I've already said my piece about Seth MacFarlane on the mothersite--and there'll be more to come--but considering the brief debates that have surrounded "Family Guy" 'round these parts, I thought I'd mention a few properties that beat the show at its own game, and by that I mean the unexpected injections of popular culture nonsense and assaults on good taste, narrative, and audience expectations. True that they're not in a televised half-hour format, but they all go to a similar well, and revisit it often enough to recall the "Family Guy" ethos--and while the Internet series aren't always successful, they never fail to approach the concept from different angles. (Seriously, have you seen "The Cleveland Show"? Talk about business as usual.) For your consideration:
1. Just to set a little precedent, how about The Dover Boys at Pimento University, or the Rivals of Roquefort Hall--Chuck Jones' once-infamous experiment with limited animation, and almost certainly his silliest effort. Now that the Looney Tunes have all but disappeared from the public consciousness, I tend to recoil at the thought that history will remember Duck Amuck, What's Opera, Doc?, and precious little else--but this cartoon, completely devoid of funny animals, stands alongside the best of them. (One of Mel Blanc's best performances, too--even when screaming at the top of his lungs, he's in complete control of Dan Backslide.) Not to mention that it's a sterling example of how to keep pop culture reference-parodies fresh after almost seventy years: as a launching point, not an anchor. Would it be fair to say that this gem has since absorbed the Rover Boys novels?
2. 5-Second Films. One film, five seconds long (not counting the opening and closing titles), posted on the front page every weekday. They've got hundreds of films in their archives. It's a reasonable mixture of masterpieces and clunkers, but the one aspect they all share is that each film's world doesn't begin and end with the gag itself--the implications of these punchlines are always on the table. Not to mention all the little touches--I love how the father's newspaper splits in half in the first video.
There are plenty more must-sees, but here are a few off-site links so I don't clutter up the blog too much--may I also suggest The Merry Prankster, Obscure Moments in History, Floyd's Truck Show '97, Magic Show Volunteer, Don't Thinko de Mayo, and Johnny Quickdeath Goes Scissorjogging.
3. SMBC Theater, a collection of skits from the creator of webcomic "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal." Unsurprisingly, the series has a very "gag-a-day" feel to it, and it's having some trouble finding its cinematic footing when three or four panels would probably do the job a little better. Still, they're definitely going places, and you have to respect a new twist on the old "Superman sex" and "God's roommate" tropes. A little context goes a long way.
4. weebls-stuff, or more specifically the songs that tend to go viral and burrow their way into your brain. You may recall that the first video here, "Badgers," became an Internet meme on its own accord, but beyond their general randomness, there's something hypnotic about how unrepentantly bizarre they are. I suggest you watch them in fullscreen--but you should head over to the site itself, where you can watch the cartoons in fullscreen and on an infinite loop; they really become sensory experiences after a while.
37 comments:
Tangerine.
All I can say is I just watched a 3 and a half minute trailer for something something something dark side from FG, and didn't find that funny at all.
On an unrelated topic, I want to ask about Mad Men - does anyone actually dislike this show? Are there negative reviews of it anywhere? I was sent the first two seasons to review for the site I write for, and I loathe it. I hate the show. I'm halfway through the second season and I'm hesistant to continue.
I am saddened that, as you note, Looney Tunes shorts are all but lost to time and short memory. What's funny about those cartoons is that they were very much the Family Guy of their day, trafficking in non sequitur and absurdity married to vaudeville slapstick. But they did always have context. When Bugs Bunny whimpered and crawled and yelped "Don't beat me, massa!" and then vanished offstage, only to return in the guise of a vengeful Abraham Lincoln, the context was: Bugs Bunny fucking with Elmer Fudd's shit.
Family Guy is more like: Peter gets in an embarrassing situation, says "Gee, this is like that time David Letterman hosted the Oscars." Smash cut to David Letterman delivering a bad joke from the Oscars stage. Silence is sustained for at least five beats. Oprah Winfrey slaps David Letterman with a nurse shark. Or some bullshit like that.
The very racial humor I mentioned above probably contributed to Looney Tunes' demise. Audiences after 1970 weren't going to put up long with scenarios in which Daffy Duck's shotgun explodes and leaves him in blackface, complete with minstrel accent. So the editing got heavier, and soon the shorts' own context was lost, and they starved to death for lack of relevance. Their characters became just properties, adornments for T-shirts that nobody wears now.
