Writer maintains that cartoons were more culturally literate during the Boomer Generation.
…as the famous pianist Lang Lang testifies, it was Tom and Jerry’s rendition of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody in The Cat Concerto which first inspired him to start piano at age two.
Not a thing? We didn’t watch TV, we were outside exploring.
I learned not to buy anything from ACME.
Or Ajax and Ace and The Little Giant Novelty Co. of Walla Walla, Wa.
Cause and effect, actions had consequences.
I learned that large loud-mouthed roosters never win, and that Race Bannon was gay.
GIRLS REALLY ARE LIKE LUCY: BOSSY, BITCHY, AND WON’T SHUT THE HELL UP!
Always use a map and compass when traveling near Albuquerque.
I had to look up Race Bannon. I never got into Comic book style of cartoons.
If I wanted adventure I watched Sea Hunt and Mission impossible, etc.
To this day however I still love all the Warner Bros cartoons, Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies, etc.
Viewing them on the big theater screen before a movie was the best. They were just great, colorful, funny, light entertainment that had, and still have, appeal to any age group.
That good humor could be subversive and funny as all get out. Think Looney Tunes but mostly Rocky and Bullwinkle. I got a lifelong love of bad puns from that show mostly from Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop’s Tales. And nothing can top the bad guys in Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale and Fearless Leader, Mr. Big as well and the thinly veiled despotism of Pottsylvania. Rocky and Bullwinkle wasn’t written for kids but it sure appealed to us anyway, especially those of us who were smart enough to catch the humor.
And that Wile E. Coyote could never catch or outsmart the Roadrunner. And that Slowpoke Rodriguez, Speedy Gonzalez’s cousin was the slowest mouse in all of Mexico and always carried a big gun.
If you get greedy tigers (libtards?) To chase each other in a circle, they turn to butter.
Eventually I learned Jellystone Park was just as real as Santa Claus. It was a crushing blow. It is a little off topic but there are some “great” Russian communist era propaganda cartoons on you tube. Most are low quality but it is worth taking a look just to see what your Russian counterparts had to watch.
My oldest daughter and myself favorite Fractured Fairy Tale was the Fisherman and his wife (also in Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues) where the fishermen’s wife always wanted something bigger and better from the magic fish he caught until the end where she was back in the same place that she started. His constant lament to the magic fish was classic, “Oh Alice my wife, the plague of my life” was hilarious.
@Geoff – you only liked Rocky and Bullwinkle because of their collusion with Boris and Natasha….
oops!
http://www.allthingsclipart.com/images_01d/rocky.and.bullwinkle.show.jpg
I learned to avoid ACME products.
Some of the cartoons really WERE highbrow – Classical music, Diogenes, Shakespearean plots, allusions to Homer (and Jethro), and other introductions to the finer things.
I remember Foghorn Leghorn refraining from searching a covered box, commenting “I better not look, I may be in there!” which, of course, I took as a vague hint at Schroedinger’s Uncertainty Principle.
Much better than the milquetoast, half-faggot shit that passes for cartoons, now.
izlamo delenda est …
If you get hit in the head by a falling anvil, don’t worry, you’ll be fine in just a few minutes.
Jonny Quest. Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Read recently that no network does Saturday morning cartoon programming anymore. Too bad. Gave kids a common culture growing up.
I learned about opera from Bugs Bunny! Heckle and Jeckle were the best.
Many of those old cartoons were made for adult audiences first, and child audiences second. They had to have a level of sophistication which would be appreciated by grown-ups, but enough pratfalls and sight gags to entertain kids when they moved to the Saturday matinee or the TV screen. When they started making cartoons only for the child’s eye, the laziness the social engineering and the cultural decay began. I loved “Wacky Races” and “Scooby Doo” when I was eight, but I still knew that they couldn’t compare with a 1940’s Bugs Bunny.
Back in the day when the name Disney meant something, he had the audacity to create really excellent programming for mere children before marketers exploited children as a demographic. I remember our first color tee vee set and the first “living color” Disney Sunday night program. Who, in their right mind, today would try to teach children the concept of the Golden Rectangle in mathematics and architecture, or use a character like Professor Ludwig Von Drake to explain color and prisms?
This is the difference between introducing kids to new ideas and feeding their imaginations versus indoctrinating them to warped ideas about “fairness” and “equality.”
That episode is on YT. It’s some kind of wonderful.
Heavens to Murgatroyd, exit stage right!
I learned my mother hated the Three Stooges. Bugs & Looney Tunes characters with Mel Blanc, what a treasure of humor and talent. It will all soon be illegal to watch.
Prog needs to meet Bugs Bunny.
What I learned from my generation’s cartoons was that hallways were as long and repetitive as the dialogue needed them to be.
I learned that rabbit season is never the same time as duck season.
