Archive for the ‘death’ Category
September 17, 2008
Nota bene: We apologize for the lack of updates lately. We are a bit short-staffed as a couple weeks ago one of our editors left for a weekend trip to visit her relatives in Innsmouth, Massachusetts, but she hasn’t returned yet. If you read this, please call or e-mail us: we are worried about you.
Contributed by E. Lewis
To sum up the plot of The Secret of NIMH, Mrs. Johnathan Brisby (we never learn her first name) is desperately trying to save her young son, Timothy, from death. Timothy, a sickly boy, had come down with pneumonia right before the plow comes. To be spared from the evil plow, the family must move but because Timmy’s so sick, he cannot leave the house–hence a plot.
In just that small summary, can you see a gapingly humongous plot hole? Just think, the plow comes year after year, it is nothing new, and yet year after year, all the animals get into an uproar. Now you’d think, if you have to move to a safe location each year because the plow is coming, you’d just relocate to the safe place. Wouldn’t that be so much simpler then packing up everything, getting into a tizzy and rushing about the place praying the plow doesn’t get you? They frankly deserve to die if they are that stupid. I know, I know, if common sense were being used, we wouldn’t have a movie.
To the animals the plow is a sort of Armageddon, an end-all dooms day where everything is destroyed and to save your life, you must heed the warnings and promptly leave. Those who linger will be destroyed. Period. Actually, Armageddon isn’t quite right, the plow is more of a hurricane. Meteorologists track the impending hurricane and warn the designated strike zone to leave the area. People go about boarding up their houses and they take their most precious belongings and family and get out. That is, they do if they’re smart. There are always some who make the news because they’ve seen hurricanes before and nothing’s made them leave and some little silly winds and rain sure ain’t gonna do it. And they sit in their houses until the wind blows the roof off and the rain drowns them all. The plow is that hurricane, there are specific seasons where hurricanes are prevalent and likewise, there are seasons in which the plow becomes active. The smart animals get out before they are destroyed, the stupid ones hang about until the last minute thinking maybe it won’t hit this year. If you are stupid enough to stick around year after year, don’t complain when everything is taken away. Hence you see I have no compassion for the Brisby family. With that many children, you’d think they wouldn’t live right in the path of the plow.
Tags:armageddon, hurricane, Mrs. Brisby, plot hole
Posted in The Secret of NIMH, death, from the archives | 2 Comments »
August 30, 2008
- Another cartoon in which characters have been seen to die is Gargoyles, although I only remember it happening once onscreen. In the episode “City of Stone”, Demona has turned everyone in the city into a stone statue. She then goes on a rampage, blasting the statues apart with vicious glee. It was one of the most disturbing images I’d ever seen in supposedly children’s television.
- Contributed by Kender D.
- The image of her viciously blasting the stone humans wasn’t nearly as disturbing as the way she blasted them. She shattered many of the ones she blasted, but one in particular caught my attention. She blasted the arm off a young woman! She didn’t take the time to shatter her, she just blasted the arm off! “So, Ms. Johnson, how did you lose your arm?” “A humanoid lizard with a hatred of humanity blew it off.” When she turns back to flesh, to her only a moment has passed, yet her arm is gone, leaving a bleeding stump.
- Contributed by BlueNight
- In reply to the whole “City of Stone” death business, Greg Weisman made it pretty clear that a major wound like losing an arm in statue form, would simply mean that the person simply never transmutes back into flesh. Also, there was a significant character death at the end of “Avalon Pt. 3″: the Magus. After the fight with the Wyrd sisters, it’s pretty obvious that his little nap isn’t temporary. “Future Tense” also had a lot of fun killing off all the major characters. Broadway’s death, especially, was very well done.
