News Flash: High-Profile Pot Blames Kettles For All Modern Ills

[athelind]

John Kricfalusi rants at length about how cartoon characters and toys for kids are no longer "cute", "tasteful", or "appealing", and, by extension, how culture has been destroyed as "...[f]orm has ... been replaced by meanness, ugliness and 'attitude'."

Kricfalusi is the creator of Ren and Simpy, the poster child -- no, the Patient Zero -- of mean, ugly, toss-out-the-model-sheet, tasteless "attitude" cartoons.

Shout-out to boingboing

Edit: added a link to the rant in question, so you can all experience the Simanity of it all first-hand. Sorry about that./font>

Comments

[fragglemon.livejournal.com]

So... he's more of an idiot than I originally thought?
Fraggle

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Read for yourself (and I went back and added the link to the main post).

[scarfman]

This from the man of whose work the most memorable, to me, dialog has always been when one booger under the piano bench asided to another, "This guy talks to farts, man."

What's the context of the comment? Might Kricfalusi be indeed wishing to repudiate his own work, as Einstein did during the development of the atom bomb? (Never thought you'd see those two proper nouns in the same sentence, didja?)

[scarfman]

Ah, you were editing as I was commenting.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I was indeed. And, no, there was no repudiation, nor even a hint of self-awareness. Nor has there been any suggestion that Kricfalusi has any plans to move away from such repulsive works as The Ripping Friends or Jimmy The Hapless Idiot Boy.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

News Flash: High-Profile Pot Blames Kettles For All Modern Ills

Nicely put. Ren and Stimpy has much to answer for.

-The Gneech

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

What the fuck.

I mean, I used to watch Ren and Stimpy and I think it kinda was the start of my love for the good bent into something weird and twisted.

But seriously, what the fuck. I think he's like, the last person who can complain about it.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

R & S was never the same after they took it away from him.
He does have several lost episodes on DVD to sell IIRC.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

It was even less the same after they gave it BACK to him.

But even at its best, it was poop-and-booger humor with ugly, mean-spirited characters and little patience with the niceties of model sheets or coherent dramatic structure. It had its amusing moments and its lasting contributiuons to pop culture, but it was always exactly what John K. is decrying in his screed.

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

I just can't follow this. Outside of it being from the person that seemed to popularize "ugly" random form animation, it just doesn't hold together. For the life of me I can't see how one set of toys has "form" and another doesn't, other than in the overall rigidity of the toy. I'm quite glad the plastic headed stuffed critters are gone because the few I've seen always creep me out.

Part of the move was safety concerns (as some point out) I'd guess, but as even others say, his data set is quite selective. Noting wrinkles is one thing, but a good quality stuffed critter avoids most of that. I had an excellent Sarabi plush (from the Lion King) where all the features were quite defined. Similarly a grocery store chain here carries a series of big cats and seals every year that are cheap and top notch in getting good solid features in the faces. There are solid underlying structures for support, so even John there would probably like these, despite still being soft overall.

It appears the next post will discuss this in cartoons and art, so I have a feeling THAT is the one to tune in to for a good laugh or a shake of the head.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Amen to the demise of the plastic headed dolls...and glove puppets...
that plastic smelled weird to me. And the comments about what happens when the neighbourhood crybaby gets walloped with one....
I recall bitching to someone about the demise of tin toys, and got a similar response. Mind, giving someone a compound fracture of the skull with a toy train is a good way of learning not to do it again...
And yes, I nearly put an eye out when I fell over on my scooter (the rubbers on the handlebars always went AWOL)

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That was one of the things that irked me about the screed: he cherry-picked particularly bad examples of "modern" toys (and note that a significant fraction of his "modern" examples were 20 years old themselves). There are some excellent toy designs out today, and some utterly shapeless ones from the '50s and '60s.

Hellfire, the most popular kid-vid hero of all time was a sock puppet, and the toys based on him just replaced Bob Clampett's hand with batting.

And yeah, plastic-headed plushies creep me out, too.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the sock-puppet version of Cecil (and the cartoon based upon it) had a lot more "form" than Kricfalusi's own reinterpretation from the '80s.

