Complaints = Nostalgia?

[Tig]

Disclaimer: This thread is not about the live action debate on Cartoon Network, or anything issues against the network. It's about some of the responses towards us.


It seems whenever we make a compalint about some of the cartoons of today, whether valid or mindless ranting, we're labeled as nostalgic fogies.

Because I will tell you right now that I have quite a bit of favorite programs that are of this decade:

Kim Possible
Aemrican Dragon
The Emperor's New School
The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron
Fairly Oddparents
Avatar The Last Airbender
The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy
Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go
W.I.T.C.H.

I enjoy Ed Edd and Eddy as well as Spongebob Squarepants, but they started last decade, so I'm not sure if they qualify as modern or past toons in the context of the topic.

Look, I do admit and apologize for arguements that get out of hand, but I think it's unfair to label every complainer as a nostalgic old fogy longing for the glory days. Others besides me, do have favorite programming from this decade so the accusation is inaccurate.

Plus many of you seem to dismiss all complaints as interchangable rants, without even thinking that some of them are valid complaints.

So I'd like to know why any criticizm is automatically consdiered as us being nostalgic.

And please read the thread fully and take what I'm saying into consideration before responding.

I don't ask for people to agree with me, but I think it is simply good courtesy to actually think about the contents of the complaint rather than brushing it off.

[loveoasis]

Wouldn't this better be suited for the General Animation forum?

[CrazeeGurl101z]

At least until it's moved, do you have any comment on the topic?

[dodgeman2004]

I made the exact same complaint months ago. Nobody listened to me, and still base my complaints on nostalgia.

[Rocket-D]

Sometimes it is nostalgia but typically if a show was bad then it's still bad now and if you don't notice that yet then maybe it's even better than you remember it.

I love the Disney 80's/90's syndicated cartoons and rewatching them today I can see exactly how cleaver they were. I wouldn't say that's a matter of nostalgia because I own the DVDs which I've watched and thus it's a fresh look at some series I didn't watch for years.

When I was a wee lad I never noticed which episodes of Ninja Turtles were really entertaining and which weren't. Now I can see plainly that the first 5 episode pilot is great (albiet a bit cheesy) entertainment and several other episodes are but most of them are pretty awful and can't touch the 2003 series in quality.

A lot of people heavily make this debate in reguards to live action programing but if I watched Pete and Pete today I'd still enjoy it where as I wont touch a great deal of Nick/Disney's various tween/teen aimed shows and any fool could tell you All That stopped being funny years ago. It's like SNL, there were some really good seasons and most of them weren't that recent. Not all of today's tween/teen sitcoms are awful though. Hannah Montana is farely entertaining and Out of Jimmy's Head has it's moments but most of the live action tween shows don't appeal to me at all and neither do many recent cartoons.

Cartoons today generally lack personality. There are certainly still some great cartoons being produced today but they're more crap coming out right now then in recent years much less 10 years ago.

[Yasmin A]

I consider myself very well rounded as far as animation goes. I also have a high tolerance for "stupid" (hey! I'm a cow and Chicken fan, what can I say?) as far as toons go. I will admit, I like what I've seen of Fosters. I like Cartoons from virtually every era in animation history. I like a lot of the suff from the 30's (well, the stuff that was crafted and well done, not the "Hey! Look what we can do" dancing flowers cartoons), I love the 40's (even the racist WW2 cartoons), 50's, 60's, The 70's didn't have too many cartoons that appealed to me (Fat Albert and Hong Kong Phooey are my favorites), I loved the 80's and 90's. I even like the current era, dispite the obvious animation slump we're in at the moment.

There are some cartoons I will admit, I'm nostalgicly biased to. I love Inspector Gadget as much as I do Bullwinkle and Rocky. Still do. Some cartoons I feel that I appreciate more as an adult. Even Muppet babies. Not kidding.

The only cartoons I regreted liking are (I'm spilling my heart out here. These are deep dark secrets) Care Bears and any other girly show from the early 80's. I was a preschooler at the time, and I liked the bright happy colors. These shows now disgust me to the core.

