Post by ryan on May 5, 2006 3:55:35 GMT -5
Confession time: All of my favorite TV shows are cartoons. Yeah, Lost is great. Yeah, Six Feet Under was kinda wacky, and Weeds is sporadically funny. But give me good animation anyday over occasionally-good zeitgeist dramas.
I've often wondered why I feel this way. Perhaps it's because there's something fundamentally immature about my personality. Or maybe it's because the average episode of The Venture Brothers or Futurama delivers more creativity and wit per second than the average "live action" show delivers in an entire 60-minute segment.
For whatever reason, when I spin that roulette wheel of digital-cable channels, the ball falls more often than not on a cartoon. I have my long-running favorites -- including the two shows previously mentioned. I also have a growing list of shows which have fallen out of my favor: Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, American Dad, Sealab 2020, and Tom Goes to the Mayor are just a few. These shows were funny until their bizarre premises wore thin, and revealed that the shows themselves were pretty much one-joke affairs.
And besides that, the entire Adult Swim lineup has become so pervaded with jokes of the violent and crude variety that I find myself fairly dissuaded from watching. More and more often, I find myself troubled by what passes for humor on shows like Family Guy and American Dad. Sure, these shows aim to lampoon our modern anxieties -- but they do it in a way that's crude, humorless, and mean-spirited.
Why do our modern anxieties have to make for humor of the tasteless variety? Can't we have shows that lampoon our modern fears without resorting to tastelessness? Whatever happened to wit?
Enter Invader Zim.
Invader Zim is a 30-minute cartoon which airs on Nicktoons, Nickelodeon's all-animation channel, several times a week, usually at night. The show involves the adventures of Zim, a short green alien with a Nepoleonic ego, who believes he was sent to Earth to help pave the way for an invasion. Zim is from the planet Irk, where the leaders are selected by height, and are addressed as "The Almighty Tallest." The Irken race is bent on universal conquest, and holds high esteem for their Invaders, the elite soldiers who are assigned to prepare planets for domination. Being short on stature but big on gusto, Zim's exploits on his homeworld made him a thorn in the side of the Irken Armada -- so when Zim demanded to be assigned a task as an Invader, the Tallest decided it might be a good chance to get Zim out of the Armada's hair, and assigned him to Earth, a planet none of them had ever heard of.
Outfitted with Gir, a malfunctioning robot with an insatiable appetite for junk-food, Zim lands his ship in a row houses on the outskirts of an unspecified Earth city. His ship unfolds into a base that attempts to resemble a house, and from here, Zim conducts his daily activities. Mostly, he spies on the habits of Earthlings; attempts to blend-in as an Earth child; attends school; thwarts the plans of Dib, the only Earth-boy who suspects him of being an alien; and develops plans which are thwarted by Dib.
The concept of the show bears a kind of wacked genius -- but then, all great cartoon concepts are breathless exaggerations. What I find consistantly entertaining, and even fascinating, about this cartoon's premise is that it casts us, the viewer, into the shoes of the bad guy! We are meant to identify with Zim, this insect-like alien invader who sees all humans as "filthy dirt-monkeys!" We see things from Zim's perspective; the cartoon is drawn in nocturnal shades of purple, green and red. Humans have pallid, sickly skin and huge rolling cow-eyes. The camera angles, composition, and lighting draw often, and deeply, from the realms of psychological horror and madness -- think Hitchcock, Terry Gilliam, and Tales from the Crypt.
I could tell you all about how inspired and wicked and clever the show is, and I could explain all the ways in which I think the show touches upon issues of deep cultural relevance -- but my goal here is to make you want to watch the show, and I don't think an intellectual essay would accomplish that. And beyond that, it wouldn't communicate how downright cracked and hilarious the show is. That really is the bottom line, isn't it? If the show isn't funny, who cares?
Tonight's 30-minute segment was split into 2 episodes. The first, "Germs," opened with parody of "War of the Worlds," in which Earth soldiers defeat an army of alien invaders by sneezing on them. The germs, it seems, are Mankind's salvation. We zoom out to reveal Zim and Gir crashed on the sofa. "That's just stupid!" Zim says. "Germs are harmless!" But, of course, the late-night movie has left Zim feeling uneasy. So, he whisks down the garbage-chute into his subterranean lab. Some quick research on the galactic Internet reveals that germs may, in fact, be deadly to him after all. Unsettled, he orders a pair of "microgoggles" which promise to reveal all germs to the wearer. The goggles arrive almost immediately, via an asteroid that crashes in his front yard and cracks-open revealing a package simply addressed to: Earth. Zim straps-on the new goggles, and immediately screams, his hair standing on end. He calms himself, then turns to face the other direction, and screams again, utterly horrified and unable to move. We then see, through his eyes, a computer-enhanced image of the room, swarming with tiny green dots identified as "germs."
