Here’s a great 10-minute mini-documentary on the artistry and influence of Bill Melendez, the animator who created most of the Peanuts specials we all know and love. Very interesting, especially how it ties in the Peanuts specials with Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Wes Anderson. It’s worth short time it takes to watch. (via Cartoon Brew)
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine
1 Comment | 
A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown, psych, video | Tagged: Alfred Hitchcock, Peanuts, Rushmore, Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson | 
Permalink
Posted by The Editor
Contributed by Alexander R.
One of the things I remember strongly from watching cartoons as a child was the names. Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble. George Jetson. I thought it marvellous that the names fitted the surroundings, and I delighted in spotting the essentially terrible puns that was every non-main-character name in The Flintstones. (Actually the strongest thing I remember was being so frustrated at the super-obvious plot turns in The Flintstones. I could see the misunderstanding or conflict coming so far ahead that I had to leave the room until the inevitable happened and I could carry on watching.) But names in The Flintstones were understandable. They were named after stone because it was the dawn of civilization, and they were surrounded by stone. Not much imagination required. But The Jetsons was our future. This meant that our world turned into their world over time. So where did the names come from?
The 1881 census of Great Britain showed that the top nine surnames were Smith, Jones, Williams, Brown, Taylor, Davies, Wilson, Evans, and Thomas. A recent survey showed the country’s top nine surnames were exactly the same, in exactly the same order. Names are chosem according to fashion, while surnames are passed down from parent to child. The same survey did note the dying out of surnames such as Balls, Death, and Shufflebottom, so we can see that bad names can die out. It also showed an increase in foreign surnames such as Zhang, Singh, and Patel, as immigration brings names with them. But none of this explains the arisal of entirely new names, such as Jetson, Spacely and Cogswell. In this article, I posit a few theories as to how such names could develop.
The first is name mutation. When people move to a country with a different language, their name may be difficult to pronounce, or may lose subtleties when transliterated into the local alphabet and pronunciation system. The immigrants may alter their name to fit in with the new culture. So George Jetson’s antecedents may have been Jessens, Janssens, Jeong Suns, or Jha-Sas, who gave up their heritage to ease assimilation into American (or wherever The Jetsons is set) culture.
The second possibility could arise from gender equality. While there isn’t a lot of evidence that women’s rights has a strong hold in the future, today we can see a rising issue of tradition versus equality in the concept of surnames. While a woman can keep her own surname when marrying, the question still remains: whose surname will the child take? Double-barrelled names are one option, if not a long term one, as double-barrelled marries double-barrelled and surnames grow exponentially. Another solution is that boys take the father’s name, and daughters take the mother’s name. However, this option can create large amounts of confusion. Let us assume for this article that a third solution is developed in the future: portmanteau. Upon a marriage, a new surname is created, using half of the man’s name and half of the woman’s. The order and proportion would probably be juggled to produce a suitable-sounding name. So when Ms. Nakamura marries Mr. Gruber, they both take the name Grumura, or Nakaber, or whatever they decide between them sounds good. So through generations of Concepcións, Garcías, Johnsons and Powells, one can arrive at a surname such as Cogswell.
The third option is a totally different approach to surnames. Take your fathers? Whatever? So last century. One still can’t legally change your name until eighteen, except in cases of extremely stupid parents. A judge in New Zealand determined that a nine-year-old is legally allowed to change her given name, if that name is Tallulah Does the Hula from Hawaii. But as Generation Y takes over, and young people grow increasingly determined to set their own stamp on themselves, it becomes a rite of passage to choose your own surname. Then surnames would change with fashion. If technology is sexy, technological names will arise. Jet? Jets are cool. Add a ‘son’ to make it sound like a surname should, and young George is off!
The final possibility I will touch on only briefly, as I am aware it has been discussed before, and that is nuclear holocaust. The theory that the world of The Jetsons is on unnecessarily tall and fragile pillars because the ground has become a nuclear wasteland upon which no human could survive is not one I have invented. But suffice it to say that rebuilding from an apocalyptic showdown between man and machine may inspire many to set aside reminders of the past. Indeed, there is a certain comfort to the thought that we are not connected to the atrocities that took place in the vast expanse beneath the clouds known only as “The Below”. Worry about the flesh-eating mutants that roam the surface? Me? Don’t be silly. They’re from another era. They ate people like Smith and Jones. My name is Jetson, and I will live forever.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine
1 Comment | 
The Flintstones, The Jetsons | Tagged: 1881 census of Great Britain, Cogswell, portmanteau | 
Permalink
Posted by The Editor
It seems to me rather easy to claim one’s writing to be Freudian by simply peppering with “id,” “ego,” and “superego,” and perhaps throwing in “cigar” or two. This is much in the same way that episodes of BraveStarr can be repurposed into Law & Order scripts by replacing all musical cues with “chung-chung” and/or Jerry Orbach.
So I am unqualified to testify as to the verisimilitude of the following Ex Situ, which is a review of The Cat in the Hat that appeared in The Koala, the student humor magazine of UCSD.
After pooh-poohing the righteous rantings of the waterlogged Christ figure, the Cat begins to juggle several icons of Western culture, most notably two books, representing the Old and New Testaments, and a saucer of lactal fluid, an ironic reference to maternal loss the two children experienced when their mother abandoned them “for the afternoon.” Our heroic Id adds to this bold gesture a rake and a toy man, and thus completes the Oedipal triangle.
Freud on Seuss > Catena Ex Situ
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine
Leave a Comment » | 
BraveStarr, Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat, ex situ, morality, psych | Tagged: Jerry Orbach, Law & Order, oedipal, superego | 
Permalink
Posted by The Editor
You are currently browsing the The Journal of Cartoon Overanalyzations blog archives for May, 2009.
