Ex Situ: Bolt Improves Your Life

December 29, 2008 by The Editor

bolt_bar

A little depressed after the holiday season, or at least after that last over-analyzation? Well, My Super-Charged Life has the cure for the red-and-green blues, courtesy of Disney’s underperforming animated feature, Bolt.

For instance: after spending over 11  hours around your family members, do you feel like committing something ending in -cide? Here’s the fourth lesson from Disney movie Bolt to improve your life:

4.  We need our friends and loved ones even if they are a ragtag bunch

In the movie, BOLT made friends with an alley cat named Mittens and a hilarious hamster named Rhino.  They both were unlikely allies, but they helped BOLT achieve his goals.

In the same way, we need others to help us along our way toward success.  Yes, our group may look a little different than what we imagined, but that doesn’t matter.  We all have our baggage that we bring into relationships.

The key is to recognize and value the relationships we have.  These people have committed themselves to being our friends and loved ones.  I have had to fallback on my family and friends more than once so, I can testify that good relationships are essential.

Sounds like good New Year’s Resolution fodder to me.

Improve Your Life: Things I Love From The Disney Movie BOLT
> Catena Ex Situ

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Bolt, ex situ | 1 Comment »

Ex Situ: The Grinch and Racial Suicide

December 22, 2008 by The Editor

grinch_bar

Joe Crawford from ArtLung sent in this link to a post from Undercover Black Man, which itself links to a seasonal over-analyzation at Lawrence Auster’s View from the Right blog.

Here’s Mr. Auster’s entire article:

As I type, I’m glancing at some grotesque thing on ABC, about the Grinch and Christmas, in which humans interact in brotherhood with a variety of monstrous looking other species, and a little girl has a tender relationship with an unsettlingly hideous but sensitive and kind-hearted being called the Grinch, and everyone loves each other. This is not our society celebrating the beautiful holiday of Christmas. This is the Liberal Controllers of our society carefully teaching children an unnatural and dangerous lie that they would never believe unless they were carefully taught. How many whites will militate against vitally necessary immigration restrictions in the decades to come, how many young white females will be raped and murdered by nonwhites in the decades to come, because of the message of trusting and loving racial aliens that programs like this implant in them?

As an holiday bonus, one can click the link below to read an additional Who-sized comment about the Shrek movies.

Undercover Black Man: Lawrence Auster has a Question
> Catena Ex Situ

Tags: , ,
Posted in Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Shrek, ex situ, politics, racism | 3 Comments »

The Last Days of Lady and the Tramp

December 15, 2008 by The Editor

ladytramp_bar

From The Last Days of Disco, screenplay by Whit Stillman.

CHARLOTTE
Saturday, I took my niece, who’s seven, to see the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp. She loved it! It was so cute. I’m beginning to fall in love with the whole idea of having kids.

ALICE
I hate that movie.

CHARLOTTE
What?

ALICE
It’s so tacky. Not to mention depressing.

CHARLOTTE
This sweet movie about cute cartoon dogs you found depressing?

JOSH
There is something depressing about it, and it’s not really about dogs. Except for some superficial bow-wow stuff at the start, the dogs all represent human types, which is where it gets into real trouble. Lady, the ostensible protagonist, is a fluffy blonde cocker spaniel with absolutely nothing on her mind. She’s great looking but, let’s be honest, incredibly insipid. Tramp, the love interest, is a smarmy braggart of the most obnoxious kind. An oily jailbird, out for a piece of tail, or whatever he can get.

CHARLOTTE
Oh, c’mon.

JOSH
No, he’s a self-confessed chicken thief—an all around sleaze ball. What’s the function of a film of this kind? Essentially it’s a primer on love and marriage directed at very young people; imprinting on their little psyches the idea that smooth talking delinquents, recently escaped from the local pound, are a good match for nice girls from sheltered homes. When in ten years, the icky human version of Tramp shows up around the house, their hormones will be racing, and no one will understand why. Films like this program woman to adore jerks.

DES
God, you’re nuts!