[paka.livejournal.com]

What he's talking about I think is solidity in character design - that if you assign a cartoon character underlying structure it moves in certain ways. He's finding modern cartoons unappealing because many of them aren't informed by the same sense of structure as older cartoons. If you compare the character designs for Ren and Stimpy with say, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, that's what I think he's on about.

By extention he feels the same way about toys - that a level of structure grants the toy appeal as a design.

I think it's a pretty interesting argument potentially, but the "everything these days is shit!" attitude obviously stands out far more. Not to mention it does make me feel like he's about to tell me about how as a young man, he had to walk through blizzards to knock out hundreds of miles of inbetweens by candlelight, and he liked it just fine.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I find that the characters in Foster's have a lot more solidity, design sense and FORM than anything that's oozed out of Kricfalusi's pen. They may have a DIFFERENT sense of structure than the characters from classic animation, but it's not a LESSER one. They certainly don't have the Lack Of Form that he's going on about.

[twentythoughts.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that the character designs of Foster's absolutely rock :)

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Indeed! I mean, aside from Blue being...ridiculously annoying and unlearning with each episode, every character seems very neat. Even the Duchess is modeled and drawn after her personality! Note that she's two-dimensional, much like her shallow attitude.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The TV Tropes Wiki lists Bloo as one of the prime examples of Flanderization, where a single, minor aspect of a character completely consumes him.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I found R&S amusing in its day but... I don't disagree.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

First, the notion that Kricfalusi is aghast at tasteless with modern cartoon characters made me laugh out loud, hehe. It was REALLY FUNNY.

The rant, itself, I also found disingenuous, insofar that I could read it. First, he takes his chipmonk toy as if it were the typical of the type produced at that time. This is grossly illogical. It is a single instance that is taken for type. Indeed, with historical items, there is also a strong tendency for those that are well made and well thought of to survive in the first place -- that the toy is well made does not mean that toys were well made from that period, only that well made toys from that period tend to survive. What about all the crappy chipmonk dolls that did NOT survive?

Secondly, as a po' kid born in the late sixties, I remember this period in my own childhood. I remember having a LOT of cheap fucking toys, hehe. The notion that things were better back in the day is repugnant nostalgia.

Third, now and then I buy a plush doll for my woman. Most recently I got to visit the Monterey aquarium without her so I got her a plush pelican. Now, he is Petey the Pelican. Petey is precisely everything that Kricfalusi laments is no longer out there vis-a-vis stuffed animals. Petey is well made, well formed, and cute as a button. He is not, true, based off of a cartoon character, but the notion that well-made, pleasing toys are not commonly available is true only if you're stupid as a box of rocks.

Fourth, well, it is the commonest thing in the world -- odious, but common -- for people of a certain age to say, "Those meddling kids!" Just like people who were adults in the 50s and 60s thought that rock and roll was "noise", people who were adults in the 80s and 90s believe that rap and hip hop are "nose" -- just like the people who were adults by the time the 30s rolled around thought that jazz was "just noise". It is common as people, as they get older, to think that what the youth are doing is immoral, poorly done, in bad taste, and generally bad compared to the icons of their youth . . . which are, of course, the paragon of all human culture. Thus: Alvin the Chipmonk from the 60s is better than the same character done today, and better than Squarebob Spongepants. This is very common, tho' I find it banal and it does sadden me a little bit -- that adults find it so easy to forget that they are casting the same epithets on youth culture that was cast on their culture when they were youths . . . and for the exact same reasons! It saddens me because I'd like to think that this is so obvious it hurts, but lots of people never seem to get it.

This rant is longer than Kricfalusi piece merits but, what the fuck, I'm bored right now, hehe.

[twentythoughts.livejournal.com]

And anyone who attacks Spongebob Squarepants deserves to be attacked by a squirrel in a space/diving suit.

[twentythoughts.livejournal.com]

The guy seems to be complaining about toys more than the cartoons themselves, actually. Granted, he mentions it at the end, but that's not the main focus.

