When I was a little kid, I loved all animated cartoons. It didn’t much matter whether they were any good. When advertisers started pushing Popeye macaroni — green spinach-flavored macaroni in the shape of Popeye characters — I pestered my mom until we got some.
Oh, it was terrible!
Maybe that’s why I stopped loving Popeye cartoons. Or maybe it was the crude rubber-limbed early animation, Olive Oyl’s grating whine, Popeye and Bluto’s inarticulate mutters and grunts, or the dim-witted, predictable stories. As I grew older, I still loved cartoons, but Popeye fell by the wayside.
Then, many years later, I saw three long color cartoons: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. They were good — good enough that I’m having trouble now deciding whether to buy this forthcoming DVD of the first sixty Popeye cartoons.
Could it be that Popeye just went over my head? Were Popeye cartoons making serious points about the human condition, and I was just too immature to get them? Roy Zimmerman found something:
Nixon looks rational, Reagan looks fiscally responsible. Dan Quayle looks like a genius.
If it turns out Woody Woodpecker is deep, I’m in serious trouble.
Post a Comment
No personal attacks on any of the participants here.