JOSH
The only sympathetic character, the little Scotty who’s so loyal and concerned about Lady, is mocked as old-fashioned and irrelevant, and shunted off to the side.

DES
Isn’t the whole point that Tramp changes? OK, maybe in the past he stole chickens, ran around without a license, and wasn’t always sincere with members of the opposite sex. But through his love for Lady, and beneficent influences of Fatherhood and Matrimony, he changes and becomes a valued member of that rather idealic household.

JOSH
I don’t think people really change that way. We can change our context, but we can’t change ourselves.

ALICE
I agree with Josh. Scotty is the only admirable character. It would have been a much better movie if Lady ended up with him.

DES
I’m really surprised. I think Tramp really changed.

JOSH
Maybe he wanted to change, or tried to change, but there is not a lot of integrity there. First he’d be hanging around the house, drinking, watching ball games, maybe knocking Lady around a little bit. But pretty soon, he’d be back at the town dump chasing tail.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Lady and the Tramp, the female gender, the male gender | No Comments »

Ex Situ: Candy Land

December 5, 2008 by The Editor

candyland_bar

Again, the staff here can’t be accused of non cogitatio ex arcae. A great over-analyzation is a great over-analyzation, no matter what the subject matter or prevailing zeitgeist. So, when we boinged across this really fine ars ludorum analyzation of the sexagenarian board game Candy Land, we were compelled to share:

To begin with, let us view Candy Land as a mathematical entity. It is very nearly a Markov chain, a stochastic process in which, given the current state, future states are independent of past states. (It would be a pure Markov chain if the deck were shuffled after each play; instead, it is a crippled Markov chain coupled to a push-pop stack.) As such, it is a metaphorical representation of the fundamental ideology of the United States; the past is no constraint on the future, and each individual should strive resolutely for personal advance despite whatever the past may hold. The child born in a log cabin may achieve the presidency, an immigrant boy who grows up in the slums of Brooklyn may become a real-estate magnate, an Ivy-educated scion of wealth may wind up on a bread line, and a double green will speed you to the fore. Though there are winners and losers, initial conditions are no determinant of outcome in the freedom of America. The subtext, of course, may be that success and failure is entirely random and has nothing to do with individual initiative and hard work, a concept alien to the Platonic ideal of the American dream, but perhaps a more accurate representation of reality than the Horatio Alger myth.

Any analyzation which uses the term “stochastic” gets 2 bonus points. The analyzation itself gets even better, but you’ll have to click on the link to read the rest:

Play This Thing!: Candy Land > Catena Ex Situ

Tags: , ,
Posted in Candy Land, ex situ | No Comments »

Discriminatory Segregationism in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

November 25, 2008 by The Editor

peanuts_bar

We are thankful here at J. Cart. Overanal.: thankful that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Take, exempli gratia, this still from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973 C.E.):

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Two immediate items of note:

  1. Linus Van Pelt, acting in his customary role as spiritual leader, is sitting at the head of the table.
  2. Franklin, the sole African-American member of the Peanuts ensemble, is sitting all by himself on one side of the table.

Here is a passable video of the sequence, including a nightmarish Guaraldi-seasoned tête-à-tête between Snoopy and a beach chair:

The scene in question is, in fact, somewhat questionable itself: the numbers of chairs and servings fluctuate throughout, giving the meal a disorientating Kubrickian quality. This produces in the scene a sense of unease and tension which reflects the viewers’ discomfort at the casual racism on display. Indeed, Franklin is seated in the malicious beach chair, which humiliatingly places him at an eye level below that of the others.

Though this segregation is not limited to racial issues only: Marcie, though eccentric and possessing of an ambiguous sexuality, is caucasian enough to be allowed to remain close to the rest, but is still seated at the end towards the left side of the table. Linus chooses to seat Marcie as far away from himself as possible, separated from the larger group by the dog. Indeed, the beagle is deemed a more fit companion than any heterodox humans. (Though, perhaps Snoopy is allowed to sit with the elite in due respect for his cooking prowess. It is also noted that Snoopy, in an act of defiant compassion, serves Marcie and Franklin first.) Furthermore, to extrapolate, the only characters exempted which could reasonably join the table next are the obsessive-compulsive Schroeder, the filthy Pig Pen, or the unloved and sadistic Lucy, who, if arriving late, would be forced to sit in one of the chairs next to Franklin and Marcie. Thus, the entire left side of the table would be relegated to odd, unhygienic misfits and belligerent, racial outcasts.