The one thing he does mention, though, is a bit harder to understand. Is he talking about angular, stylish stuff like Genndy Tartakovsky's stuff? Because that sure as hell has form. As 2D as it all looks, the animators there clearly think 3D all the time. Kids Next Door? Hell no: If anything has a clear form, that's it. The influx of anime and americanime? Granted, a lot of the designs involved in shows like Totally Spies and Martin Mystery look like they're all drawn by the same damn artist, but that's a different matter entirely. Plus, when it's done well (see: Turtles), it's hella nice.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

ANd none of the fawning commentators ("I like Beast Wars transformers!!") even seem aware of the existence of Ren & Stimpy, or any of the other illfated projects John K has turned to over the years.

I remember when R&S first came out, Kricfalusi had a lengthy editorial in an animation trade journal about how horrible Tiny Toons was and how much it defecated on the spirit of Looney Tunes. It was much like this, holding up the best of the past against the mediocre of the present. Brother hadn't seen space jam or back in action yet.

[bfdragon.livejournal.com]

All the 'good' toys he shows are hideous. Is this some sort of vague attack on post-modernism? His 'bad' examples seems far more an example of the beginning of the shoddy craftsmanship that "the establishment" begin to embrace as they more and more shipped building overseas.

The even sadder part? If you compare those ultra-cheap animations on Adult Swim shows like Harvey Birdman to the originals, it's actually better then the ultra-cheap Hanna-Barbara animations. Now of course today low budget animation has the benefit of computers to help, but how can you claim everything is going down hill when the animation in Venture Brothers is substantially better then the actual Johnny Quest cartoon ever was? The parodies surpass the nostalgia. I’d say we’ve come a long, long way. What the real problem is, nobody but a few smatterings of independent and Japanese studios want to PAY for the substantial creativity and talent that is out there.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Not even touching the animation department, most of the shows we loved back before the 80s were cookie-cutter thin: the bad guys were either creepy loners or dysfunctional organizations populated by faceless idiots. The good guys had a few touches of character, but they focused on one or two characters out of dozens. Even the 'superheroes' were rather bland. Nowadays, sure, there are many cartoons that carry on this same tradition, but many that are both homegrown and imported have expanded greatly. Even the rehashes of old series like Transformers, Justice League, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have gone the distance to change things from what they were to a more-modern outlook where we can identify with everyone.

Ren and Stimpy, back in the day, was a gross, unblinking cartoon that did what it sought to do: shock and change the general cartoon audience that was used to what I had just talked about. It carried little for it other than pop-culture flashes and a few memorable moments, and I don't look back on it with too much fondness.

If you want to see something that reflects a deep change in cartoons in recent years (both in animation and other departments), look to The Maxx, Gargoyles, Beast Wars, Samurai Jack, and of course very recent things such as Ben 10, Foster's, and Justice League. I mean, ye gods, even if you hate Pokemon and Digimon for being nothing but pop-culture whores, they've helped to change animation shows as well, the third season of Digimon especially, which actually feels deep and natural rather than ear-screechingly dubbed and dumbed-down.

I will always love cartoons of most any kind, and while I still very much enjoy the cartoons of my youth, the ones of today have, thankfully, matured a great deal. Perhaps Kricfalusi had a hand in making it that way, but perhaps he should also recall the long span of time when most cartoons were more extensions of toylines than original creations themselves.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

ReBoot for teh win?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Pokemon and Digimon are GREAT counter-examples: the characters and the toys based on them are exactly what John K. is extolling in his screed. They're cute, appealing, fun, have coherent underlying form and good design sense, and the physical toys are by and large solidly made and have good play value.

Their big flaw is that so many of them are TOO cute. They're SCHMALTZY. And, as you say, they're kinda whorish -- the properties, especially Pokemon, are very much in the Milk Kids For Every Dime mode.

But form? Form, they've got in spades! And appeal, moreso!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

What the real problem is, nobody but a few smatterings of independent and Japanese studios want to PAY for the substantial creativity and talent that is out there.

I disagree. There's some really good, solid, creative animation coming from the Big Studios these days. Stalbon mentions several in his reply; let me add Fairly Odd Parents, Danny Phantom and Kim Possible to the list of solid, creative, stylish shows that overflow with Kricfalusi's "Form".

Oh, and much as I love Venture Brothers, Dis Not The Classic JQ.