THE ANIMATOR: …So we were thinking, why not center it on the Warner brothers and their sister, Dot?
EXEC #1: Who’s we?
EXEC #2: The Warner Brothers had a sister?
THE ANIMATOR: My fellow toonsmiths and I. And not like, the historical Warner Brothers. We’re talking about cartoon characters created by the studio in the 1930s. Sort of like mascots. Or daemon familiars.
EXEC #1: Right, sure.
THE ANIMATOR: The great part is that the Warners really own their cartoon nature. They’re not like other idiot toons you watch who don’t even get that they inhabit an imaginary picturescape and aren’t real. They’re self-aware.
EXEC #2: Ha, ha. “Breaking the fourth page,” as it were.
[it weren’t]
THE ANIMATOR: Anyway. Their names are Yakko, Wakko and of course, Dot. We like to think of them as the Shadow, Chance, and Sassy of the small screen.
EXEC #1: Ah, cute, they’re dogs? Or two dogs and a cat, rather?
THE ANIMATOR: Nope, neither dogs nor cats. They’re… I guess the most accurate way I can describe it is “sporadically malevolent agents of chaos.”
EXEC #1: What animal is that.
THE ANIMATOR: They’re locked away in the studio water tower on charges of max zaniness until they escape in the 1990s, where our show begins.
EXEC #2: Ahh, I think I understand. It’s like Roger Rabbit! Toons are a separate class, and the Warners are animated but they interact with a live-action cast. Pretty cool!
THE ANIMATOR: Pretty no. The show’s multiverse and all matter therein is animated. No tri-dimes.
[???]
THE ANIMATOR: Sorry, that’s inkslang for “three-dimensional beings.”
EXEC #2: If everything’s animated, how will the audience recognize that the Warners are toons qua toons, so to speak?
THE ANIMATOR: What better time for children to be asking these questions? They have already begun to wonder what makes them themselves, discrete and whole, and not the chair they’re sitting on, the remote they’re holding, the sister with whom they’re vying for power. In short, what animates them. And that’s the question probed by all cartoons.
[…]
THE ANIMATOR: Also they just look real cartoony.
EXEC #1: Tails?
THE ANIMATOR: Yep.
EXEC #1: Clothes?
THE ANIMATOR: About half.
[diligent note-taking]
EXEC #2: What happens when they escape the water tower? Are they on a quest, or is it a scrape-of-the-week type deal?
THE ANIMATOR: They’re not constrained by parents, physics, or a moral code, so a little of everything. They torment their Freudian psychoanalyst and mock Satan and undermine the authority of a Barney-esque pretender. Mayhem is their genius. They’re a lot like Amelia Bedelia in that way, if, as I do, you read Amelia Bedelia as a rebel saboteur of the patriarchy. Except the Warners don’t bury their libido in the layers of spice cakes.
EXEC #1: Oh. They have libido.
THE ANIMATOR: Mm. One of their catchphrases is “Hello, Nurse!” which is a thing they yell whenever the buxom studio nurse appears. Then they leap into her arms and slobber. Sexuality is a serious matter in the animatrix.
[…]
THE ANIMATOR: There are hot men for Dot, too.
[whispered conference]
EXEC #2: Hang on. If they’re not cats and dogs, are they mice?
THE ANIMATOR: No. We have mice, though! Brain is a megalomaniacal lab mouse who plots global domination, and his cell mate Pinky is a sweet dolt who says narf.
[lingering pause, as if to suggest that every human relationship has its Pinky and its Brain]
EXEC #1: How do these conspiratorial mice intersect with the story of the Warner siblings?
THE ANIMATOR: Did I not explain that Animaniacs is a vaudevillian pastiche? There is no fixed plot, structure, or mythos. Settings and characters leap the time-space continuum with the Warner siblings as the only line of continuity.
For example, let’s say Death comes for Wakko at a Swedish meatball-eating contest. Yakko and Dot riff on Bergman as they annoy their way out of the bureaucracy of mortality, at which point we shift to Dot’s Poetry Corner for a little rhyme time, then onward to the heart of the jungle where we visit Flavio and Marita, a pair of married Italian aristocrats. Who are hippos. Other episodes might see the Warners fighting Captain Ahab, or Chicken Boo becoming a sheriff. Anything’s possible.
EXEC #2: Yeah…I’m wondering if maybe it’s all a little too possible? Establishing limits is an important part of worldbuilding.
THE ANIMATOR: Tooncraft defies limits. The art of animation is the constant rearranging and reshifting of the lines between illustration and creation. Yakko, Wakko, and Dot embrace their cartoon heritage and its antic, violent traditions. Kids will dig it.
EXEC #1: Um. When you talk about the Warners knowing who they are and embracing their heritage — I just want to clarify, you mean like… The characters in the world of the show. They’re self-aware in the show, but not like…not like really.