The characters are not evil: Peppermint Patty shows genuine remorse for embarrassing and bullying Charlie Brown, and Linus is often a beacon of compassion and temperance. But the point is made: the virus of casual discrimination is insidious and unaware, and can manifest itself at an early age.

Nota bene: this troubling issue uncovered via Super Punch >Catena Ex Situ

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in ex situ, homosexuality, morality, racism | 6 Comments »

Mini-Analyzations

November 18, 2008 by The Editor

mini_bar_10

  • Has anyone else noticed how the main villains in both Aladdin and The Lion King look like Jonathan Harris, the actor who portrayed Doctor Smith on the TV show Lost in Space?
    -Contributed by Ora S.
  • Popeye seems to be a curious meld of Zen and absurdist philosophies. The Zen nature of Popeye is obvious: “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” Popeye sees himself as existing neither in contrast nor comparison to any other entity, he simply is. His relationship with Olive Oyl can be read as absurdist. In many episodes, Olive willingly leaves Popeye for Bluto (or Brutus). Popeye goes to great lengths to “rescue” her when the relationship goes bad. The memory of these rescues never impresses Olive because we know she will leave Popeye again and again need to be rescued. (”Who are we waiting for? We are waiting for Godot.” Repeat ad infinitum.)
    -Contributed by Chris B.
  • In Muppet Babies, I feel there are two main reasons why Nanny was only shown from the knees down. These are:
    1. to make a running gag
    2. to make the show seem to be even more from a child’s point of view.
    -Contributed by The Editor
  • Of course this is pointless, but I used to notice frequently on Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids that if they were chasing a member of their group, the ensuing crowd of pursuers would also include the one who was being chased. For instance, if Rudy had committed some offense and Fat Albert and the gang chased him across that junk yard, Rudy would also be in the crowd that was chasing him! C’mon guys, spend a half-hour and ink a new cel.
    -Contributed by Ken G.
  • What is the concept of Pokemon? People capture these wild animals, and use them to battle other people who engage in this activity with a hope to have the strongest creatures and the title of “Pokemon Master.” Now let’s pretend this is real. You would go out and capture wild creatures and force them to fight each other. Now aren’t cockfights and dogfights illegal? And if animals were smart enough to do what they were told, I think most people wouldn’t want to do such a horrible things to them! When you think about it, the whole concept of Pokemon is wrong and evil. So I think.
    -Contributed by Xwonka

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Aladdin, Bluto, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Mini-Analyzations, Muppet Babies, Olive Oyl, Pokemon, Popeye, The Lion King, all categories that do not contain themselves, mistakes, morality, philosophy, villains | 2 Comments »

Ex Situ: The World’s Richest Duck

November 12, 2008 by The Editor

scrooge_bar

Michael Barrier has posted an unpublished appreciation of Carl Barks and his creation, Uncle Scrooge McDuck. For those of you playing at home who are unfamiliar with Carl Barks, his Uncle Scrooge comics were eventual the basis/inspiration for the animated TV show DuckTales. Mr. Barrier goes into some detail about the creation, motivation, and evolution of this now-classic character.

Snippet:

As Barks put it in a 1974 interview, “He had lots of money, but he wasn’t a criminal about it.”Of course, a real billionaire who had made himself rich from Montana copper wouldn’t have plunged into the gold fields alone 16 years later. There may be echoes of Andrew Carnegie in Scrooge’s Scottish surname, but the real Carnegie, unlike the fictional duck, hired other people to do such work for him as soon as he could. What Barks was doing, with his young audience in mind and with remarkable thoroughness and ingenuity, was making the reasons for Scrooge’s attachment to his wealth as concrete as possible. If Scrooge carried gold out of the Klondike himself, then of course he’d care about it.

