Showing posts with label Hanna-Barbera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hanna-Barbera. Show all posts

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Fred and Wilma had sex!





They did. They really did, or they wouldn't have gotten Pebbles.

You know. Pebbles. She happened round about the third season, The Flintstones was beginning to sag a bit in the ratings, so the show's writers decided to add a new wrinkle. They took a truly bold step for a cartoon series.

They made Wilma pregnant.




Imagine it. A PREGNANT cartoon character! Wilma went around for a number of episodes with a big jutting fertility-goddess belly covered by a demure white maternity blouse. What does it all mean? If we're going to imagine this is any kind of normal scenario, we'll have to think of it in the same way we do in real life.

If anyone dares go there, we have to come to the conclusion that Fred and Wilma were - you know. THEY WERE HAVING SEX! Try to picture it. No, don't go there! But try. They are merely cartoon characters, after all, and not real. But they had a "real" baby, didn't they?

Picture it.




How good a lover would Fred Flintstone be? How long would he last? How adept would Wilma be at pleasing her man and keeping him satisfied so he wouldn't go after some cheap floozie in the gravel pit? I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine Fred Flintstone having sex, and deciding one day to just throw the rubber away and wing it. Or was Pebbles really just Daddy's little accident?

Another bizarre issue: the Rubbles, becoming envious upon seeing the adorable new Flintstone baby, began to sigh over the fact that they couldn't have babies of their own.

INFERTILITY! The writers had broken yet another major taboo.




Cartoon characters struggling with infertility: it seems unthinkable, especially in the early '60s. Betty had blown her ovaries somehow-or-other, or else Barney must have had a low sperm count. Picture him in the fertility clinic with a plastic beaker and a Playboy.

Well. IF the writers were going to introduce such ideas into a cartoon series, aren't we within our rights to just sort of sit here and think about how it all went down?

So there was no IVF then, no surrogacy, and a cartoon character masturbating in a clinic is just too weird to contemplate. So the Rubbles wish upon a star, and. . . voila! Bamm Bamm appears on their doorstep, his biological parents abandoning him because he is such a little freak.




It's good for Barney, because it means he never has to have sex again. And Betty no longer has to keep track of her cycles on a calendar to see when she's ovulating. (Hey, they ARE talking about having babies here!) She doesn't have to think about breastfeeding either. The advantages of a baby on your doorstep!

So Pebbles turned out to be the Flintstones' only child, at least for the duration of the show. Does that mean Fred and Wilma no longer had sex? Did they use birth control after that? Was Wilma orgasmic? Did Fred suffer from premature ejaculation?

These are the things that perplex my soul.

BLOGGER'S SOURCE OF ASTONISHMENT.
 This is an exact transcription of that sappy "Let the Sunshine In" song that Pebbles and Bamm Bamm sing in one of the episodes. I was - gobsmacked. It's religious! I mean, REALLY religious, in a creepy kind of fundamentalist way that was unusual even back then.


Open Up Your Heart and
Let the Sun Shine In




Mommy told me something
A little kid should know
It's all about the devil
And I've learned to hate him so
She said he causes trouble
When you let him in the room,
He will never ever leave you
If your heart is filled with gloom




So let the sun shine in
Face it with a grin
Smilers never lose
And frowners never win
So let the sun shine in
Face it with a grin
Open up your heart and let the sun shine in


When you are unhappy
The devil wears a grin
But oh, he starts to running
When the light comes pouring in
I know he'll be unhappy
'Cause I'll never wear a frown
Maybe if we keep on smiling
He'll get tired of hanging 'round.




If I forget to say my prayers
The devil jumps with glee
But he feels so awful awful
When he sees me on my knees
So if you're full of trouble
And you never seem to win
Just open up your heart and let the sun shine in


So let the sun shine in
Face it with a grin
Smilers never lose
And frowners never win
So let the sun shine in
Face it with a grin
Open up your heart
And let the sun shine in




(YouTube random comments): 50 years later, it's still timeless. And still true :) Thank God for Pebbles and BamBam.

If the Almighty and Powerful God didn't create Pebbles and Bam Bam on the 8th day where would we be now. Praise baby Jesus.

I had never realized how religious this song was. Creepy.

Me neither until tonight. I heard the written lyrics and it was wonderful for me too! And I'm 59!

i love it, and i am 62

WHY CANT PEOPLE JUST ENJOY LI'L CUTE THINGS,INSTEAD OF READING TOO MUCH INTO THEM/GAWD!!!!

