Archive for the ‘ex situ’ Category
November 12, 2008
Michael Barrier has posted an unpublished appreciation of Carl Barks and his creation, Uncle Scrooge McDuck.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:Uncle Scrooge, Carl Barks, Klondike
Posted in DuckTales, Scrooge McDuck, ex situ | No Comments »
November 4, 2008
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:yidisher kop, shtick
Posted in Bugs Bunny, ethnicity, ex situ, stereotypes | No Comments »
October 6, 2008
Here’s the first in the previously-alluded-to series of videogame over-analyzations. For those purists out there: fret not. We don’t plan on doing these all that often. Our primary focus is and will always be Cartoon Over-Analyzations.
Unfortunately, the closest any of the staff has gotten to playing BioShock is: about five years ago, one of us got half-way through System Shock 2. Accursed monkeys! Along with rave reviews, BioShock attracted a flurry of discussion pertaining to Objectivist elements subtly and not-so-subtly within. Busy game site Kotaku presented an excellent article in early 2008 which discussed the pertinent themes primarily through interviews with the president of the Ayn Rand Institute, Yaron Brook, and the game’s designer, Ken Levine.
“It seems to me that [Levine has] misrepresented what Ayn Rand believes and her ideals beyond objectivism,” [Brook] said. “He’s setting it up to fail. He believes, based on what I’ve read, that any system that is absolutist is ultimately going to lead to disastrous effect. Any system of black and white, any system of ultimate morality. In many cases that true. But I think what lessens the game is that misinterpretation of objectivism.”
Et cetera. Would you kindly check it out.
No Gods or Kings: Objectivism in BioShock >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:would you kindly, objectivism, Andrew Ryan, Ayn Rand
Posted in BioShock, System Shock 2, ex situ, politics | No Comments »
October 2, 2008
Seth McFarlane’s intermittently amusing Family Guy is a bit of a controversy around the offices here. On one hand, it constantly uses repetitious non sequitur shock gags to fool semi-stoned brains into thinking they are watching something funny. On the other hand, it is terribly, lazily animated. A Manichean dilemma!
Via Cartoon Brew, we found this nicely thorough piece by Kyle Evans analyzing the style and content of Family Guy, with extra emphasis towards Mr. McFarlane’s Cavalcade of Comedy’s Super Mario Bros. parody. It’s like Mr. Evans was able to extract a beautiful geode of pure reason from our collective consciousness. (i.e. we agree with everything he says) Here’s a vivisection:
Also exactly the same is the character designs, with Mario looking like a cross between Brian and Peter, while Princess Peach looks like Lois in a pink dress. Apparently Seth never learned to draw from any other perspective than a three quarter front on. This insistence on keeping all characters at this angle creates an offputting effect when you have characters conversing – which is the majority of Seth’s work; endless, mind numbing conversations. Having two characters side by side on a slight angle talking to one another creates this bizarre effect as though they’re staring just past one another - there’s absolutely no sense that these characters are truly engaged in conversation. It doesn’t help that you hardly ever see a non-talking character animated or that these conversations are carried entirely by the moving of the lips.
The full article has diagrams and audio-visual aids. Interesting, even if you disagree.
The “Art” of Seth McFarlane > Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Stewie, Princess Peach, Seth McFarlane, Manichean
Posted in American Dad, Family Guy, Super Mario Bros., ex situ | No Comments »
September 21, 2008
There’s a delightful article by Adam Gopnik in the latest (September 22, 2008) issue of The New Yorker about some controversies surrounding the Babar series. Here’s a clip:
In the past few decades, a series of critics on the left, most notably the Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, have indicted Babar in the course of a surprisingly resilient and hydra-headed argument about the uses of imagery and the subtleties of imperialist propaganda. Babar, such interpreters have insisted, is an allegory of French colonization, as seen by the complacent colonizers: the naked African natives, represented by the “good” elephants, are brought to the imperial capital, acculturated, and then sent back to their homeland on a civilizing mission. The elephants that have assimilated to the ways of the metropolis dominate those which have not.
Fascinating. As is the rest of the article, which among other things touches on: a wholly different controversy regarding the fate of Babar’s mother, the occupations of animals, nationalistic representations of order and disorder in children’s literature, and Matisse.
Freeing the Elephants >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Celesteville, imperialist propaganda, Matisse
Posted in Babar, anthropomorphica, ex situ, politics, racism, villains, violence | No Comments »
September 9, 2008
Over at Jim Hill Media, the eponymous webmaster received this e-mail query:
Can you please help me win a bet at work? A co-worker of mine says that WALL-E makes a brief cameo appearance in “Ratatouille.” More importantly, this guy has bet me $100 that I’ll never ever be able to find that robot in this movie. I’ve watch my kid’s “Ratatouille” DVD three times now and haven’t seen hide nor hair of WALL-E yet. So if I offer you a percentage of my winnings, will you please tell me where I can find this robot in the movie?