[…]
EXEC #2: [breath-adjacent] Guess we know who the Pinky is.
EXEC #1: Really, Trevor?
THE ANIMATOR: Other characters include pigeons who are the mafia and a singing cat voiced by Bernadette Peters. We’re also working on a totally chill and unspooky skullhead, a celebrity squirrel, Randy Beaman’s friend Colin, lots of historical cameos, and the aforementioned Chicken Boo. There will be parodies of beloved classics and sly references to politics, pop culture, and sex.
[…]
[…]
[…]
EXEC #2: Let’s move on.
EXEC #1: How will kids feel when they watch this show?
THE ANIMATOR: Disconcerted. Unmoored. Hyper-stimulated. Amused to the point of terror.
EXEC #2: Oh good. Don’t want my nine-year-old daughter to feel too…moored.
THE ANIMATOR: Nine-year-old daughter? Her loyalties will lie with Dot, as they must in a tooniverse starved for female heroes, though her personality will be closest to Yakko’s and in her heart of hearts she’ll cherish Wakko. She won’t want to admit it, as everybody loves a Wakko and a Wakko she will never be.
[Trevor gets the sense that he will never be moored again]
THE ANIMATOR: Animaniacs isn’t “for” kids, you see. It is the anarchic soul of the child. Sensory overload, constant change, sibling rivalry, new adventure. Life happens in a disjointed series of images, until they’re locked away at night by an authority whose motives remain opaque.
EXEC #1: And we’re big fans of anarchy, believe me! But psychosexual satire and postmodern vaudeville don’t exactly scream “Saturday morning cartoons.”
THE ANIMATOR: Oh, it screams. It screams and screams. But for every parody of a World War II propaganda reel, there’s an elegiac picture-poem about the life of wrapping paper or the flame of a candle — and all stories of course are the same story, about the value that lies in the unnoticed, the ephemeral contribution that is a life.
EXEC #1: That’s nice.
EXEC #2: Global thoughts: Maybe more of that, less Death and entropy?
THE ANIMATOR: If you want a sanitized education, there’s PBS. Animaniacs isn’t here to teach your daughter that sharing is caring and cookies are a sometimes food. Instead she’ll learn that sharing is communism, an economic system adopted by the Soviet Union after the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas — Rasputin can explain. Runt Valrunt will teach her about French literature and that lots of things can be food, even cats.
EXEC #2: Hey, I love a clever parody as much as the next knucklehead, but will the children even understand a majority of these jokes?
THE ANIMATOR: No, they will not.
[…]
THE ANIMATOR: Animaniacs will not make sense to them now. It will make the world make sense to them later.
[Silence, but for EXEC #1’s barely-breathed ‘narf’]
THE ANIMATOR: In the past there were no divisions between children’s and adult entertainment. Everyone sat ’round the kerosene lamp reading The Leatherstocking Tales and everyone at the trading post made the same puns. But in our PG-13 age, who’s going to introduce your daughter to essential Americana, if not the Godpidgeon?
EXEC #2: I mean, maybe she doesn’t need to know about organized crime just yet?
THE ANIMATOR: Cultural literacy is an Always food, my friend.
EXEC #2: You’re saying that ten years from now, a young person will watch The Godfather or read Freud for the first time and realize that the Viennese shrink archetype in their minds was actually from Animaniacs all along? And the mumbling mafia don and the plot of Les Miserables and the fall of the Tsars? That the show will act as a sort of contextual membrane through which kids absorb quintessential images that will one day render direct source material more accessible, and that the cultural déjà vu they experience when they encounter said material will recur throughout their adult lives?
THE ANIMATOR: Quite. Research indicates that 90 percent of this generation’s cultural associations will have been shaped by Animaniacs.
EXEC #2: Wait. That’s not even — you’re just making up whatever —
THE ANIMATOR: Rearranging the lines, is all. Rearranging the lines. Now…
[rolls pencils across the table]
THE ANIMATOR: Are you ready to draw the future?
THE ANIMATOR: Nope, neither dogs nor cats. They’re… I guess the most accurate way I can describe it is “sporadically malevolent agents of chaos.”
EXEC #1: What animal is that.
Ferrets.
Ohhhhh the Animaniacs are ferrets, I get it now.
Yes, it all makes sense!
so, this happened in my childhood:
big sis: The Animaniacs aren’t a real animal.
lil me: Yes they are!
big sis: Okay what are they.
lil me: [real confident] they’re SIBLINGS.
“EXEC #1: How will kids feel when they watch this show?
THE ANIMATOR: Disconcerted. Unmoored. Hyper-stimulated. Amused to the point of terror.”
yup yup accurate, this was true.
