WHY CARTOONS FAVOR ZOMBIE AUDIENCES

It's amazing how many vintage cartoons contain zombie audience scenes like this one (above) from Clampett's "Henpecked Duck."
Look at the audience behind Daffy. The characters in the background painting are hazy and ghost-like, with blank faces as if they were just bussed in from Hell.

Here the audience has acquired some definition but they're still engulfed by an eerie mist and are lit from only one direction. Why did so many old-time directors favor this kind of weird treatment? The obvious answer is that drawing each individual head in the crowd would have been time-consuming and take too much attention away from the main characters. Look at these sharply-drawn Jack Davis heads (above). I don't know about you but I spend a lot more time looking at the faces in the crowd than the people in the car. So that might be the answer.....but it's not the only possible answer. Maybe zombie audiences were just plain funny.

IT HELPS IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN TIMES ARE FUNNY

Here's my memory of what men wore in the mid-80s(above): Dr. Martin's high top shoes, spandex bicycle racing pants, fanny pack, and a buccaneer shirt with puffy sleeves and collar wide enough for a second head, if needed. An Elvis Costello, close-on-the-sides haircut, of course. I left the shirt label out which was something guys did later on in the 90s but it looks so good with this outfit that I threw it in anyway.

I knew the 80s were funny when I was living through them. I'm furious with myself and other artists for not chronicling that period with pictures. I didn't because I thought a million other artists must have had it covered. It turns out they didn't. Amazingly the funny part of the eighties passed without drawings to record it. Equally amazing, the period we're living in now is passing unrecorded. All the bling, nose rings, baggy pants and bald heads are going to pass into oblivion, unrecorded by artists.

I know what you're thinking : plenty of underground comics and animated TV shows are recording our time, but are they? The kind of drawings I have in mind are done by artists who can see our time as campy and ridiculous, the way people in the future will undoubtedly see it. What we need are artists from the year 2040, fresh out of the time machine. For me Crumb and Wood fit that description. Both of these artists knew they were living in funny times and they took full advantage of it.

I didn't have time to find illustrations by these artists that would fit what I was trying to say. The Crumb drawing doesn't make the point at all but I'll leave it in. I did stumble on a drawing by Wood (below) that sort of fits. Guys, do you want to see it?

ANOTHER BOOK REVIEW: "THE CRIMINAL PERSONALITY"

I thought I'd take some time out to explain why I like one of the books in my profile. I picked this one because it's the title most likely to be misunderstood. I'm not really interested in criminology per se. What I like about this book is that it's a work of practical philosophy.

The author, Stanton Samenow, is a prison psychologist. When he wrote the book he'd been working with prisoners for over twenty years. He definitely believes there's such a thing as a criminal type, someone who likes the excitement of crime and would rather die than lead a normal life. This condition is generally regarded as incurable but that's not how Samenow sees it. He came up with a therapy for it.

According to Samenow (above) the natural criminal doesn't reject the way ordinary people think, his problem is that he can't even imagine it. Not in the least. The natural criminal is a manipulator. He can't imagine any other way of thinking. He believes everybody else are manipulators too, he's just better at it. The first time you tell him him that ordinary people are not manipulators he's genuinely shocked because he's never even considered the possibility. He thinks you're putting him on.

Therapy for this type of person consists of asking him to keep a detailed record of everything he said and did with other prisoners, with an emphasis on the small things. The therapist listens to the criminal read the record and he stops the reading whenever some oddball manipulation comes up.

For example, the criminal says he asked another prisoner for a cigarette. The therapist stops him and asks if the criminal really needed the cigarette. The criminal matter-of-factly says he didn't but it was an opportunity to mess with the other guy's mind. The therapist replies that an ordinary person wouldn't ask for the cigarette unless he really wanted it. The criminal is dumbfounded and doesn't believe it. They talk about it for awhile then go on.

