there’s only one “dominant” species. As the Prince of Egypt soundtrack says, “There is just one race: humanity.” Therefore, in a world with several different classes walking around on two legs, all kinds of things are possible.
Fay Weber has replied to the question thusly:
I’ll leave you with a Terry Pratchett quote, which rank up there with Douglas Adams and Htom Sirveaux:
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because – what with trolls and dwarfs and so on – speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
August's pondering, sent in by Fay Weber:
Fay asks-
Alright. [cracks knuckles] Before we get too far into this, I would like to point out that we almost witness Milo and CatDog relieving themselves. Likewise, Wacko Warner, Jake Morgendorffer, Dib, and Chuckie Finster have all made excursions to the throne room, not to mention the other allusions to the act in many modern cartoons.
But the point remains. These cases are few and far between. Either these characters have exceedingly large bladders, or there’s something amiss. It’s…almost like they don’t exist, or something.
[green, superimposed caption reading “SATIRE” flashes across screen.]
Ahem. Lily speculates that it’s due to the fact that there are better things to spend money animating than restroom breaks.
What about literature? she asks of me. In Harry Potter, it seems that the topic isn’t even brought up until Goblet of Fire: "Only this morning, for instance, I took a wrong turning on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I have never seen before, containing a really rather magnificant collection of chamber pots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. But I must keep an eye out for it. Possibly it is only accessible at five-thirty in the morning. Or it may only appear at the quarter moon--or when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder." ~ Albus Dumbledore
But whatever the explanation, one can be glad that potty breaks ARE kept to a minimum.
September's Pondering is an essay I started a while back and never finished.
Inside Megsy’s Head
I was just watching “Inside Binkie’s Brain” when I realized that I don’t agree with Megs’ “inside the villains brain” thing at all. His little hero isn’t tied up. In fact, it’s running around just like DW’s. Unfortunately, it’s a tad confused, much like our good buddy Mr. Volt. See, here’s my theory: when he was electrocuted, it fried his brain. I believe we all agree on that. But, when he was thrown against the wall, his little hero escaped, not unlike Binkie’s. Instead of being your typical DW-ish villain, though, he’s a defender of the little guy. By trying to get rid of Ham and Prina, he was avenging the victims of bullies everywhere. By liberating light bulbs, he’s, well, freeing enslaved peoples. And he never really looks for unnecessary trouble, he just does what he needs to in order to free the bulbs, then steps out of the way without causing too much significant damage. I also find it interesting that "Elmo" means "protector."
I guess I could take this argument up with several other villains, however Megavolt happens to be the one fresh on my mind at the moment. See, he’s a hero. Just a different kind.
For October 2001, I turn again to the clothing theme which was first explored last August. This time, however, rather than exploring clothinglessness, I ponder quick clothing changes.
I have always been bothered by the incident in El Dorado in which Tulio and Miguel magically revert to their typical outfits during the It’s Tough to be a God sequence. Our godly heroes begin the song decked out in their divine robes, then go on to consume a large amount of one intoxicating liquid or another. The sloshed duo, after dancing around a bit, jump through a couple of hoops and are magically reclothed in their normal garments. This worried me, but I never considered using it as a pondering until Lily pointed out during Emperor’s New Groove that, after Kuzco discards Pacha’s hat and blanket-y thing, which were previously being used as Kuzco’s disguise, Pacha is wearing them in the next scene. Thinking back, I was reminded of Steelbeak’s hyperactive robe/suit in Cleanliness is (is) Next to Badliness, as well as Tanya and Anastasia’s dresses.
What’s up with this? Do characters have wardrobe people standing off screen only to change their clothes every time the camera is off them? Maybe they’re like those dolls that, when you put warm water on their faces, makeup magically appears. Are they just trying to mess with our minds, or is there some reason these changes occur? Who could guess?
All I know is that it couldn’t possibly be just because the animators and continuity people are careless.
November, 2001 - In honour of Shrek's video release:
What is Fiona princess OF?!
We never see her parents. We didn’t know, beyond a sketchy estimation of a day-long trip from Duloc, where the smeg she’s even from. Let’s say she was banished from her kingdom. I can see how it might be considered blasphemy for a princess to turn into an ogre and her parents, fearing embarrassment, might lock her away until such time that she receives “true love’s first kiss” (bah, humbug!) But wouldn’t someone find it odd that the young princess disappeared for years, then suddenly reappeared with her “true love.” And, besides, once she finally did meet her “true love”, would she not have attempted to notify someone? So, maybe the plan was to simply leave her on her own for all eternity and claim that she had met with some terrible accident.
So, assuming that were the case, she certainly would not have been left with any supplies, any education, any assistance. She would not expect anyone to wait on her hand and foot. But wait. She seemed to remember the conditions of her curse. So, yeah. She would have had to have been old enough to realize who she was and what she was entitled to (which would also explain her…less than self-serving nature…). And now I’m just talking in circles.
Whatever. Suffice it to say, there are far more fairy tale princesses than there are kingdoms to facilitate them.
December 2001
Marissa Kilgore writes:
