This is the first Tex Avery's birthday post I've done since my son was born. Like I mentioned before, my son's name is Avery taken after the great master Tex Avery so I feel it's fitting to involve he little guy in this post. Throughout this post we will all answer the question put forth in the title: "What is my son's assessment of Tex Avery's work?"
What's that? Why, yes, my boy Avery has indeed been watching many many selections from my DVD/Bluray collection pretty much since the day his eyes were fully open. Why do you ask? It's a good way to keep him quiet and happy.............. some of the time. If he's genuinely enjoying what he sees, then it works quite well. If not, well then you've got a loud cranky baby on your hands and you'd better do what you can to alleviate that situation fast.
One big selection from Tex's filmography that my son has seen is the "magnumest opus that ever magnumed an opus", that seminal masterpiece: Red Hot Riding Hood.
The verdict: I am sad to report that this cartoon made my son Avery cry. He wasn't crying at first, which is good. However, when it got to the part where the Wolf was going crazy at the table looking at Red dancing on the stage, that's when he showed his displeasure. Ah well. He's only 5 months old as of right now. Cultural works have ways of growing on people once they mature and become more worldly, which I'm sure my son is destined to do.
Here are some other shows that have given him displeasure in the first few months of his life:
Sesame Street - he's scared of The Count
Fraggle Rock - he's scared of the Gorgs, especially in the openning theme song when Jr grabs Gobo
Dumbo - Avery does NOT care for those lady elephants that pick on and exclude Dumbo. Well' y'know, he's not wrong. If you watch the movie you can easily see that those elephants are pieces of shit in general throughout the entire movie. That's the point of their characters of course, but it's understandable that he would not enjoy watching them.
I'll give a special mention to Sylvester & Tweety right here, because he has a kind of love/hate opinion of them. Li'l Avery loves anything with music in it, you see.
As many of you reading this now are aware, most S&T cartoons start off with Tweety singing a song. My son is thoroughly entertained by this. But he is quickly taken aback the moment Sylvester makes any kind of grab for him. Avery lets out a shriek that seems to be saying "NOOOOOOOOO! DON'T KILL THE SINGING BIRD!!!!" That grief is short lived the moment Sylvester fails with either a long fall, dog punch, or explosion. That is then followed by a feeling of relief. But, the grief begins anew when that "puddy tat" recovers and makes another attempt. It is of course then followed by another sense of relief. Grief --> Relief Grief --> Relief Grief --> Relief over and over again. So, to him, the Sylvester & Tweety series is more of a heavy drama than a slapstick comedy. Well, again, he's 5 months. He will eventually notice a pattern within this cartoon series and hopefully experience joy or what have you.
There is one thing in this world that he does fully enjoy. It lights his face up every time he watches it. Anybody with small children already know who it is. But, for everyone else, I will embed his very favourite show right below:
Yep! This video has been playing much more than once a day every day for several months. And now that I'm showing you this video, now YOU have every one of her songs stuck in your head with no chance of escape. HA!!!
Although, I have heard that the above figure Ms Rachel is being hailed as the new Mister Rogers and for good reason. She does a tremendous job of reaching, teaching, and educating children I'm sure all over the world. She helps keep my son happy and that's great. More power to her.
He's not ONLY entertained by Ms Rachel though. His horizons are a bit more broad than that. Here are some things I've seen him enjoy:
Robin Hood Daffy - I saw him smile al through the scene where Daffy and Porky are laughing with each other. He found their laughter to be infectious and it got to him.
Louvre Come Back To Me - Well, for pretty much the entire cartoon he had no idea what was going on. He saw Pepe Le Pew pursuing the black & white cat throughout the art museum while her naturally jealous boyfriend was trying to step between them (only to be overpowered by Pepe's stench). However, I saw him smile at the very very end of the cartoon. There's a "montage" of sorts showing many of the paintings reacting to Pepe Le Pew's odour all through the establishment. The very last painting to react is the Mona Lisa who simply says "I can tell you chaps one thing. It's not always easy to hold this smile." Whether you think that joke is strong, weak or whatever is immaterial. Avery found it amusing that a painting suddenly started talking and that's great.
Oh hey! There is a Tex Avery cartoon that my son Avery did enjoy. He likes that cartoon about little Owl Jolson wanting to sing jazz much to the dismay of his conventional symphony-loving father: I Love To Singa. I've seen him enjoy seeing that little owl singing the signature song for the whole cartoon. So, in a small tribute to my baby son, I've drawn him as Owl Jolson.
I can't wait for him to start his education just so I can see if he would "get through Yale with buela buela"!
Here's a screenshot from that animated video I'm working on. I figured that it was too crazy NOT to share. Anyway, there it is for your visual enjoyment or whichever emotion takes you.
I've seen people online decrying smear animation and too wonky and weird. People just take a screenshot of it and just focus on that one image pointing out everything they find "wrong" with it. These are people that are of course 1) not in the animation business 2) have never tried to animate anything in their entire lives. Therefore they have no inkling of how any of it works. On the day they finally do acquire that knowledge, they'll find out that the image they once gawked at does indeed work within the movement where it counts.
This is, of course, something that AI artists could never fully duplicate even with the biggest computer with the highest amount of RAM memory.
Anyway, that's my post and subsequently my rant. Here's hoping my video, smears and all, is done and online soon. I can't wait.