And yet we cannot look away. <3
Animaniacs will not make sense to them now. It will make the world make sense to them later.
I need to lie down.
Yeah, that line was the moment I had to restrain myself from immediately quitting my job and going home to watch Animaniacs all day. Narf.
FOR REAL
I teared up a little, no lie.
Seriously. SERIOUSLY. I had to stop and stare at that one for a minute.
I AM SO READY TO DRAW THE FUTURE
i really loved this show, you guys, and now Mini Wren loves it and my life is coming full circle with this article. yayyy
They’re not constrained by parents, physics, or a moral code this is, essentially, the dream state of all toddlers.
“I found Prince!”
“No no no! FINGER-prints!”
“…I don’t think so.”
Goodnight, everybody!
I really question Dot’s taste in men. She moons over Mel Gibson but passes up Prince? C’mon, girl!
To be fair, a LOT of us judged the Mel Gibson book by its cover.
Its pretty Pretty PRETTY cover.
That we stared at for years before the unspeakable filth written inside burst forth.
Yup. I too fell to Gibson’s pretty cover.
Also Russel Crowe. (Gladiator! Master and Commander and violin playing! AND THEN HE THREW A TELEPHONE AT A HOTEL EMPLOYEE TWO YEARS LATER!)
My boyfriend and I quote this on the regular.
“That the show will act as a sort of contextual membrane through which kids absorb quintessential images that will one day render direct source material more accessible, and that the cultural déjà vu they experience when they encounter said material will recur throughout their adult lives?”
I mean, Wishbone was also pretty important in this regard, but we’ve already DONE that pitch meeting.
(now I’m wondering if the animator of Animaniacs in Abbey’s head was a disgruntled ex Wishbone employee)
(I’m sure the timing doesn’t work out, I don’t care)
Correct–Animaniacs predates Wishbone by two years.
True story: In my high school freshman Honors English class, we read Romeo and Juliet, A Tale of Two Cities, and Count of Monte Cristo, all of which were done by Wishbone. I think it was when we started Count that someone said, “Oh, there was a Wishbone episode of that one!” to which we all excitedly agreed.
My teacher said, “What’s Wishbone?”
Here’s something you may not know: attempting to explain the concept of Wishbone to an adult while trying to sound knowledgeable and mature and, well, sane, is not possible.
These two things were my life from 7-10! Wishbone made me seek out canonical fiction, so when I read Les Mis, Runt Valrunt came to mind and I thought my brain exploded.
Ma didn’t let me out much…
“Cultural literacy is an Always food, my friend.”
how do i make 2nd-4th graders understand this
A healthy sprinkling of anvils will come in handy, I think.
I don’t care, Aunt Slappy. Anvils are funny! – Skippy Squirrel
That was where I gasped aloud, tbh.
Principals and school boards, too.
Show Them Animaniacs. It’s all on Netflix.
“sporadically malevolent agents of chaos.” #same – this is brilliant
I was in line at the grocery store the other day and a woman with a small gaggle of children got behind me. One of said children, probably no more than 7 or 8, started quietly singing the Animaniacs theme song, and I don’t know if I’ve ever held such hope for our future before.
EXEC #2: [breath-adjacent] Guess we know who the Pinky is.
We do indeed
They’re Pinky, they’re Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
This. is. glorious. My whole childhood was the Spielberg cartoons (Freakazoid! Hysteria!). Yes.
Divorced! Beheaded! Died!
Divorced! Beheaded! Survived!!
Oh man, Hysteria. I guess I can count that along with my Felicity doll the next time I wonder how I got here, while despairing over my job and wondering why students don’t know the difference between John Lennon and Vladimir Lenin.
My local independent bookstore constantly has American Girl books secondhand for cheap. I am slowly reliving my late childhood/early teen years via Felicity and Samantha novels.
I don’t know, Freakazoid was okay but Candlejack always scared me t
CANDLE
FUCKING
JACK
Candlejack is so so scary.
It had beavers that turn watches into gold!
YES.
Welp…at least now I know how I’m going to get the Animaniacs theme song out of my head. “He’s here to save the nation, so stay tuned to this station”
Man, Hysteria is such an underrated cartoon. I must begin scouring the internets for it now.
As a theater geek kid whose family sang along to the Les Miz cast album on road trips, I found Runt Valrunt to be absolutely thrilling. Even if none if my actual friends got the references, I knew that the Animaniacs were my people. God bless.
I sing the “dig down, dig deep, les miser-animals!” all the time and NO ONE has gotten the reference which makes me extremely sad.
“And Wakko has the voice of Ringo Starr on Nyquil. Obviously.”
I had a crush on Wakko’s voice. But not on Wakko. It’s hard to explain.
SAME! Like, a BIG one.
I had the same experience with Bender? Idk.
