Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Cartoon Heroes

I've always been addicted to cartoons. I used to watch Cartoon Network all the time. I know a lot of kids who find them inane (what is wrong with these children?). I also knew a lot of kids who weren't allowed to watch more than one show a day or had some sort of a television time limit. I'm really lucky that my parents didn't bother much about setting similar rules for me.

The only rule I actually remember having was bed time at 10 p.m. I used to like to read before bed, and never followed this arrangement, irritating my parents immensely. I remember crying so hard when my mum had threatened to lock up the book cupboard if I continued not following this rule. What kind of parents threaten their children with keys? They were evil, I tell you!

In any case, I kind of had a free reign over cartoons when I was young, which means I've watched everything there is to be watched, especially it was produced by Hanna Barbera. You name it, and I've probably seen it. It was a time where there was no Disney Channel, and all these creepy Disney child stars didn't exist. No, Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Camp Rock etc. It was all hand drawn old school animations. I really, really loved cartoons and there isn't any explicable reason for this because I find them silly when I watch them now.

There were these shows that everyone loved and I hated for absolutely no reason. Of course, it didn't stop me from watching them, but I remember them just irritating me immensely. I hated Popeye , Johnny Bravo, Pinky and the Brain, Dexter (I hated Dee Dee so insanely), Powerpuff Girls, Coyote and the Roadrunner, Johnny Quest. I also have insane amount of love for some other shows that other people didn't particularly care about like Captain Planet, Space Ghost, Josie and the Pussycats, The Fantastic Four, Top Cat, or The Jetsons, which is the most underrated show ever created. I love The Flintstones and everything, but The Jetsons is so much better and no one apart from me realizes this. There is even a special episode called The Flintstones Meet the Jetsons, which was aired every New Years' Eve and I've seen it at least five times. This channel had the most awesome shows ever, and I can't understand why kids would want to watch anything else.

It just annoys me to see my little cousins watching Disney channel all the time with its ridiculous shows. I knew I had reached the end of my patience with my 9 year old cousin when she started explaining her love for Zac Efron and the Jonas' Brothers to me. Its not normal for 9 year olds to have crushes on human beings. When I was 9, I wanted to marry Aladdin, which is a perfectly normal underage crush to have. I didn't actually want to marry Aladdin. I wanted to be Jasmine, so Aladdin could marry me. When I told this to my older teenage cousin, she looked at me aghast and told me, 'Do you realize that what she's wearing is not even a proper bra?' and I could never look at Jasmine the same again.

The only shows that I never had much of an opportunity to watch was animé because they didn't show animé in India when I was younger. I suppose this is a good thing because it looks really addictive and I get obsessive about things quite easily, but this does mean I have no idea what people are talking about when my friends have entertaining, meta discussions about Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Naruto etc.

I was just mentally going through the shows I used to watch as a kid and I have just realized that I watched a lot of television, which explains a lot really. This is also pretty weird because nobody in my house actually watches television. I still do watch a lot of television shows and have been forcing myself off them for the last couple of months because I have the tendency of getting obsessive about things and ignoring everything else that I have to do. I'm so glad Heroes has become crap because now I don't have to watch it any more, and that feels great. I'm just trying to stick to films but the awesomeness of The West Wing isn't really helping me keep this resolution.


NB: The title of the post is the name of an obscure song by Aqua. I must write a post about the joys of Europop one day. Its one of the most awesomely frightening music genre ever!

5 comments:

Charlie said...

If you're writing about cartoons then your exams are over!

And you never mentioned any of the Warner Bros. cartoons--you know, Bugs Bunny.

I thought the best WB characters were Foghorn Leghorn and the Chickenhawk.

Panacea said...

Ooooh, I loved Warner Bros. I've practically seen every Bugs Bunny cartoon ever created and my favourite characters were Elmer Fudd and Marvin the Martian :D

Noooo, exams are anything but over. I had a bit of a brief holiday in the middle but I have two exams next week, so I'm pretty burdened with studies right now. You'd think I'd have learnt from the past and done something useful for the last two weeks?

Anonymous said...

So what about Avatar?

Panacea said...

E: I will not dignify this comment with a response

Anonymous said...

BUT IT'S SO DEEP!!!11!!!11!