J.H. has done more than answer this guy’s question: he has written an exhaustive article detailing almost all of the Pixar self-references he could find. Some of them are so hard to spot, you need an expert like Mr. Hill to do the legwork for you. So, click over to brush up on your Pixar minutia and picayune intelligence. It’s how I would impress my co-workers if they would ever talk to me.
A Special “Where’s WALL-E” Edition of Why For? >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:picayune intelligence, eponymous
Posted in Ratatouille, WALL-E, ex situ | 2 Comments »
August 25, 2008
Found by snooping around Cartoon Brew recently, Adrien Noterdaem’s Interactive Map of Springfield doesn’t require much in the way of introduction. It doesn’t even require a The Simpsons reference, like “Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!” or possibly “Trab pu kcip.” What it does require is an appreciation for a lot of effort. Here’s a section to give you the flavor of the thing:
The above is just an inanimate simulacrum. The actual one is indeed interactive, as promised.
The Interactive Map of Springfield >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:abandoned store, Professor P. J. Cornucopia’s Fantastic Foodmagorium a
Posted in The Simpsons, ex situ | No Comments »
August 10, 2008
Over at CHUD.com, lovable grouch Devin Faraci has written another editorial about WALL•E. The premise of this editorial is that WALL•E’s less-than-really-expected box office is partly due to “The central love story doesn’t really work.” He then proceeds to make an extended analysis of WALL•E and EVE’s relationship:
But of course this is a story told from the point of view of the social retard, so this creepy behavior is rewarded. This is the wish fulfillment aspect, and it’s here that the relationship story goes off the rails for me. In the movie EVE wakes up essentially in love with Wall*E; having him need to win her at this point would have been more interesting and realistic. Wall*E as a character undergoes almost no change in the movie, which again is that social misfit POV - it’s everybody else who needs to change, not the guy who can’t make eye contact with the check out girl at the supermarket.
I don’t buy the hypothesis of this being the reason for WALL•E’s relatively lackluster B.O. (Like Ratatouille, it’s a hard movie to sell properly.) Nor do I completely buy his analysis of the romance, but I have to admit that Mr. Faraci makes several excellent, thought-provoking, and essentially accurate points. It’s a valid critique, just one I don’t agree with. I think that the movie works best as a sort of nonliteral robot fairy tale (c.f. A.I.), though that probably is a critical cop-out.
NOTE FOR SENSITIVE READERS: Mr. Faraci refers to Doing It, using the euphemism “Doing It.”
The Devin’s Advocate: WALL•E’s Unlikely Love Story
>Catena Ex Situ
Tags:A.I.
Posted in Ratatouille, WALL-E, ex situ | 2 Comments »
August 5, 2008
This Ex Situ refers to one of the most heated controversies surrounding Disney’s The Lion King. No, not that SEX/SFX dust cloud thing. No, not the “Original Theatrical Cut” DVD’s fraudulent advertising. Nor the fact that the filthy, treacherous, often mentally handicapped hyenas are all voiced by minority actors. Nor that troubling Riefenstahlesque imagery. Nor the confusion over whether Timon is Rosencrantz and Pumbaa is Guildenstern or vice versa.
This Ex Situ’s particular controversy is: that much of The Lion King seems to have been wholeheartedly ripped off from the influential 1960’s Japanese anime Kimba the White Lion. Perhaps not the overall plot, but several scenes and characters in The Lion King bear a suspiciously uncanny resemblance to scenes and characters in Kimba.
Over at Kimba W. Lion’s Corner of the Web, there’s a ranting, unwieldy, and unfortunately cyan page discussing the whole issue:
It is my opinion that the creative people at Disney most definitely knew of Kimba as they were making The Lion King– but somehow, before the movie could be released, it was decided that the tie must be denied. Even if that means a slap in the face for Osamu Tezuka, the “Walt Disney of Japan”.
It’s pretty damning evidence.
Remake of Tezuka’s Popular Story Turns Into Denial? >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Riefenstahlesque, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
Posted in Kimba the White Lion, The Lion King, ex situ, knock-offery | 2 Comments »
July 30, 2008
Excellent illustrator Jake Parker alerted us to this article from his blog, Agent 44. The meat of the thing really is fairly autoexplanatory, so I’ll preface it with his own quote:
Where does the machine end and the flesh begin? So, to make everything piece together a little better in my head I drew up what I think the internal structures of Lightning McQueen might look like:
Delightfully creepy! I’m sure the question of how the characters actually procreate will be answered in Cars 2. Be sure to click below to head over to the original article, wherein Mr. Parker gives some thoughts on Cars and his amazing vivisection.
Inside Lightning McQueen >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:vivisection, Lightning McQueen
Posted in Cars, ex situ | 2 Comments »