“I’m not sure why you’d even need to ask.”
“They’re a lot like Amelia Bedelia in that way, if, as I do, you read Amelia Bedelia as a rebel saboteur of the patriarchy.”
Don’t we all read her like that?
OH MY.
OH MY
OH MY!
When Animaniacs was on the air, I was in my twenties and smoking a lot of weed as did all my friends. None of us had children. Did a lot of kids actually watch this show, or was it mostly 20-something stoners? Serious question.
I was 6 or 7 and yes. My mom recorded it everyday on a VHS tape because it came on before she got off work, and that was literally the first thing we all did, after we got home–watch it.
Thank you. The world I live in in better for knowing this.
I was in late elementary to middle school, and I watched it every day. (I have no idea if, like, four-year-olds watched it. Rainbow Brite it ain’t.)
We totally did. I think I was in my early tteens and I and both younger siblings LOVED it.
Watched it everyday after school! I was a pre-teen/teenager when it aired.
Knowing kids watched this gives me hope for younger generations. EXCELLENT. Thank you all!
I was 9. I fiercely loved it.
My brother and I watched it religiously. I would have been 3 when it started and 8 when it ended; my brother would have been 7 and 12. I’m watching it on Netflix now and wondering how I found any of it amusing when 90% of it went completely over my head.
But it is genuinely the lens through which I view the world in a lot of subtle ways now.
These are the sorts of answers I was hoping to hear. Yay!!!!
I remember coming home from 1st or 2nd grade and always watching Anamaniacs and Sabrina the Teenage Witch with my dad. He explained some of the more G-rated cultural references to me.
Yup! My brother and I were under 10 & watched it religiously with both of our parents, who were big fans. I remember the popular, cliquey girls teased me when I said I liked the show. So I don’t know if if was for every kid… Not surprised Toasties are fans.
I was about 10 when it aired, and my older brother and I watched it religiously. My favorite was Slappy the Squirrel, followed closely by Pinky and the Brain. Buttons and Mindy were the wooooorst.
Revisiting it is amazing. I definitely cherish the memory of rewatching it with my brother, laughing our heads off, while our parents and my sister-in-law watched in silence.
Yes! I was one of them. I am now showing it to my husband, who did not see it at the time (except for the standalone Pinky and the Brain cartoon), and he’s just…bemused.
Yeah I was in middle school when it was on (and had younger brothers – it was the only after school show we all liked). My boyfriend is five years older and missed this completely, it’s the only time I really feel our age difference.
Completely agree! I was 10 when it started airing and I’d say it is about 90% responsible for my subsequent personality. My boyfriend is 4 years older and missed it completely, and I’d say most of our differences stem from him not getting my sarcasm.
I also watched in college. My teens have been watching on Netflix this month.
RELIGIOUSLY. I was in grades 3-8 going by the dates listed, and me and my younger siblings watched every damn episode. My parents also loved it, and the Pinky and the Brain spinoff. We still refer to it about as often as the Simpsons.
My dad still makes Pinky and the Brain jokes with us, too. And if my sister and I are driving somewhere, and either of us sees a particularly large pigeon, we will point to it and say “Godpidgeon.”
I was a young teen, and it led me to make jokes that were dirtier than I thought. But then, I also read my parents’ Doonesbury collections when I was little, so I spent a great deal of my childhood making jokes that were dirtier than I thought, because I was always good at recognizing punchlines, even if I didn’t understand them.
I did! And for years after, my mom and I would end phone conversations with “Okay I love you bye-bye!”
We *still* do that with family members <3
I was in high school and then college, and we watched it religiously. Some of us were stoners and some of us were not, so it was also the 20-something non-stoners.
I was 11 in 93. Animaniacs & Batman were my favorites. Had good taste back then.
I was around nine when it started and watched it pretty much every day. I’m sure most of it went over my head, but I loved it.
Same-was nine when it first aired and I don’t know how many of the references I understood, but my brother (two years younger) and I watched it all the time.
yes, my sister and I watched them a ton and we were definitely kids. I would have been 6 when it first came out and 11 when it ended.
I watched it in elementary school! I remember loving it. I think I got enough of the jokes to be laughing and entertained the entire time, and I was aware that some things were going over my head, but I didn’t mind.
We’ve showed it to SteelyKid (nearly 8) and the Pip (4.5), and they are big fans. Though the pop culture stuff was second-hand even to me when I first watched it, and they are going to be in for some weird moments if they are ever so unfortunate as to encounter, say, _Heart of Darkness_ as adults.
This is the beginning… the beginning of our story…
Yep! I was 8 in ’93 and my little sister was 5. We loved that shit. Watching it now is kind of a revelation, as others have noted, of all the stuff that went right over my head.