Favorite Foghorn quote, after being blown up with TNT:
“Fortunately I keep my feathers numbered, for just such an emergency.”
😆 I learned…..😆
that if your group is ever investigating a crime in low-light conditions, NEVER split your group into competent / incompetent search teams.
Never blow the smoke off the barrel of your revolver after shooting it.
Don’t leave your pic-in-ic basket out where pesky bears will steal them.
Clutch Cargo was just creepy but compelling. Kindness, always a moral to the story.
https://youtu.be/IOljPoMWy2o
Davy and Goliath: Family, sharing, faith, peace, conflict resolution, racial and ethnic integration, friendship, forgiveness, love. I didn’t know what a Protestant was, but it didn’t really matter. https://youtu.be/CT59BZZYovA
The Soupy Sales Show – Season 1, Episode 6
Soupy Sales wasn’t a cartoon but it was weird fantasy comedy, fun with a touch of reality. Pookie, White Fang, Black Tooth, good times
https://youtu.be/b9JflGTBwms
The little seemingly vulnerable guy will never be a victim if he has brains and refuses to give up.
“Of course, you know THIS means WAR“!
I learned that, when chasing roadrunners, coyotes can actually defy gravity, but only if they remain ignorant of that fact.
Once they realize what they’ve just done, they fall
So the lesson I learned there was “Ignorance is Bliss.”
I learned that wascawy wabbits are cross-dressers.
1940s Looney Toons are my favorite cartoons. The wit, timing, music, musical cues. And ‘boint!’. Who can forget the 5 Doors/2 Stairs musical cues. My all time fave cartoon is Daffy Duck in ‘The Babysitter’.
I loved Davy and Goliath too, Zonga!
I learned that cartoon characters’ feet sound just like bongo drums when they run.
I learned that if you’re going to hunt Wabbits, you must be vewy vewy quiet!
Zonga & Tuesday – Claymation was that fascinating area in between cartoons and live actors. It had real appeal, but wa difficult and time consuming to make.
Even if you are steam-rollered ‘flat’, in your next ‘frame of life’, you can jump right back to your full body and continue to fight.
It taught me to never give up, no matter what!!!
I learned how to sexually harass women from Pepe LePew
Tennessee Tuxedo getting his ass schooled by Mr. Whoopee on the ‘3-D-BB.’ Moreover, our queer-ass society today would never allow a sidekick to be fat and stupid, like Chumly unless the main character is gay, like Sponge Bob. Even Fat Albert would be renamed Vertically Challenged Albert.
I always wondered why Fred Flintsone never changed his clothes…or wore pants. Wilma must have kept him “busy”.
@RatFink: if you like claymation you must love Wallace and Gromit!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0qagA4_eVQ
Call for Super Chicken! Bawk bawk bawk bawk!
anyone remember Roger Ramjet? …. Tom Terrific? …. Top Cat?
… and Popeye, Felix the Cat, Tom & Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, Augie Doggie & Daddy, Quickdraw McGraw & BaBa Louie, Trixie, Dixie & Jinx, the Disney Crew … Mickey, Minnie, Chip & Dale, Goofy, Donald & his Uncle Scrooge & his nephews, Daisy Duck, Pluto
my favs have always been the Merry Melodies/Looney Tunes group …Bugs, Daffy, Porkie Pig, Sylvester, Tweetie Pie, Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd, Marvin Martian & his dog, Speedie Gonzales, Yosemite Sam, the Tasmanian Devil
Rocky & Bulwinkle.
Mr. Peabody and his way back machine.
Looney Tunes, Rocky and Bullwinkle, so many others made childhood bearable and fun. I still laugh out loud w/tears watching those great cartoons on YouTube.
My favorite Looney Tunes character is Yosemite Sam – “The meanest, toughest, rip-roarin-est, Edward Everett Horton-est hombre whatever packed a six shooter!”
He was bombastic and totally clueless about how Bugs Bunny could get the best of him everytime.
Oh yeah, btw, “Dragons is so stupid”
https://youtu.be/yobj1Zv91KA .
…and “WHOA” is not a suggestion;
https://youtu.be/QYiCP1kxL1E .
There was one Popeye cartoon that totally creeped me out when I was a little kid. It’s the one where Popeye was abducted by aliens while he was out driving and the aliens pulled him into their spaceship and did experiments on him. It was scary for me at the time because I have an overactive imagination to begin and still do. Why I still remember that one and have forgotten others I don’t know. And nobody mentioned Beany & Cecil and the bad guy Dishonest John (Ya, ha, ha…), it was a hoot.
That rabbits could talk, Mexican mice were fast, sailors ate spinach, Martians were dopey (Marvin is still my hero) and dogs with capes could fly.
Oh, and if you fell off a very large cliff and made a poof of dust as you hit the ground, you could still climb out of the hole and go back to chasing the road runner.