The criminal says he asked for a light and held the other guys arm steady when he held the match. The therapist asks why he held the arm and the criminal says it was to show the other guy who's boss. The therapist says ordinary people wouldn't have held the arm unless the light was in danger of going out. Once again the criminal is dumbfounded. It goes on like that. Over a period of two or three years the criminal gradually learns how ordinary people think. He has to learn it, just like learning a subject in school, and when he's learned it his behavior changes because people naturally adapt to new enviornments once they comprehend them.

Now I haven't the slightest idea if this if this therapy really works. What interested me about it is that it made me wonder if some people, including fairly ordinary and intelligent people, might think so differently than myself that we almost inhabit different worlds. When someone vigorously disagrees with me but seems to have a weak argument, we might be at an impasse based on completely different assumptions about life. These assumptions are often hard to articulate and the person holding them might not even be aware of them. The same goes for me.

After reading this book I decided to make an effort to get over these impasses by arguing to what I assume are the unspoken assumptions. I also decided to assume the other person was as rational as myself and had no secret animosity or evil intent in their make-up. I've been doing this to some extent ever since I read this book and I think it's worked, or at least it works half the time, which is a lot. Of course there are genuinely crazy and evil people and this technique won't work with them, but most people aren't like that.

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.

WHAT IS THE LITTLE GIRL LOOKING AT?

Believe it or not, this Carl Larsson picture of a girl fishing over a railing is one of the most evocative pictures that I own. Over the years I've gotten cartloads of ideas by staring at it. One of the things that appeals to me about it is that there's only one human being and one deck in the scene. If lots of people had a deck fronting the water the view would be spoiled. In this case only one does. The viewer is like a king enjoying a scene that only a handful of other people will ever see.

Now obviously this is just a fantasy because with the population being what it is not even a king could afford to keep a vista like this to himself. But fantasies don't have to make sense. For example, what's the best seat in the house if you're going to out to hear a symphony orchestra? Is it in the middle of the first row? Not really. When you think about it, isn't the best seat one that would be next to the conductor? And wouldn't it be better to lie down than sit down? The best seat is a cot next to the conductor.

What would be the best place for a table if you're going to eat a reataurant meal? By the window? Not really. For me the best place would be right in the middle of the crowd rushing to and fro in the main room of a giant big-city railroad station. I like to see effective people in a hurry. I like trying to imagine what their lives must be like, and while I'm doing that I wouldn't mind a thick, juicy steak and some good wine at a well turned out table with impeccable linen. Of course no one would take notice of me. But that's my fantasy. Maybe you'd like to dine on a mesa or in the womens' dressing room of a supermodel contest.

What's the best place to put the desk that you like to work on? In a big, cushy office? Maybe, but I prefer to be outside in the tropical jungle - minus the heat and bugs. I don't mind monkies and cheetas on my filing cabinets. I think I'd like hearing tropical birds and listening to the gurgling of a near-by stream. I'd like dappled sunlight on my papers and the ozone smell that preceeds a tropical thunderstorm, which by the way wouldn't get my papers wet.

So that's why I like the fishing picture. It's all about possibility and thinking about what you really want, instead of what you'll settle for. Once in a while what you really want turns out to be what other people would really want too, and once in a while ...well, you know the rest.

BOOK REVIEW: "ACTING FOR ANIMATORS" BY ED HOOK

WHERE ARE THE FUNNY DRAWINGS?

What's funny? Well, for starters, this drawing by Basil Wolverton (above) is funny. Everyone I've shown this to laughs. Why do we so seldom see funny drawings like this in modern animation? It's odd to think that TV animation contains so few funny drawings. You'd think a few would slip in there, if only by accident. I'll bet the artists who designed the TV poster above have drawings of theirs pinned to their cubicles that are 10 times funnier than anything in the poster they made. Why is this? What's wrong? What's responsible for this? Why are there no crisis meetings when a poster or a comedy show fails to include funny drawings?
I love drawings like this (above) because they so obviously exist just to get a laugh. The artist isn't ashamed of being funny, he flaunts it! They're not mildly amusing products for an era of reduced expectations...they're gloriously and unashamedly reaching for a laugh! If I see one more mildly amusing animated feature or TV show I think I'm going to explode. The audience is hungry for funny drawings! Why are we witholding them?