But I don't think Family Guy is going to have anywhere near the cultural half-life of Looney Tunes. Not even close.
Mad Men: I like it, but I'm a sucker for schadenfreude and weighty themes cloaked in period dress, particularly when that dress is on Christina Hendricks.
Honestly, I have to make myself watch Mad Men. I usually enjoy it and I'm glad that I invested the time. I absolutely ADORED that Golden Violin episode from the second season (I think). It paid off seeing the "old" Don Draper later on. But it's something that I have to force myself to do. I haven't seen any of the latest season.
And also, my overwhelming feeling while watching it is that I want to get in a time machine and go on vacation in the early 1960s. The period setting doesn't only upstage the show, it IS the show. Of course, that's probably the point.
I'm a believer, I guess. But yeah, I have lots of sympathy for the eventual backlash and I would like to see some negative responses also.
No, Anonymous, I don't think I've ever read a negative review of Mad Men. But since you brought it up, why don't you elaborate on your hate a bit? It'd be interesting to hear from the Devil's Advocate.
In point form:
- "The period setting doesn't only upstage the show, it IS the show. Of course, that's probably the point." Yes. This is it. There is nothing to the show but "Look, it's the fucking 1960s!" Ignoring the fact that the show's accuracy in representing that period is dubious, every single plotline in the show is about the time period and only the time period. In the 60's everyone was sexist, homophobic, sexist, in love with cigarettes, sexist, in love with drinking, sexist, afraid of new technology, so on so on. It rubs your face in it without actually tackling any new ideas or challenging ideas of that time period - I find it oppressive and it offers nothing to me. I think it's subtextually barren. Consider the awful episode where they get a photocopier in the office, and that became a major plot point, because, holy shit, technology! It's like if the Sopranos is remade in 50 years and an entire plotline is built around someone getting an iPod. Further, it's so poorly constructed and inept that entire plotlines appear and fade without notice. There's a B-plot around the midpoint of Season 1 in which one of the male characters goes out with a friend who reveals that he's gay for him. After that initial shock comes and goes, it's never mentioned again (at least not for many episodes). Any intelligent viewer is left going "huh?" - there's no cause and effect. Then the exact same fucking plot is played a couple of episodes later, with Joanie and her housemate, which is again forgotten about a couple of scenes later. What's the point? To reinforce the homophobic attitudes of the '60s, I guess. But why should that be the entire focus of the thing? There have been many many many plotlines in which the climax/punchlines involves highlighting and drawing attention to the blatant sexism of the time period. But surely that should be in the background, like the living paintings in Hogwarts, which in the better Harry Potter films are not the focus, they're just there. You can take a play by the Bard and change the setting to a different era and it can be fantastic - you can't take any element of Mad Men out of its era because there's nothing but the era.
- Don Draper. I hate Don Draper. The character bores me to tears; I mentioned The Sopranos, and I think the writers are desperately aping The Sopranos, wishing to pose Don Draper as a likeable-moral-grey-area like Tony, but the fact is I really enjoy spending time with Tony Soprano. He's a vulgar womanising son of a bitch, often very violent, and this clashes with his dedication to his family, both of them, and I like the challenges his character faces. I like most of the Sopranos ensemble, whereas I hate nearly everyone in Mad Men. They're weak, they're caricaturish, their responses and behaviors are obvious (with one exception, Vincent Katheiser's Pete Campbell, whose non-alpha-male status is often fascinating to watch, clashing with Don, and with his wife, he may be the one redeeming feature of the show for me). But the show expected us to care about its characters from the pilot without giving us reason to - why should we give a shit about Don Draper not being who he says he is? Why should we care about his past? It is, again, subtextually barren, it's pointless. The show is pointless. But hey, it's the 60's!
- I hate the soundtrack, that I find goes between faux-period diagetic crap and oppressive-soap-opera cuts with the occasional out-of-place gloomy Silent Hill atmospheric piece to really confuse everything.
