Popeye Work
What were the earliest cartoons you remember watching? While at 67 years old, I generally find little difference between me and people of 72 or, for that matter, between me and people of 62. We were all old enough to grow up on the music of the sixties, we all experienced Vietnam one way or another and we all grew to adulthood during the greatest housing boom known to man, We are all Baby Boomers, but that span of eighteen years that defines our generational cohort is actually quite a long spread when it comes to certain things. like most people of my age in America, my life was heavily defined by television, just like the Gen Xers and Millennials’ lives are defined by the birth of the internet and Gen Z and Alpha have had their lives defined by social media. While we all probably had slightly different tastes in our screen time viewing habits, I suspect that the common thread that runs through most of these cohorts is that their early childhood was spent watching a lot of cartoons. While comic books are not dissimilar, I think the visual media has far greater impact and gets absorbed deeper into the psyche. Cartoons are a big deal is the mass socialization of Americans.
But I have noticed that Baby Boomers think more in terms of the cartoons that were most popular at the most formative moments of their youth. Understanding that everyone matures a bit differently and its not like cartoons don’t have a long enough shelf-life to have been watched by most of the cohort at one time or another, you would think that we share more favorites than not. But this is less so because cartoons as a mass medium (meaning on TV) were just coming of age as the Baby Boomers were coming of age. That means that over the ten year span that I mentioned (covering people born from 1949 – 1959), assuming a five-year-old is the prime audience, the relative production value of the cartoons in 1954, 1959 and 1964 are dramatically different.
A proper historical retrospective on animated cartoons for children (always questionable who the audience really is) predates cinematography and goes back two-hundred years, but I think for this purpose we can consider the 1928 introduction of Steamboat Willie that gave us Mickey and Minnie Mouse as the start of the cartoon era. I am really talking about their use on TV where kids can sop up the stuff for hours, so I think it’s fair to say that since cartoon focus shifted from theatrical previews to children’s programming on TV in the late 1950, that was the beginning of the major mass media impact on kids. Even though I spent ‘54-‘58, ‘59-‘61 and ‘68-‘71 outside the U.S., I tasted the forbidden fruit of Saturday Morning cartoons during the 6 months we lived with my Grandfather in Myers (‘58), NY before heading back down to the tropics for two years. I remember that all I wanted to do on Saturday morning was put my chair three feet in front of that old grainy black & white TV console and stare at the phosphorescent tube for the five hours those cartoons aired. These were mostly Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Heckle & Jeckle, Merrie Melodies, early Looney Tunes, and my favorites for some reason, Mighty Mouse and Popeye. In those early days there was not enough original programming so there were lots and lots of reruns, but who cared? Those early versions really were pretty crude by any standard.
By the time I returned from the tropics and landed in the heart of America’s suburban, tract-home prototype, Madison, Wisconsin, the quality of cartoon programming had taken a big leap forward. We suddenly had Hanna Barbera with their wonderful Flintstones and Jetsons, not to forget Top Cat. Looney Tunes went into overdrive and expanded from Donald Duck, Porky Pig and Goofy to great versions of Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety Bird & Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, the Tasmanian Devil, and Speedy Gonzales. This was also the heyday for Rocky & Bullwinkle and their wonderful variety show with Boris & Natasha, Mr, Peabody and the Way-Back Machine and, of course Dudley Do-Right and Sweet Nell. There were others like Johnny Quest and the action heroes like Superman and Batman, as well as Underdog. They all still bring a big smile to my face when I think about them and when I ponder which lessons of life I learned best from which cartoon characters.
I remember during my career that when the subject of recruiting new talent came up, as it did quite regularly, there were two legendary interview techniques that stick in my memory. The first was the high-pressure salesman routine where you asked a candidate to sell you a pen you placed in front of him. That always seemed a bit too serious and testy. The other was to ask a candidate which cartoon character he most related to and why. This, on the other hand, always seemed fun and highly informative because it caused a candidate to think about what qualities he prized most in him or herself and what cartoon character quality would be most positive and not construed as potentially stupid or, should I say, goofy.
I use cartoon analogies, like we all probably do, very often when I tell stories. They are easily relatable and bring that necessary element of humor and interest into the story to keep people’s attention. But I think very carefully about which cartoons are likely to resonate best with the specific age audience I am addressing. It rarely makes sense to quote Mighty Mouse to a Millennial that only has Sponge Bob Square Pants and a point of reference. Like John Candy showed us on the bus in Trains, Planes and Automobiles, everyone loves the Flintstones and that’s probably because it ran from 1960 – 1966 as a Prime Time show and was enjoyed by a far wider range of ages than the typical Saturday morning cartoon show.
What got me thinking about cartoons today was that I had a very productive day around the yard, doing all the maintenance that got deferred from our extended road trip. The big event was that I bought a pair of electric hedge trimmers (the hand-held 20V battery kind) and set about trimming the shrubbery around the patio. I had watched several You-tube videos about pruning Lantana and Ornamental Grasses and I decided that this one Australian gal had the right idea in using a handy trimmer that was powerful enough to last the length of the job and yet not so heavy that you cramp up your hand and arms by the sheer weight of the thing. It was tricky to find just the right tool, but I finally landed on a Craftsman model that had everything I wanted. I became a shrub-trimming wizard. Back in my Cornell Plantations summer job days, hedge trimming was considered a skilled activity and was reserved for the full-timers while the summer help like me just cleaned up the clippings.
I have new-found appreciation for those full-timers now since my forearms are screaming at me that I overdid it. This seems silly. I didn’t use a manual tool, it was an electric tool, but still the weight and motion have sent spasms through my forearms and I am getting occasional cramps. I now appreciate why Popeye had those big forearms with the anchor tattoo. I was going to say to you that this turned out to be pure Popeye work, but then I wondered, would anyone get that analogy? I guess I will just have to ask Olive Oyl to make me some spinach tonight.