Soon enough, Zim is down in his lab, a hair-net stretched over his head, microgoggles strapped on his eyes, latex gloves on his hands, wearing tissue boxes like shoes. He's wielding a can of antibacterial spray with jittering hands, looking around nervously, muttering a stream of babble, and reminding us very much of Howard Hughes. As matters progress, he finds himself running low on germ-spray, and must make the horrific trek outside, to purchase more from the store down the block.
As Zim steps outside, still wearing the Howard Hughes getup and walking Gir like a dog, a legless man sitting on a porch across the street spies him and furrows his brow at the strange-lookin' fella. Ominous music plays. Zim skulks off down the sidewalk, holding the spray-can out like a knife, screaming and discharging it every few feet. Gir strides, heedless and oblivious, a few feet in front of him.
As they near the store, Zim asks Gir to hold the near-empty can for a moment. Gir takes the can, then spies a nearby hamburger shack and impulsively bolts off to grab a burger, unfortunately leaving Zim defenseless.
Zim, horrified, persues Gir into the restaurant, where he nearly passes-out in horror at all the germs -- before being shocked to discover that the hamburgers themselves contain no germs at all! He's puzzled, then amazed -- then he jumps onto the counter and demands from the clerk, "Earthman! Tell me why your meat has no germs!" The clerk, who shows no sign of surprise, begins a rather bored and rehearsed-sounding monologue about how NASA developed a special kind of germless meat in outer-space, called "space meat," and how McFlabby's purchased the rights to use "space meat" in their sandwiches.
Zim's eyes light up, and he says, "This 'Space Meat' could be the answer to my problems! Using this 'Space Meat,' I can blend in, unnoticed, and keep all the germs away! Forever! Human! You do not know what you have done on this day! Your fate is sealed! Give me ALL of your 'Space Meat!'"
Cut to the final shot of the episode: Ms. Bitters is teaching class. There's a knock, then the classroom door swings open, revealing Zim, covered in oozing masses of raw meat. He approaches, smiling nervously but lumbering like a zombie, towering over the camera. Horrific music swells. Cut to black. End of episode.
I urge you to give this show a chance. It's hilarious, disturbing, clever and cracked. I think it's one of the best things on television, and certainly the best cartoon I've seen in a decade. The first season of the show has been released on DVD, by the way.
I've often wondered why I feel this way. Perhaps it's because there's something fundamentally immature about my personality. Or maybe it's because the average episode of The Venture Brothers or Futurama delivers more creativity and wit per second than the average "live action" show delivers in an entire 60-minute segment.
For whatever reason, when I spin that roulette wheel of digital-cable channels, the ball falls more often than not on a cartoon. I have my long-running favorites -- including the two shows previously mentioned. I also have a growing list of shows which have fallen out of my favor: Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, American Dad, Sealab 2020, and Tom Goes to the Mayor are just a few. These shows were funny until their bizarre premises wore thin, and revealed that the shows themselves were pretty much one-joke affairs.
And besides that, the entire Adult Swim lineup has become so pervaded with jokes of the violent and crude variety that I find myself fairly dissuaded from watching. More and more often, I find myself troubled by what passes for humor on shows like Family Guy and American Dad. Sure, these shows aim to lampoon our modern anxieties -- but they do it in a way that's crude, humorless, and mean-spirited.
Why do our modern anxieties have to make for humor of the tasteless variety? Can't we have shows that lampoon our modern fears without resorting to tastelessness? Whatever happened to wit?
Enter Invader Zim.
Invader Zim is a 30-minute cartoon which airs on Nicktoons, Nickelodeon's all-animation channel, several times a week, usually at night. The show involves the adventures of Zim, a short green alien with a Nepoleonic ego, who believes he was sent to Earth to help pave the way for an invasion. Zim is from the planet Irk, where the leaders are selected by height, and are addressed as "The Almighty Tallest." The Irken race is bent on universal conquest, and holds high esteem for their Invaders, the elite soldiers who are assigned to prepare planets for domination. Being short on stature but big on gusto, Zim's exploits on his homeworld made him a thorn in the side of the Irken Armada -- so when Zim demanded to be assigned a task as an Invader, the Tallest decided it might be a good chance to get Zim out of the Armada's hair, and assigned him to Earth, a planet none of them had ever heard of.