- I hate the pacing. I don't think it's slow and precise, I think it's full of filler. Unneeded scenes that, again, reinforce just how sexist the 60's were, so on, so on. I also hate the opening titles, which I think are entirely meaningless. As a counterpoint, my favourite show currently screening (although on hiatus) is True Blood, which has amazing opening titles that nail the tone and themes of the show perfectly. What the hell do the Mad Men opening titles mean?
- I hate that no one can explain to me why this show is worth a damn except refering to it as a "period drama". Fuck that. Show me one other period drama that is good only because it's a period drama.
What the hell do the Mad Men opening titles mean?
That advertising execs are falling through life, hawking empty promises and dreams of a better life via consumerism, while actually they each have no answers to give anyone of any lasting value or wisdom. In fact, the Mad Men themselves are more fucked-up than most of the masses they aimm to "brainwash" (especially Don, a man so gifted in lying as a job that his entire existence is a lie)? Something along those lines?
I like the show. But I can understand people hating it. It takes a bit of work to really get into it, which is why I think the '60s-ness is prevalent -- to give casual viewers the "period hit" of superficial entertainment, while everyone else can look beyond that.
Hey Anon, give yourself a name! Don't worry, you're safe here, unorthodox opinions and all. Plus, it's gonna make it easier than referring to you down the road as That Nameless Person Who Hates "Mad Men".
I love "Mad Men" but season 3 left a funny taste in my mouth. It was...TV. Also, I hate Betty Draper far more than I think I'm supposed to. She's just such a piece of crap mother that it colours my entire perception of her. And I don't care what the apologists say, January Jones sucks. Being an archetypal Hitchcock Blonde buys her an incredible benefit of the doubt.
I actually liked "Family Guy" last night, mainly for all the animal-cruelty humour. Which is probably the least endearing thing I've ever written, but c'est la vie; also, it felt very first-seasonish in that it had narrative drive. I would suggest that another key difference between FG and Looney Tunes is that when someone gets hurt on FG, they show blood. And I would argue that never loses its subversive kick.
I would suggest that another key difference between FG and Looney Tunes is that when someone gets hurt on FG, they show blood. And I would argue that never loses its subversive kick.
I'll say it did when the brought the Giant Chicken back a second time, since that's where most of the bloodied, "violent" action on "Family Guy" comes from. More to the point, when Peter Griffin staggers back with two black eyes and dozens of bleeding cuts to finish the sentence that was cut off by the aforementioned 5 minute, extremely over-the-top fight, it's obvious that he's fine and there's no real weight to either the violence or the punchline (that the violence had no real weight). It's the same effect as watching Wile E. Coyote get flattened by an anvil and then be fine again after a quick fade-to-black; if he's not bothered, why should I be? And if Peter Griffin experiences no long-term effects from his bloody battles with the Chicken, or Brian can get shot in the kneecaps and set on fire in one scene and be perfectly fine in the next, then how is at all subversive?
I don't know; I guess I got over the titillation factor of "blood in cartoons" somewhere around the time that "South Park" killed Kenny for the bazillionth time. Blood doesn't make something subversive just for the fact of itself -- we've moved beyond the days of parents being hysterical over "Mortal Kombat," right? That episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer was put into a coma by one of Bart's pranks, that was way more subversive, both for an attempt at showing a consequence to this level of "Looney Tunes"-style violence, as well as the implication that anger and violence are both cause and cure in that cycle (Homer wakes out of his coma to strangle Bart, such is his anger at Bart's admission that he had put Homer into a coma in the first place).
As for all of the "Mad Men" love/hate discussion: I have the first season, have watched about 4 episodes, but have since stopped and haven't returned to it. I usually end up doing the same for pretty much any dramatic television series these days, but I have much less desire to jump back into that one compared to some of the other shows I'm working my way through. I'll see if, once I finish the first season, I can rent the second season and feel more of a charge out of it (much the same thing happened with me with "The Sopranos," FWIW). If I'm not feeling much else for the show at that point, I'll slot "Mad Men" in as a show I can respect more than actually like, and go back to actively ignoring it.
@Jason: All true, but not everyone on FG is invincible. Brian's run over a dog, Peter killed Quagmire's cat with a straight razor, and Stewie chopped up New Brian, and so far all of these creatures remain dead. (Peter's dad died, too, albeit a non-violent death.) There's no internal logic to it, but mortality does exist on FG--and not in Looney Tunes--and I think that's partly what I'm responding to.
