This ineptly-filmed surreal wonder is a scopitone, produced for a video jukebox of the same name. Here’s a blog featuring many more. Thanks to Mark Martin’s Jabberous blog for pointing this out!
What’s A Scopitone?
It’s a “Film Jukebox” invented in France in the early 1960’s (from surplus World War II airplane parts!) and also the films (the precursors of todays music videos) which played on it.
I previously mentioned the 700 Hobo project I participated in, which had cartoonists from around the world draw interpretations of 700 hobos named by hilarious author John Hodgman.
Since I wrote, the project has expanded in new directions… all the hobos were completed some time ago. Now the group that brought you 700 hobos has conceived of 700 things to draw 700 of… aka the 700 Things Project. These will be tackled gradually, but the first nine are already active.
700 Things
700 Hoboes (give or take 100)
700 Zombies
700 Pirates
700 Underwear Clad Vigilante Mutants
700 Bunnies
700 Unicorns
700 Robots
700 Clowns
700 Knights in Splendiferous Armor
Here’s how it works… at the start of a project people submit names to a list on flickr until it becomes a list of 700 items in the subject. Then they are put into an “official list” and people start drawing. Different peoples’ interpretations of the same character are fine. Once you’ve drawn your illustration, you post it to Flickr and tag it appropriately to be added to the appropriate group. Some of the organizers are also going to do a 700 things website which will eventually suck in the info from Flickr and organize it.
I’m going to try to eventually do at least one drawing for each group as they appear… I’ll post the results here.
Here’s my first drawing for the 700 Underwear Clad Vigilante Mutants (i.e. superheroes) Project… #21 The Vigilant Hound.
THE VIGILANT HOUND
Real Name: Richard Bruce
Identity/Class: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Occupation: Playboy
Group Membership: The Kennel Club
Enemies: The Flea, Bulldog, Hell Hound, The Mail Man, Fire Hydrant
Aliases: The Mutt of Mystery
Base of Operations: New York, NY
First Appearance: Sideshows of Justice #26
Powers/Abilities: Enhanced sense of smell, counter-balancing tail, The Big Bone of Justice.
History: The Vigilant Hound designed his costume with the intent of striking fear into the heart of evildoers… unfortunately his childhood fear of hound dogs proved not to be as universal a fear as he had hoped.
Nevertheless, he had chosen the life of a crime fighter, and fight crime he would. Besides, the tailor who custom designed it for him wouldn’t take returns.
Armed with his big bone of justice, and aided by his 8-year old sidekick Puppy, he mostly strikes laughter into the guts of criminals everywhere. However, in his view, a laughing criminal is almost as vulnerable as a fearful one. At least, that’s what he tells himself.
Also, in my 700 Hobos post I mentioned above showing off my artwork I did for that project, realized I forgot to include one of my hobos… here he is…
Colin that Cheerful Fuck
This cheerful rapscallion is widely hated for his positive attitude in the face of extreme hardship and poverty.
Meet the Peanut Vendor. It is credited to “Len Lye” on youtube (although in the comments, someone claims it is actually by Dave Fleischer). Judging from the other Len Lye films on youtube, it seems unlikely it is by him, as none of the others feature any character animation that I saw… and the character animation in this gem is quite good, and would appear to be by someone with experience. Anyone know the answer to this?
Wow.
Update: It is directed by Dave Fleischer all right. No wonder it’s so great.
Update 2: Or not… Tyler in the comments points us to lenlye.com, which credits it to Len Lye here. Tyler says:
Hi – I can assure you that this film is by Len Lye – see my comment on YouTube. The monkey happens to be owned by the New Zealand Film Archive, actually. Lye made one other stop-motion animated film – The Birth of the Robot. Anyway, glad you liked the film.
Thanks Tyler! Lenlye.com says:
Experimental Animation (also “Peanut Vendor”) (1934)
3 min, 35mm, b&w, sound
Music: “Peanut Vendor” by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies
The protagonist of this film is a marionette monkey built by the film-maker himself. Lye presented this film as a prototype in the hope of finding partners for a series of puppet films, but without success.