[Sewgirl]

I call it being nostalgically biased based on HOW you argue about cartoons old vs new.

If you just say 'why can't they make 'em like they used to?", and just somehow insist that your kids can easily watch the cartoons of THEN but can't watch the cartoons of now...at first I believed it, but the fact that EVERYONE seems to say this tells me yer like what you claim the Disney Channel now is: a one-trick pony.


Y'wanna know what cartoons I used to like, but now can't sit thru to save my life?:

Alvin and the Chipmunks- the animation is NOT as good as I remember, and MUST THEY EMPHASIZE EVERY FREAKIN' SYLLABLE COMIN' OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS?!!!!!!!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- part of me is now biased against the Turtles, as I'm now the huge Ghostbusters fan I was as a kid. But first off- James Avery played Shredder...every time I hear him now, I can't stop thinking "Uncle Phil". And the whole concept of humanoid Turtles..I just find it cheezy now.

Muppet Babies- I love the Muppets..too bad whatever appeal they have goes right down the latrine with this show. Of COURSE they have to show a million movie clips; it's unwatchable otherwise.

Transformers- face it, this cartoon was made ENTIRELY to sell the toys, and it couldn't BE more obvious. The plots are boring as can be, and the animation wasn't too great, either.

Ren & Stimpy- ok, I'll confess I never totally got into it, but really tried to as it seemed all my other friends found this show hilarious...though I DID like Mr. Horse. Watching it now...it just doesn't hold up. They rely on latrine humor above and beyond the call of duty. I don't mind latrine humor...but not doing it JUST for the sake of doing latrine humor. And whatever adult humor there was in the show..it just gets watered down with the cheeziness...and the latrine humor. "No sir, I don't like it".

Cartoons I have a HARDER time sitting thru, but still can:

Thundercats- almost as big of a disappointment as the toyline is, when you look back on it. The plots are REALLY cliche, and it's just a lot of..weird stuff. BEAUTIFUL animation, though.

GI Joe: Real American Hero- the story keeps it going, and the animation is ok, but not as good as I remember....but if I hear Duke say ONE MORE TIME "what in the blue blazes"...I will personally assist Cobra Commander in his assassination.

X-Men- wow...the animation is nowhere NEAR as great as I remember it. I mean...Beast freakin' looks like HE-MAN! A BLUE HE-MAN! So yes...basically Faker. Most of the characters are drawn in a weird blocky way, to show "strong bulk"...or something... and they just don't interest me as they did 15 years ago. Mojo was a REAL letdown...and it was his appearance on the show that made me like the character, originally :P


Cartoons that AREN'T as good as I'd remembered, but still enjoy them quite a bit:

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe- this one WAS a bit of a letdown when I watched it again for the first time, roughly ten years ago. I thought the animation was an abomination...and it really became an acquired taste for me...but I decided to grin and bear it as I'm a huge MOTU fan. I'm getting more used to it, but if others say they can't, I don't blame them.


C.O.P.S- another show that wasn't as good as I remember. Don' get me wrong; the animation is great, but the stories can be a little ridiculous, and REALLY '80s cliche. Again though, I'm a huge COPS fan, so I let it slide.

Batman: The Animated Series- this is another of my all-time favorite shows..but watching it recently, there were major times when the animation just wasn't up to par, and believe me when I say the show really had to rely a lot on all the elements combined to make the show great. Sometimes, the animation DIDN'T hold up. The unfortunate thing was this- when the villains were drawn better, the animation was weaker. When they were drawn crappier, the animation was FAAAR better.


Cartoons That Have Passed the Test of Time For Me:

DuckTales
TaleSpin
The Real Ghostbusters
Darkwing Duck
MASK( just avoid the Racing Season)
World of David the Gnome
Rugrats
Rocko's Modern Life
Superman: TAS
Captain N

Heh, not a long list, IS IT? So really think about it- were cartoons REALLY all that better, or is it just your love of childhood and your waxing nostalgia getting the better of you?

