FUNNY SCULPTURE

When I first discovered the funny art of ancient Mexico I found myself wondering how it ever took root there. After all, the funny people had to live side by side with violent neighbors like the Mayans (above) and the pathologically aggressive Aztecs. But I checked and my timeline was off. The funny cultures thrived in the pre-Mayan, pre-Aztec era, before the time of Christ.

In that placid era they had time to play with their pets...

...and make fun of their goofy neighbors. 

Some of the caricatures were startlingly specific.

Pocket-sized joke sculptures were all over the place.

Every physical type was lampooned.

Women too, particularly women with thick legs. 

Of course males liked to sculpt sexy women. Who knows, maybe there was a religious reason for it. 

Haw! As time went by high-minded reasons might have become secondary.

My guess is that there was a thriving business in tiny porn sculpture. Was there a Hugh Hefner of that era? Were these figures sold "under the counter" in the marketplace?

I like the flat-on-their-backs, rigor mortis-type poses in this (above) example. Two thousand years later accountants may still be doing the deed this way.

Cultures that value comedy always strike me as being on the path to liberty and progress, but Mexican humorists lived in an increasingly rough neighborhood and, well...the rest was history.

WHERE ARE THE FUNNY CHARACTERS?

I wonder why mainstream animated features have so few funny characters. This popular film had only one, which is shown above. She wasn't on the screen very long and had only two or three expressions that I can recollect but at least the film earmarked one character for comedy and we can be thankful for that.


The family in the film weren't intended to be comedians. They were dramatic characters with occassional slightly humorous moments.


Walt had a different idea about how to inject comedy into a feature. He threw in a bunch of clowns who slurped their soup, fought with each other and engaged in broad slapstick.



To balance out the comedy he made the mean character REALLY, REALLY mean. She wasn't neurotic or mischievous, she was downright evil. The extreme behavior of the witch created so much tension that we were glad when the slapstick scenes came up. Modern fims have mild, tepid villains and slapstick, with all its funny animation possibilities, seems out of place.


If the villain in the superhero movie had been stronger, then the film would have needed a more overt and funny comedy to balance it out. Maybe comedic characters a little like those shown above, or like George Liquor (shown below) or the animated equivalent of the characters in "Dumb and Dumber," or the dog in Clampett's "Hair Ribbin." I think the audience would have liked that.


  As it was, there was no strong villain and therefore no truly funny comedy relief.