{"id":251098,"date":"2025-05-21T21:32:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T21:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/cartoons-about-cartoons-part-36\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T21:32:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T21:32:17","slug":"cartoons-about-cartoons-part-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=251098","title":{"rendered":"Cartoons About Cartoons \u2013 Part 36 |"},"content":{"rendered":"


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So where has animation gone in terms of self-reference to the art and the industry in recent years? While it seems that specific references to the medium have been overall fewer in number comparative to the amount of product produced, there have still been some memorable moments, including not only for the small screen, but in theatrical short and feature-length formats. Some are indeed better than others, but it is fun that the revival in interest of the public and devoted fans for classic animation has virtually brought some of the most recent productions full circle, with nostalgic looks back at animation\u2019s distant past, and even the classic Looney Tunes again returning to take up pencil and paper at the drawing board. Animation has survived as an art form well over a century, and remains enough of a viable commodity that it can still fascinate us with wonderment, inspire creative writing and visual innovation, and generally support itself to boot. Not a bad legacy, eh, doc? <\/p>\n

\"\"Virtual Tex<\/strong> (DIC, The Wacky World of Tex Avery, 10\/20\/97) finds Tex Avery (the cowboy hero, not the animator) traveling a canyon trail aboard his faithful steed, Burrito the goat, attempting to track his arch-enemy Sid, who has once again kidnapped Tex\u2019s would-be girl, Miss Chastity. They approach a fork in the trail with two road signs, one pointing to a destiation of \u201cBliss\u201d, the other to \u201cDoom\u201d. Suddenly Burrito stops cold at the junction, though Avery didn\u2019t tell him to whoa. Burrito steps out of character, stands up (throwing Tex), and addresses in human speech the viewing audience. \u201cLadies and Gentlemen. The producers have decoded to update this old-fashioned plot by turning our episode into an interactive adventure. At pivotal points in the action, you will be asked to make a choice, such as, do you wish us to take the easy path through Blissful Meadows, or the dreaded peril of Doom Valley?\u201d Burrito explains that buttons have been provided to the viewers to register their choices via on-screen score meters. Burrito then returns to his \u201cunfulfilling tole as a speechless pack animal.\u201d Tex refers to this as \u201chigh-tech gobbledy-goop\u201d, and is shocked when the first score registers, sending them to Doom Valley by a vote of 18,732 to 3. \u201cI hope you folks know what you\u2019re a-gettin\u2019 me into.\u201d We soon do, as a montage of shots shows Tex pursued by a horror-movie sized scorpion, an equally king-sized rattlesnake, and then found half-buried in a sand dune. \u201cFreedom of choice is overrated\u201d, says Tex.<\/p>\n

\"\"More votes keep coming in, each one as lopsided as the first in favor of the selection that seems the least conducive to Tex\u2019s safety. Tex asks if the viewers got up on the wronh side of the bed this morning. A biker mob roars across the desert, lassoing Tex by the feet and dragging him across the sands. In a Western town, Tex is stalked b a drooling homicidal blacksmith with twin sledge hammers. Tex ducks in a shed, only to find inside an assembly line replete with robotic boxing gloves, chomping false teeth, chainsaws, mallets, and other brutal devices. He and Burrito are ejected by the machinery\u2019s blows into the center of an angry mob, armed with cannon. After a mauling, they take refuge in another shed, where Tex asks the audience, \u201cI like a joke as much as the next guy, but COME ON!\u201d The latest vote makes the shed a dynamite shack, blowing out heroes sky high. \u201cTry to be a nice guy\u201d, mutters Tex. Another vote, and they land in a large pile of manure. Now Tex knows there\u2019s something fishy, as no audience would do that to their hero. Tex pulls out a cell phone and calls his mother, asking if she\u2019s been watching his cartoon at the old folks\u2019 ranch. She responds yes, and says everyone\u2019s been voting for Tex, but the votes aren\u2019t registering on the screen. Tex knows this is Sid\u2019s work \u2013 and at his hideout, Sid watches Tex on his television, button controller in hand, using sophisticated signal-jamming to block the real votes. Sid gloats to Chastity that Tex will never find him \u2013 but Tex does so in an instant, stepping right out of the television screen. Tex also mentions that tracking Sid was a snap, since his cabin was located right next to the manure pile, and surrounded by giant sattelite dishes. Chastity is freed, and asks if Tex intends to toss Sid in the hoosegow. \u201cI don\u2019t think so\u201d, says Tex, with a vengeful grin. A fade, and we see Sid in the same town where we previously saw Tex, dragged in by the bikers, attacked by a giant rat, pursued by a tank, having a safe dropped on him, stampeded by wild elephants, grabbed by a dinosaur and inflated by his breath into the shape of a balloon, floating into space to get struck by a hit-and-run flying saucer, falling into Hades\u2019 flame as a crack in the Earth opens beneath him, and finally clobbered by the homicidal blacksmith\u2019s hammers \u2013 each fate accompanied by on-screen votes registering a choice of a glowing skull-and-crossbones option. At his TV set sits Tex, pushing the buttons of a controller to select Sid\u2019s fate. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s something to this interactive sheep dip after all.\u201d Chastity appears, stating that Tex still hasn\u2019t received his reward, puckering up for a kiss. But a vote meter appears on the screen, selecting another option, and Chastity merely gives him a handshake. \u201cNow that was cold\u201d, says Avery to the audience, wondering who made that selection. The camera returns to the manure pile, where Burrito, selector button in hand, snickers.<\/p>\n

