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Thursday, November 30, 2006
A New Day Dawns
I'm changing the focus of the site. From now on, I'm just going to post cute pictures of animals with funny captions.
Or maybe not.
A recent discussion with some friends eventually got around to cartoons that messed up kids. The usual suspects were brought up. Watership Down (Holly's story of the destruction of the warren is still chilling). The Mouse and His Child (despite my insanely obsessive love of animated films, this was one I could never watch, as it depressed me too much). The bunyip sequence from Dot and the Kangaroo (which still kinda creeps me out a little). One of the films that always stuck with me as a kid, despite only seeing it once, was the animated musical version of John Gardner's existential novel Grendel. I'm not quite sure what, exactly, my parents were thinking when they took me to see Grendel Grendel Grendel, as the film is titled. It was probably that I had been enthusiastic about every single animated film and fantasy film I'd seen before, and here was an animated fantasy. Sounds like perfect entertainment for a young boy. Well, no. I'm not sure how much credence to give this review, which sounds as if it missed a lot of the point of the work, but my recollection of the film was that it was murky and morally ambiguous and full of candy-colored dread.
In short, it kinda messed with my head at an age where I was probably far too young to deal with the themes of the work. Which has, in an odd way, led to me having a tendency to sympathize with the "monstrous" figures of literature.
There's precious little on the film to be found on-line, though a rather nice performance by the Mountain Goats of the song "Grendel's Mother" is available.
So, what beloved child-hood classics traumitzied all of you?