Which is why “Animaniacs will not make sense to them now. It will make the world make sense to them later.” was a weird sort of gut-punch of truth.
I watched it religiously from 6-9th gradeish. And I was usually joined by my dad who loved it at least as much as I did and probably got a lot more of the jokes than I did! We still love the show and for Fathers Day I’ve gotten the voices of Yakko and Wakko to record messages for him. (Incidentally, the voice actors from that show are absolute DELIGHTS.)
I was a preteen/young teen and watched the everlovin’ heck out of it. It even served as a gateway for young me to take her first tottering steps on the Internet and into fandom, what with alt.tv.animaniacs and all.
I was in high school, my sister was in middle school, and my brother was in grade school, and we all LOVED it.
Yup. Watched the entire series from when it started to whenever it ended as a kid with my younger brothers.
It, along with Calvin & Hobbes, remains one of my very favorite things.
I watched it as a kid for sure. My mom really loved the show, and she was a former stoner. I haven’t watched it as an adult, but now it’s on Netflix, and I have a long weekend coming up, and I have weed…. hmm.
I was in my early/mid teens. I watched it religiously, along with Tiny Toons. Every single afternoon after school for at least a year, maybe two.
Not sure how many of the jokes I got.
I didn’t see it as a young child (8-10, when it ran first) because my parents wanted me to watch PBS, but when we moved to Ireland, it was on the kids tv afternoon there, and I was 11 and 12, and living in an isolated rural not-even-a-town-really, and a latch-key kid, and very lonely, and bullied, and that show saved my damn life. If I ever meet Spielberg, i will not ask about Indiana Jones or ET or Schindler’s List or whatever, I will ask about Animaniacs.
I JUST saw that they’re on Netflix last night, and then watched Bring it On instead. Now I’m like WHY AM I NOT ALLOWED TO GO HOME RIGHT NOW AND WATCH THIS WHAT IS THIS WORK THING ANYHOW
*sigh*
I’m just gonna have to sing the theme song all day instead…
I only noticed it night before last! That and Columbo. They are both in my list now.
I just watched Bring it On on Netflix the other night! All the homosexuality jokes and references were so strange and dated. ALSO, the Toros routine at Nationals was so much better than the Clovers, and it angers me. Not that the Clovers won, because I was OBVIously rooting for them the whole movie, but that the filmmakers didn’t make the ending believable. Ugh. What did you think?
The Toros routine at the end blew EVERYTHING else out of the water, and I didn’t really examine that at the time. But now that you mention it, I think the Clovers deserve, not just to WIN, but to be clearly BETTER than the competition, y’know? And they didn’t get that.
I did LOVE that Torrence dumped Boyfriend *before* she discovered that he was cheating. And I love how awkward and dorky Torrence looks when she’s dancing to Obligatory Heterosexual Paring’s adorable song.
I feel like we see so many very dramatic portrayals of “OMG you were cheating on me?” (and rightly so, it’s a horrible feeling) – so Torrence’s reaction basically being “lol” was amazing. And yes I rewatched the dorky dancing scene a few times!
My summer job when I was 16 was at a hotel and after I was done cleaning, if the owners were going out, I could fold laundry and watch Animaniacs, it was brilliant. (I only had 2 channels at home, no Animaniacs there.)
Isn’t “about half” true of all cartoon clothing? case in point:
HEY! You can least provide an NSFW tag!
But when he gets out of the shower, he puts a towel around his waist. What’s with that?
Some people get out of the shower, wrap a towel around their hair, and yet go out in public with their hair shamelessly uncovered.
“Have you seen Goodfellas?”
“Of course I have, I’m no dame! Great movie!”
“It’ll be Goodfellas, but with pigeons. We’ll call it Goodfeathers.”
“I hate to come back to this, but this is for kids, right?”
“It’s for everyone! EVERYONE, DAMN IT!”
“They’re a lot like Amelia Bedelia in that way, if, as I do, you read Amelia Bedelia as a rebel saboteur of the patriarchy.”
This is the part where I had to stop and cry with laughter. Amelia Bedelia is doing important work!
this is amazing
I loved the Animaniacs when I was fifteen and it came on after school and Saturday mornings. I got into my very first internet flamewar on Usenet that year when I discovered an alt. Animaniacs group and found out exactly, and in great detail, what furries were and what they thought about the Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister. I expressed my anger in the form of fanfiction. It did not end well. Google has probably got in in its archives somewhere — I’m afraid to look.
Freakazoid was another amazing piece of work from that time period. I also enjoyed Earthworm Jim and Taz-Mania, which were both better than they had any right to be.
Man, 90s cartoons were some weird and surreal shit. Good times.
“I expressed my anger in the form of fanfiction. It did not end well.”
It never does.