I admit that despite all the love, I have hesitated to watch Mad Men for the following reasons:
– I have a really hard time getting over sexism, racism, homphobia, etc. in the media. Really hard time. And I feel that Mad Men chose its setting because you "can't be sexist" on modern TV thanks to evil political correctness. It is their license to be assholes. This may be totally misguided, but I feel deeply that if you wanted to address sexism, racism and the like, you could do so perfectly well in a show set in current times – there certainly is enough of it to go around. In fact, in the Age of Obama, this might even be the more subversive move. The only other reason for the show to be set when it is would be, to me, just to have it set when it is, which isn't even offensive, but pointless.
(That said, I love Deadwood and their female and black characters)
– I hear about Mad Men taking its time, sometimes even as having a "glacial pace". I'm not in the mood for that right now (i.e. the past year or so). If you want to tell a story, fucking tell it. One show I absolutely love right now is Sons of Anarchy, where stuff happens every episode. There are no dark secrets lingering for two seasons; if something doesn't come out within three episodes, that's a long time. Stuff happens and then we deal with the fallout. On the other hand, there's heroes, which I stopped watching and caring about long ago (and which has its own share of problems regarding female and non-caucasian characters, but that's the least of its worries), a show where nothing at all happens until the final episode, or in between episodes. It's freaking boring.
– I also don't care *at all* about the problems of an advertising asshole from the Sixties.
So Mad Men will probably be the great show I will never see. Maybe that helps our anonymous guest to find a name and feel somewhat at home.
Let me add that by setting it in the sixties, even if Mad Men talked about sexism and the like (which it probably does), it would defeat itself by virtue of its setting. People can watch Mad Men and say, "gosh darnit, that's downright horrible. What a good thing the Sixties came along and ended all that, and now with a black president everything's just jolly. Let's watch a little more of that titillating-yet-horrible sexism."
Mad Men, for me, is a lot like the character of Don Draper. A fascinating, undeniably handsome exterior, an air of brooding mystery and deliberation -- and absolutely nothing at the core. No one knows who Don is or what he really wants. Even Don doesn't know. Same with the show. It's a (gorgeous) milieu, (superbly crafted) dialogue, and (well-acted) characters in search of anything to say, aside from "people are unhappy," and "wow, things sure have changed a lot in fifty years, huh?" And there's a smugness, a gracelessness to the way it rubs the characters' unawareness of the future in our faces, that really tires me.
Don't get me wrong. The production design's extraordinary, the premise is wonderfully novel, and I wish more TV shows had its earnest intelligence and attention to detail. I just wish there was some "there" there. For me, it's less of a TV show, and more of the best ad for a TV show ever created.
@Bill: True, but none of those characters can be considered all that important to the show. Of course they're not going to kill off any of the Griffins (Francis Griffin aside), but that still robs the idea of mortality of anything resembling weight for everyone else. If Peter can survive all of the things he's survived in the course of the show, can you really feel anything when his father dies, especially when the father's been in what, two episodes prior? Especially since the character was practically forgotten by episode's end, and has definitely been forgotten about since?
With the exception of two human characters (Peter's dad and Mr. Weed, his original boss), all of the things you're mentioning are random animals being killed. All of these creatures'/peoples' deaths were also meant to be the punchline. And that's something that I really don't respond to anymore. "Stewie's homicidal guys, so he chopped up New Brian rather than work things out? Isn't that hilarious?!" (Actually, I think in that instance it was set-up for another one of those little rambling discussions that went no where in particular, and wasn't funny to begin with. I think that's even worse.)
I know that "Family Guy" adheres to no internal logic or morality, all in the name of the joke, but I think that only makes a show disposable than anything else. I think the one thing that separates "The Simpsons" from "Family Guy" on this point is that, for the most part, death is seen as something tragic in "The Simpsons," and usually carries some amount of weight for the survivors, even several seasons later (especially for Ned Flanders). That's way more weighty than things happening in the "Family Guy" universe, which is still more or less equivalent to "Looney Tunes" in its depictions of violence -- and they don't even have the comic timing to pull off a good anvil joke, anyway.
Apropos of Mad Men, here's Betty Draper encapsulated.