Many DuckTales episodes were almost verbatim from Barks’ comics, so most of the Uncle Scrooge insights apply to the show, too. That should make those J. Cart. Overanal. purists in the readership rest easier.

The World’s Richest Duck > Catena Ex Situ

Tags: , ,
Posted in DuckTales, Scrooge McDuck, ex situ | 1 Comment »

Ex Situ: Carrot and Shtick

November 4, 2008 by The Editor

bugs_bar_11

Cold on the heels of our last article, another one claiming Bugs Bunny for the Jews. The ancient and semi-Yiddish Forward newspaper printed a column last year discussing the concern:

Can we find the rabbi in the rabbit? As far as I can tell, Bugs never uses a word of Yiddish, but he does have a yidisher kop. He has the gift of gab as well as a fine command of Acme products. Poor Elmer — was there ever a Jew named Elmer? — never stands a chance. Of course, it is well known that Bugs comes from a long line of tricksters. He is an Eastern Anansi, an American Hershele Ostropoler. He’s even distantly related to Isaac Babel’s Odessa gangster, Benya Krik.

Carrot and Shtick >Catena Ex Situ

Tags: ,
Posted in Bugs Bunny, ethnicity, ex situ, stereotypes | No Comments »

From the archives: Bugs Bunny is Jewish

October 23, 2008 by The Editor

Contributed by Krissy N.

Me and my friends were recently watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon, a take on the “Tortoise and the Hare”, when we began to notice some things about his behavior:

He was stereotypically Jewish.

It first came to notice at the beginning of the cartoon, when Bugs is reading a book. He reading it backwards, from right to left, turning the pages in that manner as well. Of course, one can read Hebrew or Japanese in this manner, and Bugs is definitely not Japanese.

We then begin to notice other things. Like Bugs’ Brooklyn accent. The stereotypical Jewish person always has a Brooklyn accent.

He kisses people a lot. My Jewish friends pointed this out as something their relatives do often, as well as people they just met. Bugs is awfully friendly…

He’s cheap. There’s a point in the cartoon where he has to cross a river, and instead of paying the bridge toll, he swims across the river.

Of course, being smart asses, we have to add that RABBIT - T = RABBI.

Not to say that Jewish people exhibit any of these characteristics, but they are common stereotypes.

COMMENT: Another thing altogether. In reference to what someone wrote about Bugs Bunny being stereotypically Jewish, one must also note that there is a Bugs Bunny cartoon showing Bugs reminiscing about when he was growing up (as a young rabbit either in the late thirties or early forties) in the Lower East Side. This also implies stereotype to being Jewish.
- Comment by Bugssbunni

COMMENT: Bugs does not have a Brooklyn accent. He has a Bronx accent. Just ask Mel Blanc. Oh wait, he’s dead. But I did hear him say that in an interview. As I long-time NYC area resident (not a native though), I must agree.
- Comment by JasonH2084

COMMENT: Just would like to comment on what someone said about Bugs Bunny have a Bronx accent, and not a Brooklyn one. I have read in several places that Bugs Bunny had a combination of a Brooklyn and Bronx accent.
- Comment by Mameshmeshuga

Tags: , ,
Posted in Bugs Bunny, ethnicity, from the archives, stereotypes | 4 Comments »

Ex Situ: Chicken Run is Communist

October 13, 2008 by The Editor

Lucas E. sent in this Ex Situ for us to share to the world. I couldn’t significantly improve on his missive, so I’ve just reproduced it below:

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned this on your site yet. But, it seems quite obvious to me. Chicken Run is basically Communist propaganda.

A decent analysis of it is contained here:  [>Catena Ex Situ]

The problem isn’t that Mrs. Tweedy is looking to kill the chickens. The problem is she’s trying to increase profits.

The hope of the chickens is not to bargain for better wages, better working conditions, and more time off. Rather, the hope is a worker’s paradise on the hills outside the chicken farm, where chickens can roam free in a world of abundance.

Interesting, no?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Chicken Run, politics, villains | No Comments »

« Older Entries