Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Addendum to the above rant.

After writing and posting all that, I realized there was a little more I wanted to talk about and completely forgot to. I could just go in and edit, but I want to try an experiment. We'll find out if it worked in a few minutes.

In discussing nudity in American animation I wanted to talk about other examples and not just pick on Seth MacFarlane. I'm not talking cable channels or film festivals, mainstream studios have subtly done nudity since the at least before the 1920's. (There was a time not so long ago when you could say things like "The 20s" and people would know that you meant the "1920s." Now you actually have to say the 1920s.) Felix the Cat came up in my research. He came out about 1919. No clothes what so ever. This goes on with Hanna-Barbera, Warner Brothers (and their sister Dot,) and of course Disney.

When looking at this I realize the major difference between Family Guy and Rescue Rangers: they're animals. For some reason it is perfectly alright to have Chip and Dale running around with shirts and no pants on; but not have Peter hanging out around town. I think because off the fact that Baloo and Kit are anthropomorphic bears make the fact that they have no pants on acceptable to the general population. If it's a human character, instant no-go. I don't really have a problem with it, I'm not going to go all fundamentalist on you all, (I believe that there isn't much mental in fundamentalist.) But, I will have a little fun pointing out the inconsistencies: Rebecca Cunningham and Gadget wore pants and coveralls, oddly though Launchpad had pants but not Gosalyn.

The many decades of having cartoon animals in human form eventually allowed today's media to push the envelope.

Another good thing I wanted to say about the Inukami Anime is that the writers did a good job with subtle touches of character. I caught this one right away: Keita left Igusa alone and teased most everybody else. Most notably Tayune. While not explicitly stated why in the anime, but from reading the manga and just a wild guess at what the character bible may say; that since Igusa is scared to death of men she can't properly defend herself from Keita's lechery. Tayune can beat the crap out of Keita, so he picks on her all the time, and does get his ass beat all the time.

One final point: Can any body think of an instance where Francine and Hayley are topless, facing the camera, and uncensored?

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