Be My Guest (Redux)
Note: The following post is based off a longer post originally posted on January 11th, 2005. I wasn’t very good about maintaining my blog back then and lost the 3-4 posts from this era, but thankfully the Internet Wayback Machine saved them for me.
I’ve been a life-long lover of animation and have been watching cartoons for as long as I can remember. Unlike most children, I never really stopped watching cartoons. The Simpsons began in 1989-1990, while I was still in elementary school, and I’ve been watching almost every Sunday (and Thursday) night since season two or three. I was also indoctrinated in the usual Disney fare as a youth. I really was a great time to love cartoons, as Disney’s second golden age came around the same time The Simpsons first aired. I still recall going into the theater to watch Oliver and Company-not Disney’s best effort, but the film that preceeded the immensely popular The Little Mermaid.
While Disney’s films were popular with kids, they struck a false chord with me. My parents were big believers in reading to my sister and I when we were young, and thus we knew Hans Christian Anderson’s wonderful tale before we saw The Little Mermaid. Even as a child, something just didn’t quite feel right about the Disney company’s treatment of their source material. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned to accept the sugarization of Disney’s fare while still resenting that feeling that kids couldn’t handle the classic fairy tales that served kids well up until the motion picture arrived.
I’ve also been a long-time fan of Looney Tunes, which are grand examples of short cartoons which appeal to young and old alike. In a perfect world, Warner Brothers would recognize the brilliance in that cast of characters instead of butchering them with the recent series of films and tv shows they have appeared in. The only recent decent effort that I can think of off the top of my head was the short-lived Duck Dodgers series, but even that was followed by the unwatchable Loonatics Unleashed.
Of course, if copyright laws around the world were more sane than they are today, corporations would have less incentive to milk old cartoon characters (or dead celebrities) in horrible ways. The last thing I want to see in the retirement home is He-Man trying to sell me robotic vacuum cleaners.
Tags: cartoons, corporations