First film is called Bungle in The Jungle...native theme. Fucks Pause, Faux Pas and Fox Paws. (Who finds cartoon bestiality erotic? Not me.) Buggery on the High Sea ... This one’s got, let’s see, a bunny, pig and mouse on a pirate ship. They see an island of ... you guessed it!...hotties. But before they can say land HO, some other band of devious cat pirates are already diggin’ for oil. So a fight ensues and the pig’s crew thrashes the cat pirates and boy, it’s nasty! Some sharks bite YOU KNOW WHAT off the cat pirates. Meantime the pig and his pals take a stab at the gals—who don’t seem to care who they’re dancin’ with...

Bowery Boys Meets The Bimbos. Oh boy, get a load of this technique. It’s silhouette. Looks like a lost Lotte Reiniger film. This is almost festival worthy ... and I swear that one of the “Mr. Show” cast members is doin’ a voice here.

Arabian Delights: a sheik has, gee, a harem. Not only does this momentarily arouse me, but it triggers the rest of the harem to pounce on the sheik. Oh damn, gee, that’s terrible. Happened to me during my first dance at 15. The tent’s collapsed. Okay so he sees a doc, who gives him some tonic. HA HA HA. He’s growin’ boobs. Oh dear, he drank the wrong potion. Now he finds the male drink, gulps it down and goes nuts...

For, umm, whatever reason, the film has cut off and now we’re watching Sexrise in the Orient. The animation is so bad I think I saw the transparencies moving like in that Coldplay video, but accidentally (and I bet that Coldplay video didn’t even USE cels to begin with). MEANWHILE my brain is startin’ to go numb. Memories of Ottawa selection. I’m not getting aroused at all from this and it’s almost giving me a headache ... making me dizzy ... everything happens so damn fast.

This toon sex ain’t for me. Too cold and weird. Even the worst live-action porns at least TRY to create a friggin’ story line to get you all hot and lathered and anticipatory ... but hey that’s OK ... if ‘you’ wanna get off with this stuff, that’s cool... some folks like sharing spit with animals, food and inanimate objects ... so why not animated versions? And heck there seems to be a lot of this stuff out there, so surely more than a handful of people are INTO it.

So why aren’t the festival programmers getting off their place that ain’t their mouths and showing this really outrageous stuff? Even Spike seems to ignore hard-core ani-porn, although he doesn’t mind hard-core ani-violence.

But hey ... Smut duck. It’s all part of animation history ... these contributions are just as valid, legit, REAL as legit soft porn like South Park, Beavis and Butthead, Ren and Stimpy and Plympton, or even artsy-fartsy artists like Wayne Traudt, Suzan Pitt and Erica Russell. All of these works (from Fucks Pause to Buggery on the High Sea) are legitimate forms, expressions, reflections, imaginings from REAL guys and gals like me and ‘you.’

I’m guessing this part of animation history got brushed aside PARTIALLY because of morality and taste (and let’s not forget that these ain’t films you’re gonna find in the Whole Toon Catalogue, so this requires a historian to delve into the secret, lurid world of ADULT ENTERTAINMENT) and that seems to be an illegitimate excuse, given that I can argue that some of the stuff that the current group of historians lapdance over is quite politically and socially, to use the original meaning of porn, “disgusting and obscene.”

E.g., Karl Cohen’s book only really deals with lurid underground films in the context of the ‘legitimate’ world—which is important—but we need someone to go down into the sewers and find the stuff that doesn’t surface. And what about ol’ Bendazzi... How can he justify excluding the makers of Bowery Boys Meets The Bimbos? Why aren’t these German creators in his encyclopaedia?

Where are the historians uncovering the Golden Shower era? Who made these films? Who distributed them? Why do these films exist? What does the creation of, and apparent need for, these films say about ‘our’ view of sex? Was there a stag party circuit? Did these toons play before live-action porn features? Let’s not limit our definitions of unsung and overlooked figures in animation history to storyboard artists, voice actors and layout men ‘above ground’...’cause that’s cow chew ... that’s just another case of blatantly subjective and repressive readings of history.