- Contributed by Jing-Jen Sun
- OK, God forbid that Disney should actually make a teen-oriented show. Gargoyles was great and it handled its death sequences very well. Demona is a psycho killer. She doesn’t care about the lives of humans, so she shot some when they were statues. Big deal. Didn’t see anyone complaining that a whole clan of Gargoyles was killed in the beginning of the show. (oh, and the woman would have awaken to find she had no arms, but wouldn’t have any bleeding stumps, it would just be a stump.) Hey, stuff like that happens. Teens understand this and don’t appreciate all the sugar coating that goes on on teen-oriented shows. The Magus’s death was handled very well. It was tragic, but not pointless. And the deaths in “Future Tense” were all just a dream, made to put a little shock into Goliaths system.
- Contributed by Brooke H.
Tags:bleeding stump, Goliath, humanoid lizard
Posted in Gargoyles, anthropomorphica, death, from the archives, villains, violence | No Comments »
June 14, 2008
We previously published A Freudian Analysis of Beavis and Butthead, but limiting one strictly to Freud nowadays is like limiting one strictly to gauche. That’s why Jeff Schwartz has written a psychoanalytic analysis of Beavis and Butthead, although he inexplicably does “not believe the psychoanalysis of fictional characters is useful.” The only rational explanation of this opinion is that his essay was written before the existence of The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations. Below, there is a representative excerpt of the essay:
The threat of castration, represented by Woman’s lack, is essential to subject formation, and Beavis is clearly outside of this system. Not only does his reflection tell him Bjork has a “schlong,” but when he and Butthead watch another video, which features a (supposedly) nude woman in a bathtub, Butthead expresses the hope that the woman will stand up, revealing her body to them. Beavis thinks that she will not, speculating that “she’s embarrassed because she has a stiffie.” Butthead attempts to explain that women cannot get erections, but the existence of humans without penises is unimaginable to Beavis.
On the Couch with Beavis and Butthead >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Cornholio, Freud, Oedipus Rex
Posted in Beavis and Butt-Head, death, ex situ, homosexuality, violence | 1 Comment »
May 26, 2008
We know that most of you out there in academia are currently thinking:
Traumatizing anime? Isn’t that some sort of redundant tautology?
While it’s true that for every single Kiki’s Delivery Service there are about seventeen Sister Lovecraft’s Ninja Maid Story Neko Octopus Ninja Room, one must realize that “traumatizing” is truly a relative term. Only the crème de la crème of subjectively disturbing, stomach-turning sequences have descriptions like this:
- Aforementioned naked chick proceeds to get the hell out by tearing off the head of any guard unfortunate enough to be in her way. One has his legs ripped off; another is lobotomized by a ballpoint pen. All of this is done by a pair of horrifying invisible nightmare arms sprouting from her back.
- After determining that guards’ blood is in fact a kind of magenta neon paint, Lucy finishes by beheading a clumsy secretary and using her corpse as an improvised meat-shield before going on her merry naked way.
Now what self-respecting 16-year-old male wouldn’t think that was The Awesomest Thing Ever? Answer: none. But we digress.
The 5 Most Traumatizing Anime Sequences in Recent History: A Scholar’s Guide >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Sister Lovecraft's Ninja Maid Story Neko Octopus Ninja, traumatizing
Posted in Akira, Elfen Lied, Fullmetal Alchemist, Kiki's Delivery Service, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, anime, death, ex situ, villains, violence | No Comments »
May 24, 2008
- A discovery while viewing Underdog- It’s rather baffling to observe that Underdog, his alter-ego Shoeshine Boy, Sweet Polly Purebred, Riff Raff & Tap Tap the Chisler (an evil Underdog look-alike) are the only anthropomorphic dogs in an otherwise all-human city. And no one bats an eye over this!
-Contributed by Brendan S.
- There was one major exception to the “nobody dies” rule in G.I. Joe. I refer to, of course, the memorably haunting two-part “alternate universe” episode. A group of Joes went through a dimensional portal to a world where Cobra had taken over. This episode contained several shocking scenes (like a Cobra Commander statue replacing the Statue of Liberty), but none more so than scenes of the Joes coming across their own skeletons, or rather those of their counterparts from that dimension. In that universe, the entire Joe team had been killed, and we saw the remains to prove it. One other note: being an 80’s cartoon, that episode’s obvious underlying message was, “this is what will happen if the Commies ever take over the U.S.” A similar theme, with aliens replacing terrorists, was later taken up in Exo-Squad (easily the most disturbing “children’s” cartoon I’ve ever encountered.)