So, presumably, the Internet Movie Database is wrong, which credits the film to Dave Fleischer (item 301) and makes no mention of it under Len Lye’s filmography. Or it’s right and the Len Lye site is wrong, but I’m leaning towards Len Lye at this point, since I have seen no credible attributon to Fleischer. I have no idea who did it, but it’s a great cartoon! Now I want to see The Birth of the Robot…
I recently scanned a bunch of huge ancient pages of ancient Sunday newspaper comics that will be appearing here… here is the first one.
I chose the most obviously offensive one to share first, as there is a lot to offend in these comics, so I figured I’d address this at the outset.
As with a huge amount of cartoons from the early part of the last century, it features tasteless racial depictions. As a person living in the modern world looking at old comics and cartoons, it is pretty mind blowing just how racist many early comics are. As these unfortunate and ignorant caricatures can sometimes taint the reading experience, I think it is worthwhile to analyze where these cartoonists were coming from with this stuff a bit.
First of all, I think it is worth observing that although the depictions are shallow caricatures, they are rarely hateful. For me, this is the largest part of the reason that I usually have no problem stomaching this stuff… sure the depictions are based on ignorant generalizations, but the motivation is almost always to amuse rather than to spread hatred.
Second of all, my impression from reading stuff from early in the last century, I don’t think that most people even had heard of the concept of racism. Race and ethnicity was not only viewed as a ripe source of humor… it was one of the most popular sources of humor.
Today’s newspaper comics (which I should note are incredibly tame in comparison to the early comics in almost every way imaginable) have their genres… domestic humor, office humor, funny animals, etc. If you were to divide up the major genres of the early (pre-1920) comics, it would have been something like racial and ethnic humor, devil children humor, unstable marriage humor, dim-witted woman humor, homelessness and poverty humor, violence and misfortune humor, and wacky surrealism.
Clearly, the world has utterly changed.
I find these comics to be important historical documents, depicting views of people from another world, and they are frequently hilarious and entertaining. I’m able to forgive, if not overlook, their often dim-witted views on race and ethnicity (not to mention women, the homeless, etc, etc, etc.).
I hope in viewing these old comics you will be able to enjoy them in spite of their shortcomings in these areas… there are many wonders to be found in the old comics, but they definitely aren’t for everyone. If you find these comics offensive, you are well justified, and if such is the case I encourage you not to view them.
So that all said, here are deeply offensive Chocolate Drops, by E. W. Kemble, circa July 23, 1911 from the American Examiner.
Oy. If you can handle this one, I doubt you’ll have any problem with the rest of the scans.
I can’t imagine a strip in a modern paper depicting young kids stealing a car for a joyride and laughing when they get some adults arrested, can you? Anyone who says the past was a more innocent time is talking out of their ass.
Here’s a cartoon the Fleischers did with Louis Armstrong and his orchestra providing the music. This is, unfortunately, vastly inferior to the Betty/Cab Calloway cartoons, in spite of having a great soundtrack. This is largely because it is loaded to the gills with offensive and uninspired racial caricatures of black tribesmen, some of who are tastelessly transposed onto the band members… yes, they don’t make cartoons like this any more, do they? Worse yet, it just isn’t very funny, and the animation is not nearly as spectacular or surreal as it is in the Calloway trilogy.
I wonder what Satchmo thought of it.
This is the last item in a series of scans of 1927 strips from cartoonist Gluyas Williams. Thanks again to Zander Cannon for passing these great strips my way. I’m donating the scans to gluyaswilliams.com to give them a more fitting home on the web… hopefully their collection of strips will continue to expand. Click on the image below for the full strip.
You can see some more great stuff by Gluyas Williams at gluyaswilliams.com, at The Stripper’s Guide, and at Barnacle Press.
The Old Man of the Mountain is the last of the Betty Boop/Cab Calloway trilogy (I posted the other two previously). It’s my least favorite of the bunch, but is still excellent… it doesn’t have the same level of creepiness that the other two have.
I wonder if this is the cartoon that inspired the way Don Martin drew toes.
Another in a series of scans of 1927 strips from cartoonist Gluyas Williams. Click on the image for the full strip.
You can see some more great stuff by Gluyas Williams at gluyaswilliams.com, at The Stripper’s Guide, and at Barnacle Press.