And apropos of nothing, a think piece on John Hughes' women.
Mad Men's key strength and fatal flaw is probably its advancement of theme, often at the expense of plot (in the propulsive sense of “plot” favored by most TV dramas). Each episode is sort of a small chamber piece, and the overall effect is one of a mood created, a sounding of characters’ inner spaces. The show wants you to think and feel along with it, and it’s easy to miss what the creators are going for. (The House Next Door has done the best explorations of Mad Men’s thematic levels, highlighting stuff that I often missed.) So it’s a long way from a Shield or a Sons of Anarchy, where the drama hinges on who’s doing whom wrong and the threat of physical violence is ever present. No one’s going to pull a gun on Don Draper unless he sleeps with the wrong schoolteacher. That said: if observed closely, the characters’ motivations, the events of prior episodes, the surface-vs.-substance ethos of the ad business, and the wider world of 1960-63 all turn together like a Swiss watch. Some find this approach alienating; I find it liberating. Plus, it's only a matter of time till someone loses a foot.
Classic Looney Tunes, I think, is seen today as more subversive than it was at its time. The shorts got their start as entertainments before the main feature in movie theaters. They were cartoons largely for adults, or whoever was in the theater to see Sullivan’s Travels or Casablanca. They weren’t allowed to show blood (not that Chuck Jones wouldn’t have tried), but the production code had no problems with cartoon animals falling off cliffs and getting bashed with cookware. It wasn’t until those cartoons moved wholesale to TV, and parents began to worry about whether their pre-schoolers would start swinging hammers at each other, that syndication editing took hold -- not to mention the shift in cultural sensitivity that led to all instances of blackface being expunged for broadcast.
@Patrick: I'd be careful about making those elaborate judgments/dismissals of things sight-unseen. Can you imagine what the unseasoned viewer of "The Prisoner" thinks of that show from afar? Probably lots of ignorant shit. This is why I'm not taking the "Sons of Anarchy" bait, which, Ron Perlman notwithstanding, sounds absolutely insufferable to me (ick, bikers! And I can make a lot of leaps in logic from that alone), but about which I don't have a legitimate, informed opinion.
Patrick, Mad Men mostly gets the cheap "heh, weren't the 60's different" laughs out of its system pretty early on, and afterwards only goes there when it's going to say something about the story and characters. What a good series looks like is rarely what it actually ends up being. I mean, one of my favorite shows ever looks on the surface like a juvenile, silly cartoon about giant robots and ends up being a non-laughable, stylistically avant-garde treatise on the human condition.
Really? You're going to bring up Evangelion in a conversation about Mad Men? In all of the two seasons of Mad Men that I've seen, I can't think of a single plot thread that hasn't been about those cheap "wow, the 60's looks pretty alien to us, I'm glad we know better!" laughs. What is the show saying about its characters, is what I want to know - what do you take away from it? Because I get nothing from it, except a feeling of superiority. I'm not challenged by it as much as it occasionally makes me feel like an asshole for giggling at, say, their mistreatment of the darkie who works the lift.
Having just read Walter's review of The Blind Side, I've got to ask this: Will Sandra Bullock ever be in a film that isn't venal, terrible garbage?
Walter: well, I certainly know that I may be totally off-base and that I'm basing all of my opinion on the premise of the show (and what I read about it). I didn't want to write a post that says, "here's why Mad Men is bad" – because I haven't seen it, obviously –, but "here's why I am not interested in Mad Men".
Just as with your Sons of Anarchy (and I hear you when it comes to bikers), I think this is a legitimate position. Without seeing Mad Men, I can't say if it's bad or not – in fact, I said it might be the best show I'll never watch –, just that I'm not interested.
The reason why I put it into such opinionated terms above was mostly so that people might have something to latch onto if they wanted to convince me otherwise.
For example, good point that there's a difference between a thematic show like Mad Men and a show Sons of Anarchy, where shit happens. SoA manages, so far, to not humanize its protagonists too much – a recent scene of the beating of what amounts to a bystander was harrowing –, but other than that, I'm not sure it has great aspirations of subtextual depth (or whatever ;-)).
It's just that Mad Men sounds so terribly unappealing to me – and if the linked video really encapsulates Betty Draper, well... I'm not sure I could stand her for long, either.
