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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.11 - FEBRUARY 2001

My Generation? (continued from page 2) Cartoon Network's popular award-winning series, Courage the Cowardly Dog. TM & © 2001 Cartoon Network. An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Another facet of the new Cartoon Network lineup, Sheep in the Big City, is a heart-warming tale of a farm animal's attempt at making it in a new town. TM & © 2001 Cartoon Network. An AOL Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Curious-er and Curious-er Fortunately for CN, the cartoons made during this period are "hot," gaining the endorsement of GenXers such as Timothy and Kevin Burke, who sent these programs a cuddly love letter with their book Saturday Morning Fever. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, many of these cartoons exemplify how standardization, poor quality, minuscule financing and fuss-budget "consultants" with pro-social agendas can drain animation of all its magic and wonder. For better or worse, Boomerang is a historical record of a well-defined generation's favorite cartoons...but possibly not the generation described by Betty Cohen or suggested by the network's title. I find this more curious than problematic, and I respect the right of Turner Broadcasting, or Cartoon Network, to call their new entity whatever they wish. It is amusing, however, to see true boomer cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and Rocky and His Friends, or the offerings of the Acme Hour, playing on Cartoon Network at the same time that Boomerang is broadcasting Sealab 2020 and Yogi's Space Race. My only real quibble is that Boomerang does not seem to be part of the basic cable package and must be purchased either separately or through a package upgrade. It seems to me that Turner is charging people for the wrong network. Speaking as a genuine boomer born in 1956, I think that Cartoon Network has the more desirable lineup. I would pay extra to see Mo Willem's frenetic assault on the "fourth wall" that he calls Sheep in the Big City. I would dig up a few more shekels to watch John R. Dilworth and Courage the Cowardly Dog carry out their minimalist revision of the American horror genre. I would pop a few more pennies to enjoy the lively animation and snappy dialogue of the underrated Mike, Lu and Og show. And I would bust my piggy bank to see the City of Townsville eternally protected by The Powerpuff Girls. But shelling out dough to view The Cattanooga Cats, The Funky Phantom or Speed Buggy? With all due respect, someone would have to pay me. Ah, but I am only one humble journalist soon to be lost to the flow of history. Boomerang is, at least, part of the process that assures no cartoon ever goes to the cartoon graveyard. Thanks to this network's current efforts, it is possible that 5,000 years from now future historians, cultural archaeologists and animation fanatics can all sit down together and watch Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch! without questioning whether this was an example of animal worship, tribal ritual or archetypal epic. Figuring out what era of audiences it was aimed at, however, might be a different story since the matter is evidently not clear among the Turner networks themselves. Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.

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