That being said ... what I SORTA don’t get is why someone wants to spend so much time creating this sexual world—whether writer, painter, etc...? I can understand an artist wanting to capture the essence of some great lay they just had ... but isn’t it easier to go and meet someone ... or hell ... it’s prolly cheaper to BUY someone. I guess film-video-digital is a better long-term investment, but just seems kinda sad ’cause there’s no real human. Not touching is like living inside a bubble or being a writer. ’Course if we didn’t deem aspects of sex between consenting adults IMMORAL, unnatural, yadda yadda yadda, we wouldn’t need porn and advertising (isn’t that just ‘soft’ porn?) in the first place and we’d all prolly be a lot happier and satisfied. And who the hell wants that?

(September, 2002)

Meantime I was watching this new Justice League movie from the Cartoon Network and suddenly noticed that despite guns, villains, ships, bombs and all manner of crazy violence, there was an absence of death ... and ya ya ya ... I KNOW, OKAY...’tain’t nothing new. That’s the nature of Hollywood ... all the MEANS without ENDS ... all the CAUSE without the EFFECT. Just do it. It was the same thing with The Powerpuff Girls Movie (another Cartoon Network production). The girls violently and swiftly destroy an entire city (with apparent pleasure), but miraculously they manage to avoid murdering anyone. And okay sure ... it’s probably some latent adult release via the creator, but these movies are made for and aimed at kids. Ironically, the films of Plympton and Don Hertzfeldt, which regularly feature pretty gruesome violence, at least SHOW the results (hell, they slobber over it!) and are probably BETTER for kids than these other hypocritical cuds.

We seem to have devolved into a world of fuggin TOYS (bizarre, given the “oh, people like us do die” reality of September 11th) ... I cannot remember one action animation series (let alone live-action—and as a chum reminded me—remember those A Team shows where Murdock would fire a huge bazooka into a jeep and not manage to kill anyone!?) where people are shown dying—the natural friggin desire/result of firing bullets AT people. Now mark this down folks, ’cause you won’t hear it often, but I’ve always respected Disney for Bambi and Dumbo and even The Lion King, because death is at least addressed, confronted, out and open. Beyond animation ... “Homicide” had a brilliant episode with Robin Williams all from the p.o.v. of a family who’ve just seen their wife/mother gunned down while on vacation. And hell ... even “Buffy” dealt with it (according to my gal). Okay, it’s one thing to have Daffy, Bugs and Elmer beating the tar out of each other with no cause ... clearly these are caricatures, exaggerations, dark comedies (for KNOWING adults)...but this action-hero nonsense is set in the ‘natural’ world.

Now I don’t give a hoot about the issue of entertainment-influenced violence (I grew up playing toy gun related games and have YET to kill anyone). This isn’t a so-called bleeding heart liberal call for the reduction of violence in entertainment. I got a brain and two hands, I can turn the damn television off ... no... what I’m baffled by is the utter lack of common sense/logic. I’m talking mindset/philosophy here. It’s not just cartoons ... remember all those pretty greenish bombs dropping all over Iraq back in the early 1990s? Man, they were beautiful. Do you remember the images of the results of those bombs? The decapitated heads of children? The burned women and men? Of course not. Because we are never shown this material. Even after September 11th ... the truly graphic images were, THANKFULLY, not shown (although I did watch that ABC documentary by the French guys and I’ll never forget the sound of the ‘thumps’ as bodies fell).

