Beware – heavyweight art discussion
In the pub at the weekend, we got onto one of the really weighty art subjects, and spent many hours (and many pints) furiously debating the various points of view; who is the best cartoon character of all time? My attempt to be intellectual and nominate Caroline Shotton ’s marvellous “cartoon” cows were shot down in flames, so I sunk to everyone else’s level pretty quickly.
We debated artistic merits, obviously, wondering if cartoon characters that were essentially badly drawn – see South Park or Beavis and Butthead – should qualify, seeing as we all at least pretended to be artists every now and then. Soon even that was thrown out of the window as plot and humour became the major judging criteria.
Unsurprisingly, for a group of late twenty and early thirty somethings, not many modern day cartoon characters made it onto our “list”. In fact, I think the only ones post-1990 that were even mentioned were Brian and Stewie Griffin out of Family Guy. I think at one point I tried to make a case for Bender from Futurama, but was shouted down. Mat Groening is not a popular guy among my friends – they’re of the firm belief that he should’ve killed The Simpsons off a long time ago…
So we went way back in time for our favourites. The usual suspects were mentioned; Hong Kong Phooey, Batfink, Wacky Races (though I did insist that Penelope Pitstop not be included as I hated her whining all the time). There were some left field suggestions too, like Snoopy and Woodstock, Wile E. Coyote and Marvin the Martian – though we all agreed that Disney characters were far too sugary sweet to be considered!
My nomination wasn’t a cartoon, strictly, but a stop-go animation from the 1970s. I’d be surprised if anyone has even heard of it, let alone loves it as much as I do. I’ve even sourced videos of all the shows on eBay so I can relive my childhood over and over again. Go on then – has anyone else ever heard of Chorlton and the Wheelies??
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