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Hello Reader,
Of course I watch American cartoons, both TV and big screen, although I prefer Japanese anime. In Japan, the cartoon TV series for teens may have tragic endings. Main characters die. But U.S. TV cartoons, including the evening adult ones, always have happy endings, and tend to be silly. Perhaps because their historical DNA includes “Saturday morning cartoons.”
Nothing wrong with comedy. In my town, when adults volunteer to do community theatre, comedies are more common than tragedies. Maybe we do Harvey, about an invisible “six foot two and a half inch” bunny rabbit. Or maybe our town does a play by Thornton Wilder, with minimal sets: step ladders suggesting windows, chairs for graves—use your imagination! A play where the dramatic effect comes from the plot, not needing anyone’s gifted acting, neither for essence nor voice.
Even in the big city, some people have no use for Hollywood’s “imagination challenged” realism, not during “Summer Shakespeare.” How fitting: A young diverse cast plays across the boundaries of their own ages, genders and skin pigments. King Lear’s character, though, may need an old guest actor. (“Blow wind, crack my cheeks!”)
People turn up to see a community play in a good mood, seeing their fellow townsmen on stage: There’s Miss O’Leary! There’s Lee from the Chinese cafe! Who else? There’s that guy I’m having a “small town feud” with, and that lady whom people say is a tramp… But we attend for entertainment, not classic tragedy, we “get into” the play, and as people move about the stage, we forget who they are in real life. Unless we are “unfortunates” who squint at the props, and refuse to feel involved. (Not me, I never waste my ticket)
Meanwhile, cartoons are a profitable business in a certain town of famous faces. Tinsel town. I remember a Hollywood couple. They explained to their child that although Daddy doesn’t get nearly as many parts as Mummy, he is equally good at acting: It’s just that Mummy has become a familiar face to movie goers, so she gets many more parts.
The good news for animation actors is they don’t have to be skilled at micro facial muscles. It’s all voice. Like when young girls are on long telephone calls to their Romeo, glad that phones are voice only. (Incidentally, although videophones have long been invented, they just don’t sell, not even to millionaires: There’s a warehouse of them gathering dust)
The strange news, since cartoons are voice-only, is how many such actors are people with well known faces. Coincidence? Call me skeptical, but I think animation actors, especially for movies, are hired for their familiar names. Not for their voices, because if a “household name” actor called me on the phone I wouldn’t know who it is. So never mind voice “realism.” Even for live action, for an “imagination allowed” outer space show, I for one wouldn’t “give a care” if a masked overtly white villain is voiced by a black James Earl Jones.
Meanwhile, for animation, Daddy and many innocent actors go un-heard and un-hired, including actors with plain faces or visible disabilities or visibly different skins. It shouldn’t matter, but no, according to the Hollywood suits, and their political correctness, cartoon whites have to be voiced by real whites, and cartoon blacks by real live blacks. Just how “imagination challenged” is the public supposed to be?
Strange how, for a mere cartoon, Hollywood suits won’t cast someone who is currently having a feud, or being called a tramp. Do suits think we care? For any cartoon caricature, sketched onto celluloid, once we “get into” the figures moving “on stage,” do the suits think we care whether the unseen actor is feuding over the placement of their mansion fence, or is plain or handsome, white or black? Who do the suits think voices Scooby Doo?
Yet I suppose we must indeed care, since the suits, given their horribly expensive budgets, must surely be very careful, and very responsible, for knowing what the public wants. So sure, blame the public, and then call me a sad minority.
Here’s what I think of Hollywood: If they do a “moving pictures” version of a stage play, then I will try to see the play first. It’s usually better. And I refuse to feel sorry for the suits when Texans “steal” California jobs. Good for the Texans, since Hollywood is so much into realism and discrimination.
Have you heard? Without caring whether an actor is of the Mongolian race, let alone a Japanese national, the Texans, without twanging like cowboys, are dubbing into suburban English the best of Japanese anime.
Sean Crawford
In the best half of North America,
July 2020
Comment food:
Yes, saying “our town” in the same sentence as “Wilder” was a joke. I found the script a delightful read.
During our 2020 summer of philanthropists having their statues tipped over, my favorite laugh-out-loud script is Major Barbara. (Salvation Army) She drags her feet, as folk singer Bob Dylan did for Mr. Nobel, on accepting funds from a merchant of deathly dynamite.