I’m not saying we need to see all these corpses ... but, then again, maybe we do? Maybe that’s a way of driving into the heads of many of us that firing guns, dropping bombs, gutting, slaying, etc. actually have CONSEQUENCES, that is, DEATH, loss of life, pushing up daisies, ground ZERO. Aside from the planes... I remember the image of the lifeless fire dept. priest and that AWFUL AWFUL medium shot image of people at the windows/ ledges of the WTC building after a plane hit. But we don’t see it. All we see are tears, dirt and U.S. flags. That’s not enough. And hey, let’s turn to Afghanistan, Sudan, etc., where the U.S. has killed hundreds of innocent people. How many reports did we get about lost families? Did we hear from any heartbroken wives over recent lost husbands? Did we see any footage that suggested human loss? No, of course not (at least in the mainstream news), ’cause that might actually make us question the actions of our countries.

(After I wrote this section, I heard an incredible story on the news that some Canadian police were asking kids to turn in toy guns because they felt that not only were the guns looking more realistic, but more to the point, they were contributing to a gun culture mentality. That is an astonishing and courageous thing for a cop to say today.)

Now there have been some interesting takes on death in animation—but naturally it comes from the indie side. Caroline Leaf’s The Street (taken from Mordecai Richler’s book) addresses the death of a grandparent from a kid’s p.o.v. Pierre Hebert’s Souvenirs of War is a blunt depiction of the deadly results of war. Estonian Heiki Ernits made a funny piece called Jacob and Death (1994) in which a man convinces death to let him live forever, only to find that when everyone else dies and the world changes, he finds himself very alone. In the end, he virtually begs death to end his life. And boy, the Aussies are obsessed with death. Check out Uncle, Dad’s Clock, Sarah Watt’s film ... I can’t remember the title ... but it’s about losing a child... and, specifically, Dennis Tupicoff’s heart-wrenching films The Darra Dogs and the recent Into the Dark.

There’s just so much blatant hypocrisy going on here: violence without responsibility, violence without effect, denial of death.

Why on EARTH would these producers/executives permit such extreme displays of violence in “Batman,” “Superman,” “Justice League” and “Powerpuff Girls,” BUT not permit ANY hint of the results of these actions (beyond destroyed buildings), especially considering the HUMAN damage we saw done by the relatively recent destruction of three buildings in REAL life? How is this justified as RESPONSIBLE? Is this to ensure that children grow up continuing to believe that guns are cool so they remain easy prey for Armed Forces recruiters? I don’t know about the U.S., but before almost every feature in Canada, there is this stylish, fast-cutting Canadian Armed Forces ad that claims that it’s all about responsibility, technology, learning and teamwork... As my Asian friend Arnold once said, BAHAHAHAHAHA.

Well, writing this ain’t making me feel a whole lot better about the prospect of not breathing anymore. At least with all this mass media nonsense, I can use my brain and hand to just switch the television off. Sure it bothers me to come across the asinine shows or to see my four-year-old suddenly fixated with the war toy section, but hey, I got a choice. If producers, creators and executives ain’t gonna pull their heads out of their ass/wallet, then thankfully there are logical parents who can actually speak with their kids and explain the consequences of these ‘toys’ and that particular cock-driven alternative lifestyle choice. Ya know what? Why start or stop at toys? Go get the kid a real gun, take him hunting or to the firing range. Let him fire off a few rounds at a frog or the family pet, or better still, if there’s a terminally ill (or close to it) loved one around, load her up and let the kid give granny or Uncle Charlie their peace (and yours!)...or lower the enrolment age for the armed forces. Ever see Ivan’s Childhood about the kid soldier? That was great. They’re small, flexible and unmarried. Sure they can be a bit undisciplined and wild, but, once potty trained, they’re pretty low maintenance. Best of all, I bet they’re phenomenal with guns ’cause morality ain’t really creeped in yet ... and heck, given recent events, some of these kids are gunnin’ to go so there’s very little emotional baggage involved. Plus, lots of other countries are doing it!

Death was-is-will be. No amount of denial, repression or cinematic rejection is gonna change the fact that we’re gonna bite it. Thinking/talking/showing death ain’t a bad thing because you are at least acknowledging its existence and in doing so are better stirred to get off your ass and live the life that gives you pleasure before you don’t have that choice.

(October, 2002)