-Contributed by Christopher H.
- One thing that always bothered me was that back when Scooby’s villains were just people in scary costumes: why did they have super strength? I mean, you would see them pick up insanely heavy objects like sofas or filing cabinets and throw them like they were pillows, or they would smash through wood or metal doors, or even walls with their bare hands. They should have been very seriously injured, but they just kept on going like it was nothing.
-Contributed by Tim M.
- The only problem I have here is the origin of Sancho Panda. I understand he’s a parody of Sancho Panza from Don Quixote but Pandas have never been found in Spain where the show takes place. Plus, I’m not too sure of this, but Coyotes aren’t exactly numerous in Spain either.
-Contributed by Dante W.
Tags:alternate universe, Don Quixote, Sancho Panda, skeletons
Posted in Don Coyote, Exosquad, G.I. Joe, Mini-Analyzations, Scooby-Doo, Underdog, anthropomorphica, death | No Comments »
May 9, 2008
Back in March of 2000, The Humanist magazine published an article by Lucia K. B. Hall entitled “Toy Stories for Humanists?” This interesting article presents thematic elements in both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 from a humanistic perspective. The author is convinced that each movie contains “a carefully thought-out and detailed humanist message.” Here’s an excerpt:
Seen as such an allegory, Toy Story becomes a carefully wrought description of two opposing world views: naturalism and supernaturalism. Woody and the other toys in the playroom represent the naturalistic world view. They are mechanisms–material objects that have a material source, a real-world history and origin (Mattel or Playskool or such), and no function other than to be just what they are. Woody embodies basic American Pragmatism. He’s a toy, a mechanism, a material being; he knows it and is content with it.
The article itself is hosted at The Free Library, and is linked below.
>Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Buzz, humanist, pragmatism, Woody
Posted in Toy Story, Toy Story 2, death, ex situ | No Comments »
April 25, 2008
Contributed by The Editor.
One of the best parts of the delightful animated movie Monster House is that it is essentially undatable. The film relies on character and situational humor rather than modern pop-culture references. A movie like Shrek, which relies heavily on pop-culture references, is pinpointed at a certain date. Twenty years from now, will people get references to Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible? However, just because a movie doesn’t rely on overt pop-culture doesn’t mean that we can’t determine when it takes place. Even without the caption at the beginning of the movie, we can tell that The Iron Giant takes place in the 1950s.
So, when does Monster House take place? I contend that the movie takes place c. 1987. I also believe that the exact date was made deliberately fuzzy, so it wouldn’t quite feel like it’s taking place at any precisely definable year.
- Technology:
- Z uses a cassette tape, not a CD.
- Skull uses a pager, not a cell phone.
- Cars: The cars in the movie are decidedly not modern. Furthermore, they look much like late 1980s car models.
- Video games:
- Thou Art Dead is graphically similar to other platform arcade games of the late 1980s (c.f. Ghosts ‘N Goblins (1985), Altered Beast (1988)).
- There is a short clip of Chowder playing a home game system, the graphics of which resemble the quasi-abstract style of some Atari 2600 or Intellivision games.
- Tone: The tone of the movie seems highly influenced/inspired by 1980s “kids in danger” movies. (c.f. Explorers (1985), The Goonies (1985), Monster Squad (1987)) Hallmarks of these types of films are:
- The kids go on an adventure without their parents. Often adults actually hinder or interrupt the adventure.
- Supernatural or sci-fi elements are common. The filmmakers were not afraid to make these elements somewhat scary, even at the risk of frightening younger members of the audience.
- The kids are in real danger of getting killed.
The staff here at The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations encourages intelligent readers to add examples or counterexamples of the principal thesis in the comments section.