I NEED the episode of Taz-Mania where Taz’s Dad gets in the fight with the bush rats over the orange tree. Why do the bush rats talk like the snl German bodybuilders? Don’t know, kind of don’t care.
Earth Worm Jim. He’s the coolest guy!
Does anybody remember “the Tick”? THAT was a weird 90’s cartoon.
Worth revisiting. It held up.
GRAVITY IS A HARSH MISTRESS
SPOOOOOOOOOON
I loved Freakazoid! It was a great age of absurdist animation. And the villain! The Candlejack schtick was so
“THE ANIMATOR: Quite. Research indicates that 90 percent of this generation’s cultural associations will have been shaped by Animaniacs.”
This is 100% true for me.
… what are you talking about? No one in our generation has ever use knowledge learned from Animaniacs to sound smart in a seminar, or on an exam, or a date, or … *shifts uncomfortably*
[Trevor gets the sense that he will never be moored again]- Trevor is me reading 99% of Toast articles
I actually composed an essay called “Behind the Disguise to Look Like Human Guys: The Interiority of Chicken Boo” but I still didn’t get into any graduate psychology programs for some reason.
I would like to read this essay pls
This is one of the most Toast things I have ever read. Bless you and your house.
I sing the Chicken Boo song to my cat, Erwin, but I change it to Kitten Boo. That’s… a thing I do. Just in case you were wondering.
I somehow missed Animaniacs the first time around, and this is making me feel a LOT better about the fact that my kids just discovered it via Netflix and can’t get enough.
Watch on, my small children!
I mostly missed it the first time around too, except for a few small snippets in the dorm room of my good-friend classmate that was always wanting to study with me (until I found out that he was mostly just doing it for calibration so he could cheat off my tests better, the poor scoundrel).
So this is making me question whether my almost-4-year-old needs to discover it soon. Quite possibly she does, indeed.
You might have to explain the Bill Clinton jokes to them. Er… have fun with that.
Express reference to guaranteed-compensation business practices in animation theme songs or death!
“Life happens in a disjointed series of images, until they’re locked away at night by an authority whose motives remain opaque.”
…
That’s a thought that’s going to fester.
100% what my 2 year old daughter thinks about life.
Also probably the cat I live with. (what the cat thinks about life, I mean, not what your 2-year-old thinks about the cat. probably.)
I’m convinced the 2 year old and our cat are in cahoots…
Cartoon logic checks out there.
EXEC #1: And we’re big fans of anarchy, believe me! But psychosexual satire and postmodern vaudeville don’t exactly scream “Saturday morning cartoons.”
And now I’m pretty sure I know exactly what my mother thought when she walked in on my brother and I watching Animaniacs. And then sat down to watch it with us.
“this children’s show should be HEAVILY based on an understanding of the studio system and star politics of the 30s and 40s!”
“Yes that makes total sense, go with God and make this happen”
It occurs to me now that the closest thing (and another show that I’d love to have seen the pitch meeting for) might be The Muppet Show, where the vaudeville structure has the same “and the people who will REALLY get this, will by now mostly be dead”.
Speaking of things that hold up well to rewatching as an adult.
No, see, it’s great, because it primes kids to understand these things later, because they could tell, even at a tender age, that the jokes in their beloved cartoons were references to something, even if they didn’t know what.
NB: “references to something, even thought I don’t know what” covers most of my childhood.
It primed me for understand so many jokes at Darryl Zaunch’s expense!
Similarly, Loony Tunes gave me a perfect understanding of Katherine Hepburn movies before I ever saw a single one.
I OFTEN THINK ABOUT PERFORMERS WE ONLY KNOW VIA PARODY, LIKE FONTAINE AND LUNT, SO MANY PARODIES OF THEM IN CARTOONS AND SUCH BUT HAVE YOU ACTUALLY SEEN THEM, LIKE THE ACTUAL ONES. Wild
Jerry Lewis! I can’t name a single thing he’s been in, but I can name multiple cartoons that parodied him.
THE ANIMATOR: In the past there were no divisions between children’s and adult entertainment. Everyone sat ’round the kerosene lamp reading The Leatherstocking Tales and everyone at the trading post made the same puns. But in our PG-13 age, who’s going to introduce your daughter to essential Americana, if not the Godpidgeon?
YAAAAASS this is tremendous
Retrospectively, my favorite part of the Warner Bros. Renaissance in the 90s was that Speilberg insisted that the shows feature uniquely-composed soundtracks played by a 36-piece studio orchestra, carrying on the tradition of the classic cartoons of the first half of the century.
That the show will act as a sort of contextual membrane through which kids absorb quintessential images that will one day render direct source material more accessible, and that the cultural déjà vu they experience when they encounter said material will recur throughout their adult lives?
