Tribute to Jasper and Jinx (and a related rant)

Come on, you know who Jasper and Jinx are. Don't tell me you haven't heard of them. I'll bet my non existent million bucks that you have grown up with them. No? Well, let's see here. Jasper and Jinx were the original names given to these guys.



I'm glad they changed the names.

This post is a result of some hardcore television watching I have done post intership. This meant that most of the time I have been watching Tom and Jerry because, well, it is shown in Cartoon Network half the time (I will return to this). Tom and Jerry (along with eggs) were my first and most enduring obsession. I have seen all episodes at least five hundred times each by now (this is not an exaggeration) and I think the original Hanna/Barbera shorts are the best cartoons ever created. The obvious care in detail in animation and background score has never been replicated, fifty years after the shorts ended. It's also the only cartoon I know which everyone I know likes, including people who say that cartoons are for kids. I think I saw about 20 today itself at various times. The Chuck Jones cartoons (recognisable from the title sequence where Tom meows after the lion's roar) are also decent but cannot compare to the Hanna/Barbera ones. In fact, they resemble the 'Looney Tunes' and mostly Roadrunner gags are reused and the sound is nowhere near as creative, so some of the magic is lost. Still they are watchable. But the Gene Deitch shorts, recognisable by their absolute crappiness, should have been consigned to a forgotten history instead of being rerun along with the more brilliant cartoons. My two favourite Tom and Jerry shorts are The Yankee Doodle Mouse and The Cat Concerto.

Now to my short rant. It's concerning the quality of cartoons in Indian television today, which is absolutely shocking. It's amazing that when I was a single digit age kid, there was no dedicated kid's channel (or maybe Cartoon Network had just come in), and yet the quality of cartoons shown in DD Metro and Star and Zee and Sony were far superior to the crap being shoved down our throat here.

I mean let's take one channel here - Nickelodeon. When it first came in we had the Nicktoons, some of which were brilliant and all of which were watchable and outstandingly funny kid's shows like Kenan and Kel. Now, other than Spongebob Squarepants, we have mindnumbing anime like Ninja Hattori on offer. Why? Just because there is an anime rage sweeping the world, you'll pick out the worst the genre has to offer and show them? How does that make sense. Nickelodeon had a decent animation studio, what the hell happened?

Then there is Cartoon Network. When I was growing up, we had the Holy Trinity of Cartoon Cartoons, Power Zone and Hanna-Barbera, which, together with Tom and Jerry, had developed an outrageous monopoly of the best cartoons any Indian child generation has seen. Then came Pokemon. Now it isn't a bad cartoon. Having one anime like Pokemon gives good variety. But if you replace all that made your channel good with ten different rip-offs of Pokemon, you'll start to suck. They never have recovered and the fact that half their time slots these days are filled by Tom and Jerry, proving that it is the only thing which really sells anymore, shows how crappy they've become.

Even Animax, when it started out had some real good animes to offer - Samurai X, Get-Backers, Inuyasha etc. Even the lighthearted animes were good to watch. Now, I really can't see anything on that channel these days, it's just bad.

Kid's television is generally dumber these days. Do they not trust the mental faculties of kids anymore. Because I could definitely understand Swat Kats and Batman and Flintstones ten years back. The level of the show didn't need to be of that of Chhota Bheem for me. They should really give kids more credit.

This is one time where competition has clearly brought down the standards, instead of raising the bar as our economists would have us believe should happen. Apart from Tom and Jerry, the only show I really like is Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. This Tiny TV show from Pogo is smarter than Ben 10.

Bleh!