Outfitted with Gir, a malfunctioning robot with an insatiable appetite for junk-food, Zim lands his ship in a row houses on the outskirts of an unspecified Earth city. His ship unfolds into a base that attempts to resemble a house, and from here, Zim conducts his daily activities. Mostly, he spies on the habits of Earthlings; attempts to blend-in as an Earth child; attends school; thwarts the plans of Dib, the only Earth-boy who suspects him of being an alien; and develops plans which are thwarted by Dib.
The concept of the show bears a kind of wacked genius -- but then, all great cartoon concepts are breathless exaggerations. What I find consistantly entertaining, and even fascinating, about this cartoon's premise is that it casts us, the viewer, into the shoes of the bad guy! We are meant to identify with Zim, this insect-like alien invader who sees all humans as "filthy dirt-monkeys!" We see things from Zim's perspective; the cartoon is drawn in nocturnal shades of purple, green and red. Humans have pallid, sickly skin and huge rolling cow-eyes. The camera angles, composition, and lighting draw often, and deeply, from the realms of psychological horror and madness -- think Hitchcock, Terry Gilliam, and Tales from the Crypt.
I could tell you all about how inspired and wicked and clever the show is, and I could explain all the ways in which I think the show touches upon issues of deep cultural relevance -- but my goal here is to make you want to watch the show, and I don't think an intellectual essay would accomplish that. And beyond that, it wouldn't communicate how downright cracked and hilarious the show is. That really is the bottom line, isn't it? If the show isn't funny, who cares?
Tonight's 30-minute segment was split into 2 episodes. The first, "Germs," opened with parody of "War of the Worlds," in which Earth soldiers defeat an army of alien invaders by sneezing on them. The germs, it seems, are Mankind's salvation. We zoom out to reveal Zim and Gir crashed on the sofa. "That's just stupid!" Zim says. "Germs are harmless!" But, of course, the late-night movie has left Zim feeling uneasy. So, he whisks down the garbage-chute into his subterranean lab. Some quick research on the galactic Internet reveals that germs may, in fact, be deadly to him after all. Unsettled, he orders a pair of "microgoggles" which promise to reveal all germs to the wearer. The goggles arrive almost immediately, via an asteroid that crashes in his front yard and cracks-open revealing a package simply addressed to: Earth. Zim straps-on the new goggles, and immediately screams, his hair standing on end. He calms himself, then turns to face the other direction, and screams again, utterly horrified and unable to move. We then see, through his eyes, a computer-enhanced image of the room, swarming with tiny green dots identified as "germs."
Soon enough, Zim is down in his lab, a hair-net stretched over his head, microgoggles strapped on his eyes, latex gloves on his hands, wearing tissue boxes like shoes. He's wielding a can of antibacterial spray with jittering hands, looking around nervously, muttering a stream of babble, and reminding us very much of Howard Hughes. As matters progress, he finds himself running low on germ-spray, and must make the horrific trek outside, to purchase more from the store down the block.
As Zim steps outside, still wearing the Howard Hughes getup and walking Gir like a dog, a legless man sitting on a porch across the street spies him and furrows his brow at the strange-lookin' fella. Ominous music plays. Zim skulks off down the sidewalk, holding the spray-can out like a knife, screaming and discharging it every few feet. Gir strides, heedless and oblivious, a few feet in front of him.
As they near the store, Zim asks Gir to hold the near-empty can for a moment. Gir takes the can, then spies a nearby hamburger shack and impulsively bolts off to grab a burger, unfortunately leaving Zim defenseless.
Zim, horrified, persues Gir into the restaurant, where he nearly passes-out in horror at all the germs -- before being shocked to discover that the hamburgers themselves contain no germs at all! He's puzzled, then amazed -- then he jumps onto the counter and demands from the clerk, "Earthman! Tell me why your meat has no germs!" The clerk, who shows no sign of surprise, begins a rather bored and rehearsed-sounding monologue about how NASA developed a special kind of germless meat in outer-space, called "space meat," and how McFlabby's purchased the rights to use "space meat" in their sandwiches.
Zim's eyes light up, and he says, "This 'Space Meat' could be the answer to my problems! Using this 'Space Meat,' I can blend in, unnoticed, and keep all the germs away! Forever! Human! You do not know what you have done on this day! Your fate is sealed! Give me ALL of your 'Space Meat!'"
Cut to the final shot of the episode: Ms. Bitters is teaching class. There's a knock, then the classroom door swings open, revealing Zim, covered in oozing masses of raw meat. He approaches, smiling nervously but lumbering like a zombie, towering over the camera. Horrific music swells. Cut to black. End of episode.
I urge you to give this show a chance. It's hilarious, disturbing, clever and cracked. I think it's one of the best things on television, and certainly the best cartoon I've seen in a decade. The first season of the show has been released on DVD, by the way.