7 Year Old Me: I dunno, man, I already watch The Simpsons…
I Love this! Especially as I just wrote a post about writing in cartoons which was inspired by the Animaniacs (if you’re interested http://www.janeyburton.com/animation-appreciation…. VG, so sorry you’re closing!
Can you repost? The link isn’t working
The Katie Ka-Boom character was based on my old boss. Her dad was a writer for the show. And that should tell you everything you need to know about that job.
WWWOW
How long did you stay in that job?
Not sure what it says about me that I have VIVID memories of and DEEP affection for Pinky & The Brain, and the rest of it didn’t make much of an impression.
But I’m sure it says something.
TO PROVE THEIR MOUSEY WORTH
THEY’LL OVERTHROW THE EARTH
The Christmas one, where Pinky gives Brain that globe keychain, makes me cry to this day. So much love for them.
I was a really antisocial and pedantic kid, so i strongly identified myself as a Brain, surrounded by Pinkys.
GOOD IDEA: this pitch.
BAD IDEA: trying to respond to this pitch with a topical good idea / bad idea gag, god, I am so sorry, I should never have presumed, none can replicate the bizarre charm of the original
I think the GOOD IDEA/BAD IDEA was the central formative element for my sense of humor, or else it’s the first thing I really remember as clicking with me as being the funniest thing in the entire world. Much of Animaniacs was like that, but Good Idea/Bad Idea segments were my absolute favorites. (I also liked the Wheel of Morality! I think I just really like surreal/non-sequitur humor.)
What was really groundbreaking about the Animaniacs is that the Warner Siblings represented a breaking-down of the repressive gender binary, and offered instead, a view of a possible three-gender system that could include everybody: Male, Female, and Wacky.
Wacky is my new gender.
“Oh, it screams. It screams and screams.”
Except when it sobs, of course. Excuse me, I…I have to go do something…
Man now I’m going to have the only snippet of Yakko’s Countries of the World song that I can remember in my head all day (it’s the part that includes “Germany now in one piece” – oh 90s geopolitics).
http://animaniacs.wikia.com/wiki/Yakko's_Wor…
I read this in the tune of the song!
Uuuuuunited States Canada Mexico Panama Haiti Jamaica Peru…
No kidding, my partner has this and the State Capitals songs memorized. He once listened to them on repeat, one following the other, for a whole weekend while writing an essay.
If I remember correctly, the voice actor recently recorded a version that’s more up to date with current country names. Now we can see how long that version lasts before people start saying “oh 2010s”.
yes, this explains so much about who I am as a person.
“But in our PG-13 age, who’s going to introduce your daughter to essential Americana, if not the Godpidgeon?”
INDEED.
Every line of this is perfect truth and I instantly sent it to my best friend, who likewise grew up on a steady diet of ’90s WB cartoons. We were literally just talking about the Spielberg series last Friday. This piece is getting filed away for rereading.
Mayhem is their genius, indeed.
“Animaniacs will not make sense to them now. It will make the world make sense to them later.”
This applies equally to me civil procedure class in law school. Brilliant professor talked over our head for most of the lectures, and several years later, working on my first appeal, I suddenly went “Oooohhhh.”
I do think it’s almost better to learn things that way. Plant the seeds, so when you get it later, you really get it.
This is all th explanation I have been wanting since the Animaniacs showed back up in my life and everything makes sense now and all is well.
Good Idea, Bad Idea. !!!!!!!!!
When a friend described this show to me in 1995 she neglected to mention that it was a cartoon. What I was trying to imagine as a live-action scenario more or less broke my brain.
Re. “a little too possible” – I went to a Buddhist retreat a couple of weeks ago, and one of the topics discussed was how our reality is a projection of whatever is inside our own minds. Since then I’ve been pondering that idea and how scary it is and why I resist the thought of my subconscious having free rein to determine my reality.
And now I know why. It’s because I grew up watching Animaniacs.
That research was DEAD ON!
My roommate and I would watch this when we came home from law school in our mid-20’s.
In fact, a good percentage of my law school class could sing the theme song with any variant you chose.
oh my god, I think I understand why my parents didn’t let 6 yr old me watch this now.
(except Pinky & the Brain. That was allowed, encouraged, & stuck in our head for years afterwards.)
I mean, my primary and formative experience of Wagner continues to be Bugs Bunny in a dress, so I consider this a pretty effective strategy.
SOLID GOLD. To this day, any time someone asks me “Are you thinking* what I’m thinking?” I respond “I think so, Brain.” Tragically, this doesn’t happen much. What does happen is that 100% of the time the reply is “…what?”
Also: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUnitedStatesPanamaMexicoCanadaHaitiJamaicaPeru [big breath]
*I know it’s “pondering,” but nobody ever asks me that.
This is very good.