AMEN!

You don't hear songs like this anymore, such wholesome lovely songs. Compared to today's garbage.


Monday, May 29, 2017

The pink cat




Back from Orlando by melaniethebobcat
http://www.deviantart.com/tag/melaniethebobcat





Choo Choo by melaniethebobcat





Hey Chooch by bamboodog





now i haz cheezburger by ladysomnambule





Choo Choo by iraccoon





Choo Choo from Top Cat by phraggle






Choo Choo mug shot by hognatius






Untitled by bobthetanuk




Le chat rose by rafael gonzales


The DeviantArt site never fails to knock me out with the calibre of talent and imagination therein. Just dipping into the Top Cat section was overwhelming, so I tried to keep to my favorite character.

Looking at all these, I am reminded of how spectacularly untalented I am! But I am also delighted to see that people remember and love Choo Choo and all the other Top Cat characters (but especially Choo Choo, because he is, let's face it, frankly adorable).







I can't, however, identify these last two.  They had been posted and reposted, likely on the Satanic Pinterest site (which makes me want to slit my wrists every time it forces its way into my image searches) and proved to be unidentifiable, at least by me. But if anyone knows who did them. . . For sure, I know one thing. I didn't make them, and I wish I had.


Sunday, May 28, 2017

Top Cat in Brazil!



















I should explain. One might call Top Cat a Latino phenomenon, a Spanish or Iberian or Ibero-American thingie, because for some reason these countries absolutely love him, even if characters' names and personalities are sometimes changed, and even the location shifted.

From Wikipedia:

In spite of the modest success of the show in the United States, the show was a massive hit in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Argentina, where it is recognized as one of the most famous Hanna Barbera characters ever, being as popular as The Flintstones. In Mexico the show is aired under the name Don Gato y su pandilla (literally Mr. Cat and his gang) and the main characters adopted different accents. : Benny was renamed Benito B. Bodoque y B. and given a more childlike voice than was the case in the original dubbing, Choo Choo was renamed Cucho and spoke with Mexican-yucatan accent, Fancy-Fancy was Panza (belly), Spook renamed as the word's rough translation Espanto, The Brain was called Demóstenes (honouring the Greek statesman Demosthenes, with whom he shares a speech impediment) and Officer Dibble renamed as Oficial Carlos "Carlitos" Matute. This name, "matute" was used in Argentina and Uruguay as a slang reference for policemen. In Brazil, the character is known as Manda-Chuva (Brazilian Portuguese for big shot) and was voiced by actor Lima Duarte. In addition, the city of New York was replaced by Brasília (federal capital) in the Brazilian version.




SO! I also found an incomplete list of countries in which Top Cat was a hit, much more so than in the U. S. where it was cancelled after one 30-episode season (whereas the Flintstones went on for something like 35 years). T. C. was no more than a footnote in the Hanna-Barbera lexicon until he went international. VERY international, like this:

Mexico, Canada, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, S. E. Asia, Japan, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Poland, Hungary, Middle East and Africa, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and OH SHIT, I cannot do any more!

Is this a sort of Fawlty Towers effect, where the scarcity of episodes makes the show that much more of a cultish hit? Perhaps it's the adaptability, though T. C. does seem more Hispanic than anything else. 

Monday, July 16, 2012

Les Meows: Victor Hugo in the trash can





Oh my GOD, I am too tired to write about Top Cat right now, but I have to get this down before I collapse! Since I started watching this show again on the Classic Toons channel, my whole life has changed. And as elegant as these opening and closing credits are - some of the neatest, most sophisticated animation I've ever seen, giving the lie to the belief that Hanna-Barbera only turned out schlock - the real discovery, or rediscovery,is a certain character: the one I used to call "The Pink Cat", my favorite Top Cat gang member when I first saw the show. When I was seven.

Which I was. Seven. And the cat was. Pink. I doubt if I knew his name then, as I was trying to keep the names of the whole gang straight and there were SIX of them which was just about one cat too many.


Another very odd thing about the show was the way they mixed cats with humans: a cat could be in a human hospital with a cat nurse, and the nurse could be engaged to a doctor who was actually a human. A cat could be a torch-singer in a night club that human males had the hots for.  It was all extremely weird and anthropo - anthropo - excuse me while I spit this word out.