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\u2022 \u201cVirtual Tex\u201d is watchable on DailyMotion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Superior Duck<\/strong> (Chuck Jones Productions\/Warner, Daffy Duck, 8\/23\/98 \u2013 Chuck Jones, dir.) \u2013 One of Jones\u2019s often irregular, self-produced comeback efforts for the studio late in life \u2013 and this one\u2019s a bit more irregular than usual. For one thing, it was produced at a transitional point when Jones preferred to use Frank Gorshen as primary voice. Gorshen\u2019s Daffy takes a bit of getting used to, and really only comes somewhat close in the under-the-breath muttering mode. For another thing, this episode might have fared better if there had actually been a plot written for it. Jones self-penned the project without the assistance of Michael Maltese, and seems to have settled on accomplishing nothing more in six minutes than parodying the same standard intro to Superman cartoons that it took him only about a minute and a half to accomplish to greater effect in \u201cSuper-Rabbit\u201d 55 years earlier.<\/p>\n

\"\"Narrator Thurl Ravenscroft (voice of Tony the Tiger, with whom Jones had previously worked in presenting the song, \u201cYou\u2019re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch\u201d) sums up the whole thing best at the outset of the film, introducing Superior Duck as the \u201cduck of yesterday\u201d (while Daffy coaches him, \u201cTomorrow, The duck of tomorrow!\u201d) Even Daffy\u2019s outfit looks like yesterday \u2013 a sort of rumpled version of his old Duck Dodgers suit, with a yellow exclamation point insignia on his chest. The narrator starts into the usual spiel, with what an earlier Daffy might have called \u201cnoun trouble\u201d. Superior Duck is \u201cfaster than a speeding snail\u201d. \u201cA speeding what?\u201d reacts an irritated Daffy. Passing such a gastropod on a roof, the duck asks. \u201cAre you suggesting that I\u2019m only faster than a speeding \u2013 \u2013 that?\u201d As he makes derogatory comments upon the slug\u2019s ability to shift from zero to 60 inches, the snail suddenly revs up its tail like an outboard motor, and zips out of frame at super speed, spinning Daffy around and making his beak fall off. \u201cI could be wrong, you know\u201d, says Daffy\u2019s detached beak. As another larger character streaks by Daffy, largely unseen, Daffy says, \u201cIt\u2019s about time\u201d, and outraces it, as the narrator changes his line to \u201cfaster than a speeding pullet.\u201d It is, in fact, a small chicken. Daffy tries to get the narrator to straighten it out to \u201cbullet\u201d, but is interrupted by a cameo from Foghorn Leghorn, who rises to the defense of the chicken. He refers to Daffy as a gander, until Daffy states he is the illustrious Superior Duck. \u201cI just wonder if you can superior duck \u2013 this!\u201d, says Foghorn, laying a blow to Daffy\u2019s bill with the visible word, \u201cKa-Pow!\u201d Daffy is again forced to reattach his bill.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Daffy soliloquizes why he ever got into the animation business anyway, speculating how he might have made out providing supply for duck down pillows, when the narrator reminds him he hasn\u2019t done the \u201cmore powerful\u201d bit. \u201cGet lost, Jack\u201d, says Daffy. \u201cNo work, no pay\u201d, says the narrator. Daffy freezes, reverses course, and returns to his duties, muttering, \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for avarice, for sheer greed, I\u2019d be a very happy duck.\u201d He stands upon a railroad track, and braces to hold back the approach of the headlight of an oncoming locomotive. The headlight turns out to be considerably smaller than expected \u2013 attached to a miniature toy locomotive controlled by Tweety, who passes between Daffy\u2019s feet, commenting, \u201cI did taw an upside-downy putty duck.\u201d Several other cameos randomly fill out the remaining time, including the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote (the latter encountering Daffy after the Road Runner has flattened him, and holding up a sign reading, \u201cWell \u2013 Better a duck dinner than nothing at all.\u201d), Marvin Martian and space-cadet Porky Pig (reprising for no good reason the disintegration\/re-integration pistol gag from \u201cDuck Dodgers of the 24 1\/2th Century\u201d), and the Tasmanian Devil. Daffy finally settles down to his own self-narration and to concentrate on saving the human race, when a large human hand seizes him by the throat and drags him upward out of frame. The hand belongs to the real Superman, in his only crossover into a Looney Tune, who informs Daffy, \u201cI\u2019m working this side of the street. Now bug off!\u201d Daffy does just that, making a costume change to one with insect wings, bee stripes, and a stinger, as \u201cSuperior Bug\u201d. In the last shot, as the narrator ad-libs new \u201cfaster than\u201d and \u201cmore powerful than\u201d lines, Daffy demonstrates his flying prowess, by regularly bumping into tall buildings, causing lighted signs on them to register \u201cTilt\u201d.<\/p>\n