So has anyone else heard the Pinky and the Brain theory where Pinky is the genius and the Brain is insane? It actually makes sense when you remember that the only time Pinky tried for world domination he succeeded.
It’s my headcanon, personally.
Yes- and Pinky is intentionally sabotaging the Brain’s schemes ?
They actually did that episode, and (spoiler alert?) they both become the supposed insane at the end, and take turns shouting “NARF”.
I don’t know when THE ANIMATOR started to speak in the voice of Brain, but by the halfway mark I knew there was no unhearing it.
This is perfect. WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT YOU, TOAST?
There are so many tv shows of the ’90s and early ’00s that I realize in retrospect I only watched occasionally because my younger siblings were watching them. (Notable exception: Wishbone.)
I remember Animaniacs being utterly bizarre, and also they had a sketch that was about a guy named Illinois Smith who was racing the Warners to some big archeological find, kept getting run over by a boulder. Even at the time I thought it was hilarious because I loved Indiana Jones. They also sang about U.S. capitals.
Well, now I have that theme song stuck in my head.
Remember how in the opening credits, that one person (Kate or Karen something?) whose name was on the middle left about two screens from the end and she always had some weird job title? I LIVED for that and hated it so much when the commercials or tv whatever cut it out or shrunk it tiny so I couldn’t see what her job was this time. Or when the tv station cut off the Warner Sibs’ gag in the water tower.
I kind of wonder if there was a deeper purpose in that gag, or if it was just a parody of the usually opaque job credits to go along with the second verse variation in the opening song.
Kathryn Page. Yes, I knew that from memory. Hit me with your “Please Please Please Get A Life Foundation” jokes if you wish.
omg yes, and this has also reminded me of the intense joy I took in the Tiny Toons gag credits.
Animaniacs gave me the depth in my education on Americana that my immigrant parents couldn’t. Seriously, I owe a lot to the show.
You’re saying that ten years from now, a young person will watch The Godfather or read Freud for the first time and realize that the Viennese shrink archetype in their minds was actually from Animaniacs all along? And the mumbling mafia don and the plot of Les Miserables and the fall of the Tsars? That the show will act as a sort of contextual membrane through which kids absorb quintessential images that will one day render direct source material more accessible, and that the cultural déjà vu they experience when they encounter said material will recur throughout their adult lives?
OMG SO TRUE!!
Also, did this video make anyone else cry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcC4eFhmoCE
(start at 8:30)
It had a major impact on me as a kid and for several holidays afterward I was always really nice to my wrapping paper and never shredded it any more. Also – had no idea it was directed by Spielberg!
I am so so late to this thread but I am going to post my comment to the Internet universe anyway.
I was recently rewatching Animaniacs on Netflix and was getting increasingly uncomfortable as I watched. And I came to a realization as to why. Between the ages of 9 and 12, when it was airing new or in syndication, I was going through a lot of transitions. I was heavily bullied. I moved across several states…twice. I was struggling with social anxiety that morphed into depression when I was 13. And Animaniacs was my coping mechanism. For half an hour every weekday and sometimes on Saturday, I could escape into their world. I could see them conquer their bullies. I could laugh at their adult jokes and references I was only starting to understand. I could feel like I was part of a world that welcomed me. Before it ended and I was back to all the stuff that would be hard for an adult to cope with, let alone a kid.
So rewatching has not been the joy I thought it would be. But it became a point of entry for future exploration with my therapist, so there is hope yet.
I am so sorry that something that seems like it should be joyful is not at the moment. I hope you can find some of that pleasure again once you have unpacked some of the other stuff from around it.
*Ctrl+F “Marx”*
Nope, you’re doing it wrong.
This is beautiful. Thank you.
This is perfect, beautiful, and totally accurate. Thank you!
My brother and I (approx. ages 9 & 13) watched this show in the 1990s. We would rush home from the bus in time to watch Animaniacs. And, now that Animaniacs is on Netflix my daughter (age 8) LOVES the show. She’s actually choreographed a dance to the theme song. We <3 Animaniacs!
omg yes, and this has also reminded me of the intense joy I took in the Tiny Toons gag credits.
I remember watching The Animaniacs every chance I could get when I was a kid. Thanks to this article, I’m starting to wonder if my 12 years of playing in bands weren’t subliminally spurred by Wakko’s burping concertos
I guess 'It weren't' is my Toast Phrase To Use More In Everyday Conservation of the day.
When I was 10, I was confused by the satire and parody of the three stooges, mad magazine, and bugs bunny. When I first read One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest, I laughed in all the wrong places. Mad Mag did My Fair Lady with Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, trying to transform Male Chauvanist Pig Burt Reynolds into the perfect sensitive man. Moe Howard spoofed Hitler before Chaplin. These were my formative educational experiences, and they have served me very well.