In my post last week on the dread anarchists of the world of the City, I mentioned that certain strange cartoons might serve as some sort of awakening to mindwarping alien influences.
One of the classic cartoons I had in mind when I wrote that was "Bimbo's Initiation," a 1931 Fleischer Studios "Talkartoon." It tells the story of Bimbo's unfortunate fall down a manhole, and subsequent encounter with an underground secret society--with a strong interest in corporal punishment--bent on recruiting him. I had wanted to include the above picture in that post, but at the time, I couldn't think of the name of the cartoon! In the intervening time, not only did I eventually recall it, but I managed to found it online:
Other cartoons of the era that are no doubt symptomatic of chaos god-thing intrusion into our plane (in the most entertaining way) are "Russian Rhapsody" (1944), "Porky in Wackyland" (1938) and its color almost- doppelgänger "Dough for the Do-Do" (1949), to name only a few.
6 comments:
The mind reels. perhaps it is a side-effect of losing 11 Sanity Points, but I now understand the appeal of using cartoons in your in City setting. They are perfect gaming fodder.
I've caught that one, and it is bizarre. Seeing something that weird from that long ago is like when you first discover the art of Hieronymus Bosch and realize the psychedelic sixties were really pretty tame by comparison.
I worship all that is Max Fleischer! I'm amazed to find another game blogger into this stuff!
@Risus - Embrace the weird, my friend, in all its guises. ;)
@Matt - Your right. I think,too, there's the thing of popular media being some in the moment that its seems all the stranger when your completely outside of the context it was produced in.
@ Cycloptrean - I am a fellow traveller. I was just watching volume 1 of the complete Fleischer Popeye on Sunday. Their conceptions of Superman and Popeye--in addition to being hallmarks in animation history--are part of the primordial stew from which the City and its world arises.
I always find, when coming down from hallucinogens, that my mind is usually playing some twisted, weird cartoon, so this makes sense to me for your setting.
I remember that Al (from Beyond the Black Gate) posted that first cartoon some time ago and it was the first time that I had seen it and it is very weird. Who does stuff like to kids? And why aren't we still doing it today?
There is one of those old puppet things, with the devil and a bunch of weird animated stuff (look for The Mascot and anything by Ladislas Starevicz). I first saw it late night when the USA channel was cool. If you ever catch the full thing, it is actually about a puppet dog. Man, is that thing weird, but fun to trip to.
I'll have to look for that.
I think that the idea that we were doing anything to kids with media only reared its head intermittently until after World War II. I there have been some good aspects to that, sure, but there may also have been a downside.
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