Oh, also, just to throw that out there: no, Sandra Bullock will forever be in shit films, and Evangelion is an incoherent mess that is falsely accused of greatness. There.
Nyarlahotep, well...Bullock does have Demolition Man and Speed on her CV...movies that conclusively show that she's a reliable second-stringer when her bubbly charm is played off (sparingly) against monolithic he-men like Stallone and mono-toned (s)he-men like Keanu.
Shit happens when it's assumed that you can dial that charm all the way up to single-handedly prop up turgid, unredeemable rom-com crap fests. (See also: post Pretty Woman Julia Roberts and post-Legally Blonde Reese Witherspoon)
The banner picture is Mulholland Dr., yes? I'll scoop the easy ones, ok?
Or just the hot ones, Dan? ;)
@ Anonymous: Yes, I just did. Kind of a random, weird one to bring up to essentially make a generic judging-books-by-their-covers argument, I guess. As to your Mad Men problem, if you think that's all that's going on, you're just not looking very closely.
@ Patrick: Agreed about Sandra Bullock. Incoherent: a bit. Mess: probably. Great: if it isn't, then why won't it leave me alone? It's in the same boat with The Prisoner, only the story eats itself in an even more spectacular way. Granted, The Prisoner never had a gratuitous comic relief penguin, but that's The Prisoner's problem. Diff'rent strokes, I guess.
I heartily approve of that banner.
@Jefferson: Yes, it did help that the banner screengrab is also my wallpaper. :)
I liked Bullock in that Forces of Nature flick, too.
Well, I'm not going to belabor the point of Evangelion; Prisoner might be a great analogy, or not, all I can remember of the show is that I was waiting with baited breath for something to start making sense, or seem like there was some plan behind it, and then after it was over going online and trying to find some justification, and all I found was (I don't remember exactly) that the creator was mentally ill, on cocaine, or both. And that fit.
However, after the season finale of Sons of Anarchy, I would like to qualify my love for the show; I may have judged prematurely. I only came to the show in Season 2, hearing how much it improved, but this finale was kind of ridiculous. So take that as you will.
I always worried about what happened to the penguin in Evangelion.
@ Jefferson: I like to think the penguin saw a vision of its true love and turned into primordial Tang, like the rest of the world did.
@ Patrick: Hideako Anno's depression definitely has something to do with the direction the show goes in, and that's part of why I find it so interesting. The story doesn't make total sense, but everything makes sense emotionally, and I could make a case for it on purely cinematic terms, too: the images, the editing, the sound design and the musical choices are sometimes sublime, especially in the movie.
But this is all thoroughly off-topic. Badger, badger, badger...
I think Evangelion shits all over Mad Men, and you still haven't explained to me what I'm missing about Mad Men either. In my ongoing quest to figure out what it is about this show that people like it for, that makes it worth existing, I'm hitting a lot of these "You're missing the point!!" statements without anyone telling me what that point actually is.
@ Anon: I'm just going to defer to Matt Zoller Seitz on the subject, because he said it much better than I could:
"The show presents social compacts (marriage, family, full-time employment in an office—all institutions that Don neglects or abandons when it suits him) as shackles on the freedom of those who are predisposed to do without them. It's a subtle critique of traditional bourgeois morality of the Father Knows Best, two kids-and-a-mortgage variety. It treats the very concept as an illusion, a useful fiction built atop the reality of human need—a superego-style overlay, a construct, a set of goals that we're conditioned by family, society and other forces to want, to need, regardless of whether it matches up with our own deep-seated, possibly unrecognized, maybe repressed true desires."
Which just about covers what the show's thesis is, if it can be said to have one. I'd also add that what I get out of an episode of it is similar to what I get out of reading a short story by Cheever or Updike. Not a whole lot may happen in an episode, but there's a kind of poetry to the slowness.
I watched the first four episodes of Mad Men too and found myself utterly, completely uninterested in exploring it any further, and nothing I've read about it has convinced me that I'm missing much.
--Kim
reading walter's review of 'antichrist' makes me want to go back and rewatch every single film i've ever disagreed with him about, 'cause i can't quite believe we could ever disagree on anything.
Yay for more ironic review images! It's the Antichrist!
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