I do remember Arnold Stang, T.C.'s voice, from other things, including commercials for a chocolate bar called Chunky. Stang died only a couple of years ago at age 90, so doing T. C. must've been lucky for him. They only made 30 episodes of this gem, maybe because these were alley cats and part of an actual gang of no-goods who went around cheating and stealing and breaking the law. Not a very nice example for the kiddies.




But I digress. I digress because I'm so tired my head will soon roll off my shoulders and bounce down the stairs like a bowling ball. I have to just get this in before I fade out for the day: now I've found out more about The Pink Cat! His name is Choo-Choo and he is THE coolest of the gang, wearing a white turtleneck (which was very beat back in 1961) and speaking in a Brooklyn-accented voice which Wikipedia tells me was supposed to resemble Woody Allen's.

Did someone mention Woody Allen? Did anyone know who the hell he was back then? Had he even made a movie? So unless you lived in some esoteric part of New York and went to coffee houses, how would you ever be exposed to him? Jesus. Hanna-Barbera was incredibly progressive.




The thing is, this was 1961 and I was seven. And then there was this pink cat. Then my brother got home from band practice. Then I went to bed.


TAKE TWO. . .




As it turns out, yes, yes, I DO have more to say about Top Cat. It came on late enough at night that I watched it through a drowsy haze. I liked it, but it was Different. It wasn't simple like The Flintstones or dumb like Ruff and Reddy or ridiculous like Underdog or Superchicken.

Top Cat was originally meant to be a sort of cartoon version of The Phil Silvers Show, which ran some time in the late '50s and which scared the bejeezus out of me because at the start of the show, there was this cartoon guy yelling out this incoherent gibberish. Took me years to figure out it was an army guy barking orders. I was about four, so my confusion was understandable. But who gave a shit about Phil Silvers anyway? He has been completely forgotten, and for some reason his name reminds me of an empty can of cheap salmon rattling around in a garbage can. He has all the historic importance of Arthur Godfrey's discarded fingernail parings.






But back to Top Cat.

In my last rather pathetic entry, posted in a twilight state, I neglected to mention that besides his Gang of Five (and no, I'm not going to give you their idiot names because it doesn't matter: they're something like Brain, Stupid, Fleas, Burlap Sack, and Twinkie), this show had an undercurrent of Victor Hugo that was completely missed by audiences and critics alike (not to mention Nielson ratings, which were always poor).

Top Cat was a rapscallion and a scalawag and a scofflaw and all those other things good alley cats aspire to be: but he was also hunted, chased from one end of the City of New York to the other by a menacing figure.




Behold: the Inspector Javert of the alley!

OFFICER DIBBLE!


Witless as he was, this guy had such an effect on world culture in the thirty short weeks of his cartoon life that in some parts of Australia and New Zealand, "dibble" still means "the fuzz".

As a kid I used to call him Dribble, or even Drivel sometimes, as he could be incredibly stupid. But that's not the point. Our wily Jean Valjean of the alley needed an adversary, something to push against. Otherwise there'd just be no story.

As I watch these cartoons again fifty years later (oh God, it's even more than that), they look different. I now realize "the Pink Cat" couldn't have been my name for Choo-Choo because he was grey, just like all the other cartoon characters, just like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Deputy Dawg, Tennessee Tuxedo, Wally Gator, Magilla Gorilla,  Twinkles the Elephant, Lippy the Lion and Hardy-Har-Har, and all the rest of them.




Now the colors look deeply saturated and incredibly vibrant, as if I've stepped over the threshhold and into the land of Oz. Those colors were there all the time, of course, but hidden beneath the veil of early '60s drabness. The veil peeled back, these cartoons are incredibly enjoyable to watch again, though I am not sure why.

Maybe it's their sweet pointlessness. Hanna-Barbera, clever as they could be, were not Victor Hugo, after all. But there are  still moments that cause a little frisson of shock.

Top Cat is very New York, more New York than Woody Allen (and I've already explained how Choo-Choo, my fave character, was meant to be a Woody Allen impersonation, though frankly I like Marvin Kaplan's voice characterization better -  a little more adenoidal but friendlier, not so whiny). Its New Yorkness, if ever so simplified, is crucial to every plot line.



But at the beginning of more than one episode, there's an opening shot sweeping the ramshackle skyline of T. C.'s glorious domain, accompanied by a raffish bluesy upslide on the clarinet which is strongly evocative of the first few bars of Rhapsody in Blue. 

Holy God! Is THAT where that famous opening shot in Manhattan came from? Did Woody Allen really think he was being original?





 

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