And I admit- yeah, networks probably AREN'T trying as hard anymore. But with the internet and video games taking away so much of their audience, why would they, when they can just air cheaper- costing shows, and pull in the ratings to match how much the shows cost to air?

[hwansoloid]

I can;'t stress enough that it is a preschool show. And they actually gave the audience some credit. Plus, I love how the muppet's personalities have a subtle shift as children. Other than the fact they inexplicably made Baby Scooter a technogeek, and not the overly eager intern his adult counterpart. And I will state that I think this is the best thing Jeffery Scott ever did.

Rewatching it, a lot of earlier episodes (and a few later ones) had a nice balance of mild peril. Something you'd never see in a preschool show now. look at Dora. They talk slow and loud and it's like they give the kids no credit. We could use more shows for little kids like Muppet Babies again, actually.

However, the Fraggle Cartoon is sort of like how you descibed the MB. They tried to make it as much like the live action series, too much. It wasn;'t quite as good, and Junior Gorg's voice was way off. But then again, this was supposed to be a reasonable substitue fro the real show that was cancwelled a year before they started work on this one. And it served as a substitute for kids like me who didn't have parents that could shell out for HBO (what was Jim thinking, making it a cable show? And a premium cable show at that.). However, some of it is pretty enjoyable, just not as good as the real thing. But then again, they went off on a lot of ideas they weren't supposed to have in the cartoon initially. In the original series bible, Doc and Sprocket weren't supposed to be in the show. Then there was a schedualling conflict, which lead them to not use the actual Muppeteer voices, like they originally intended. I will say, Rob Paulsen's Boober and Majorie the Trash Heap were very good.

[Jl 95]

I understand your point, and it makes valid sense...although unfortunately you also had to remind me of the Fraggle Rock cartoon which I hated, the ALF cartoon, Punky Brewster cartoon...and more.

Regardless, you do have to remember that this show IS considered one of the "childhood classics", and those watching again not going back in knowing WHAT age this cartoon was intended for...might not offer it the same appreciation and understanding that you seem to. So don' forget that. I hate to say it, but it's really not a show that parents and kids can watch together...and not a show that kids can watch later, and appreciate on a different level. And THAT'S what brings it down a few notches in my book.

J. Michael Stracynski recently had an interview in ToyFare regarding The Real Ghostbusters. He mentioned the show was written to last- to be the type of show that those watching it AT a young age could "grow up" with the show...and even go back and re-watch it as an adult, and find something new to enjoy.

Then, take shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, GI Joe, and COPS, among others- are these shows as goof, if not better, than what we remember? Again, not likely. Despite that, they appear to be in the position of "not as good as we remembered, but still enjoyable nonetheless". I mean, I can be bored, and flip on an episode of COPS or MOTU, and indeed enjoy it...naturally with more of a fan's appreciation now, but even if I weren't a fan, they're still fun cartoons to just lay back and watch.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Muppet Babies. Like you said- it's made for pre-schoolers...and no matter how hard you try to steer yourself from this fact, while watching it...you can't...and you KNOW you can't.

Another unfortunate example is Camp Candy- and I think karma punished John Candy for doing this abomination, years later, when he died on the set of Wagons East....

[IWannaGoHome]

(quoted for emphasis)

Based on that mentality, why is the (PG-13 rated) live-action movie any different? Oh, and "because it's more realistic" isn't an answer; that's actually part of the problem, but I digress.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how old I am. I watch both the old stuff, and the new stuff, but I won't watch anything just for the sake of watching it. I know what I like, and I won't watch anything that I think insults the intelligence of the viewers, regardless of whether they're 9, 19, or 90. I also won't put up with networks skipping, or otherwise altering episodes (I'm looking at you Kids' WB/Manga Ent. and the way you've been handling Eon Kid) or airing them out of order, although this really depends on the individual show.

Anyway, the point is my interest in animation is both eclectic, and varied, but I'm not so gullible that I would assume what I saw was what I got, because as I've learned, it's not always...I repeat, not ALWAYS the case (i.e., sometimes what you see IS what you get). You can't judge a book by its cover, but more importantly, first impressions are not always correct; something that works both ways, but tht's another story.