Animation Break
Every now and again, I come across a story or toon which I think could simply not be remade these days. Here is an homage to one such:
Jonny Quest was originally meant to be a cartoon version of Jack Armstrong, All American Boy. But Hanna & Barbara, in one of those odd moments of serendipity, hired Doug Wiley and Alex Toth to do the designs.
The time and budget constraints of weekly television almost did them in — the illustrators pulled late nights and skipped vacations — but while the animation is no better than their contemporaries, the heavily-inked and documentary-sharp drawings themselves are top notch. One can compare them to the best work of Alexander Raymond or Hal Foster.
In the use of not-yet-invented but realistic gadgets, such as vertical-take-off jets or hydrofoils or lasers; in the use of exotic locations, everywhere from the Arctic to the South American jungles to the Himalayas; in the use of foes ranging from Chinese scientists to prehistoric monsters, the episodes resemble TERRY AND THE PIRATES.
You will not see a show like this again, not until Political Correctness is dethroned, humiliated, reviled, scorned, broken, defiled, exiled. The men are too masculine, the all-American boy too boyish (he both calls his father ‘sir’ and disobeys direct orders, two things effete Lefties neither like nor understand) and the women — or at least Jade — too female.
Jezebel Jade smokes and shoots and enjoys kissing men, so she is far too dangerous a woman for any modern political correctoid to face.
And have a member of the party be a boy from India would inevitably be denounced as racist, even if he is adopted as a brother, clearly treated as fully honored and equal member of the team, plus has magical powers of levitation and hypnosis.
No show which regards other places and people as exotic or alluring or strange or dangerous can be permitted, since multiculturalism claims that making any observation whatsoever that not all humans are exactly identical is bigotry hence race-hatred, or cultural appropriation hence race-hatred, or both.
And as for a story with a strong female character like Jezebel Jade — forget it. The goodthink political correctoids say that is what they want in a female character, but it is not so.
As time goes on, the story tellers once most famed for their ability to tell stories seems to be degenerating. Part of the effect, no doubt, is an illusion created by the golden haze of distance and nostalgia: we tend to forget the mediocre examples.
But part is not illusion: a certain pall of fear hangs over modern story tellers, the fear of being suddenly and arbitrarily savaged by the shrieking ninny hordes of political correctness. A short while ago, perhaps, the loyal politically correct story teller could put in the proper genuflections and salutes to the proper political attitudes and ideas, or stick a number of token minorities into a story to sate the thought police.
But in the late 1990’s something changed. The radical feminists made a common cause with the homosexual lobby, the race-hustlers, and the leftover sixties radicals with no more Soviet Empire to serve, but whose hatred for their enemy, Western Civilization, had not ebbed. This philosophy, which calls itself by the unglamorous and forgettable name of ‘Intersectionalism’ says, in effect, that anyone can claim anything one wishes can suddenly be declared not only infinitely offensive, but dangerous to the public peace on the grounds that some alleged third party will be encouraged to commit an act of terrorist violence.
By this lesbian rule, any statement, any joke, or even any omission (such as if there are no black men in an historical story about the moonlanding) can be denounced as something that create a clear and present danger to the public peace, and ergo can be suppressed by the coercion of the law.
The thought police, as radicals always do, turned on each other, and began fanatic heresy-hunting. Of course, unlike a real religion, the dogmas of political correctness are nowhere written down, and have no central authority competent to rule on them, or required to harmonize apparent contradictions. Every prosecutor is a special prosecutor with no checks and no limits on the accusations he can make. Neither reason nor evidence can be raised in defense, since the affront of attempting any defense is taken as an admission of guilt.
The long term effect is to produce an attitude of caution, and a slow winter of fear. It is not an environment in which creative inspiration prospers. Fearful artists usually make imitations or revisions: reboots of known properties, slavish imitations. (It is for a similar reason that the films and plays in the Soviet Union were usually imitations of Western films and plays. Creativity is not for cowards and slaves).
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
