A Cartoonish Remembrance

In this morning’s Bucks County Courier Times, columnist J.D. Mullane waxes somewhat philosophically over the ‘60s cartoon series Jonny Quest as a tribute to Joseph Barbera, one half of television’s legendary animation team who died on Tuesday.

(And no, I can’t believe there’s a Wikipedia article on Jonny Quest either, and it’s pretty good actually.)

Yes, I watched the show also for a time, and I realized that it took risks back when cartoons usually didn’t do that sort of thing, pushing the envelope when it came to violence, as opposed to now, when some cartoons do that with everything.

But as aggravating as the whole notion of political correctness can be at times, there is a reason why that notion exists (I once heard WXPN morning personality Michaela Majoun tell people to call the station with requests because a female intern whose name I can’t recall was “personing” the phone, and I almost called the station myself to tell Majoun that I thought she was an idiot).

And the reason why it exists is because of shows like Jonny Quest.

Yes, I know it was a cartoon and it wasn’t supposed to have the same sensibility as an adult program, and yes, I also know that it was a product of its time. And I agree with Mullane that it was commendable to see a show composed almost exclusively of men where they managed to solve problems without machine gunning or blowing up the bad guys in the process (they usually tricked the bad guys into doing that themselves); also, it was nice to see the male characters portrayed in an intelligent manner for a change.

But Jonny’s stepbrother Hadji (I guess, according to Mullane – watching the show, I never knew exactly what he was) was always seen wearing a jewel-encrusted turban and, in the show’s closing credits, always played a flute while the cobra slowly coiled and rose out of the rope basket, and always was subservient to Jonny, wondering what to do next while Jonny, Race Bannon and Dr. Quest saved the day in one fashion or another.

And another cliché of the ‘60s program was that, whenever trouble arose, Jonny, Race, Hadji and sometimes Dr. Quest would inevitably strip to their bathing suits and jump into the speedboat for the rousing action finale; indeed, every time something dangerous was about to happen, Dr. Quest would tell Race Bannon to get out there and do something about it, in the tradition of Tonto, Kato, and the guy wearing the tan stretch shirt on “Star Trek” beaming down to the alien planet who would inevitably get killed or risk serious bodily harm while the hero ended up taking the bows at the end.

So yeah, it was fun, and it was a product of its time as I said. But if it were to debut now in its original form, it wouldn’t stand a chance not because of the violence, but because of its hackneyed plots and dialogue.

Also, as long as we’re on the subject of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, I should confess my fondness for Top Cat, which Mullane derides somewhat in his column. I guess it was sort of an answer to “The Aristocats” from Disney and “Bugs Bunny” from Warner Bros., with a tiny bit of “West Side Story” thrown in (I often thought Office Dibble was supposed to be a takeoff on Officer Krupke). It was often sweet and endearing as I recall (dusting off the memory banks here), and like most cartoons of that era, one of the characters was voiced by Arnold Stang.

And while I am forced to watch Scooby Doo with the young one, I should note that I think the two movies are kind of entertaining as well as the more recent cartoons since money was actually spent on production values and hiring writers to come up with somewhat interesting storylines, but why anyone would remember those original cartoons with any fondness totally escapes me, since they were cheap looking and contained barely enough of a story to work in a dippy-sounding song while everyone ran around incoherently just before the bad guys were caught.

And finally, while I know Doug Wildey, the illustrator for the ‘60s series, was a comic book artist, for Mullane to draw any comparison between Jonny Quest and DC Comics is a laughable insult.

Update 12/26: Speaking of cartoonish developments for the season, I'm glad someone said something about this because there was a last-minute flurry of "War On Christmas" B.S. in our media before yesterday.

And another thing: I should point out that the Philadelphia Inquirer usually publishes a nice Tony Auth cartoon on Christmas day wishing everyone a happy holiday season in a way that brings a smile to one's face regardless of your politics. Well, on Christmas day this year, Philadelphia's conservative newspaper of record published this garbage by Glenn McCoy, proving once more that, under the ownership of Bruce Toll and Brian Tierney of Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, there is no holiday for insulting and ridiculing anyone or anything that doesn't tow the Repug conservative (and by extension, their own) line.