Tags:1980s, Altered Beast, Chowder, monster, Monster Squad, The Goonies
Posted in Monster House, Shrek, The Iron Giant, death, violence | 2 Comments »
April 8, 2008
Most of the staff here at J. Cart. Overanal. spent their childhoods basking in the Rubik’s cube-colored glow of the 1980s. When we weren’t playing Burgertime on our Intellivisions, we were plopped in front of the TV, enjoying the most toyetic entertainment DiC had to offer.
Let me remind you that we are talking about the 1980s: Thriller. Ronald Reagan. Trapper Keepers. ALF ran for four seasons.
So this Ex Situ is what we consider a warning. When all of the young white boys who were watching cartoons of the 1980s become old white men in charge of our nation’s government and economic infrastructure, humanity is surely doomed.
Without further ado: The 10 Most Insane, Child-Warping Moments of 80s Cartoons.
>Catena Ex Situ
Tags:1980s
Posted in Care Bears, G.I. Joe, Jem, My Little Pony, Smurfs, Spiral Zone, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Inhumanoids, Thundercats, Transformers, death, ex situ, violence | No Comments »
March 6, 2008
Contributed by Panu V.
My point is about the slight increase in morbid death-based humor during the later production seasons of Animaniacs. I can give a detailed view of the phenomenon. You see, when examining those episodes more closely, it turns out most of those deaths were the ones of several famous historical persons. The show had, of course, dealt with history and its figures since the very beginning, but in a slightly different way from the start of 3rd season.
First example is “The Presidents Song”, which, as many of you probably know, sings briefly about the Presidents of the United States. I couldn’t help but notice that it was a bit different in some parts from any previous Animaniacs song numbers. The mentioning of presidents being killed during their term was recurring in lyrics/background scenes at least three times (there was also going to be a fourth one about J.F. Kennedy, but it was removed from the final version - wonder why?). Also included was this lyric about Zachary Taylor: “His breath killed friends whenever he smoked”. All this felt slightly odd to me.
But there were still more similar scenes. Another song number “The Ballad of Magellan” tells about Magellan’s journey across the sea in search of the East Indies. Of course, also included is the scene of him being killed by natives’ spears - however a couple of feet offscreen. He appears as a ghost at the end of the song. And in the 5th season, there was yet another song number (anyone notice a disturbing pattern here?), dedicated to Attila the Hun. In this one, the writers actually “rewrote” Attila’s death, because he is described (and shown on-screen) as choking on too much food during his wedding. His burial is seen immediately after.
None of these instances are really that detailed or play a major part in the script, of course, but were still quite a big change from the show’s first seasons, where almost nothing was shown to represent death, either comical or otherwise, even if it meant altering history (one 1st season episode dealt with Czar Nicholas II and Grigori Rasputin, and no references were made to either Czar’s son’s hemophilia or Rasputin’s murder - he’s simply fired). And the change didn’t stop in historical parodies, either: in a 3rd season Slappy Squirrel cartoon, her enemies hold a fake funeral to lure her into a trap. Many morbid jokes were obviously slipped in. I also don’t think I’ve seen another “family show” which has featured zombies - and by that I mean “real” zombies, as in living corpses, and not any kind of hypnotized people or something. Animaniacs did this in the 4th season episode “Night of the Living Buttons”.
Tags:Attila the Hun, JFK, Magellan, Presidents, Zachary Taylor
Posted in Animaniacs, death, from the archives | 1 Comment »
January 24, 2008
Contributed by “PRomanIV”
I read in one of the dozens of over-analyzations on this site that Japanese “children’s” anime has a tendency to allow a bit more violence than western cartoons. This got me to thinking: Have you ever noticed just how ridiculously far Voltron (the original, I’ve never seen the new one) goes to insure that NO ONE DIES.
I’m doing this from memory, but let me site the examples I can think of:
(more…)
Posted in Voltron, anime, death, from the archives, violence | 1 Comment »
