By Matt Zoller Seitz
Lessons to live by, No. 267: If you want to fake a leg injury to avoid fighting someone, it's best to leave fish out of the equation.
Freckle-faced geek Alfalfa and his buddy Spanky didn't get the memo in the 1937 short film "Fishy Tales," one of many classic Our Gang shorts now playing on the video Web site Youtube.com (and others). The short finds Alfalfa ducking a showdown with the local bully, Butch, by pretending he's been injured, crawling into bed, sticking his good leg through a hole in a mattress, and replacing the part below his knee with a fish wrapped in a sock.
Between Butch whacking Alfalfa's fish leg with a hammer, the toddler hiding beneath the mattress and tickling Alfalfa's real foot with a feather, and the armada of hungry cats gathering outside the window, the scheme's pitfalls are painfully clear -- but only to adults. What makes the best Our Gang shorts so enjoyable is their ability to depict kid logic -- or maybe I should say "logic" -- without condescension. They aren't simply for kids; the best of them seem to have been created by kids.
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To read the rest of the Star-Ledger article, click here.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Kids at play: the pleasures and pitfalls of the Our Gang shorts
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6 comments:
My favorite quote from the Our Gang series comes from the episode where Stymie is trying to find something to eat. Happening upon an artichoke, he tries to figure out how to open and eat it. Finally giving up, he tosses the artichoke and says, "It might choke Artie but it ain't gonna choke Stymie". I can't wait to get to my fast connection to watch these again.
Tully: Thanks to the Rascals, to this day whenever anyone says anything I agree with, my first inclination is to exclaim, "Aaaaaand how!"
MZS: to this day whenever anyone says anything I agree with, my first inclination is to exclaim, "Aaaaaand how!"
I was always partial to "Re-MAWK-uh-bulll."
Your link to Fishy Tales marks the first time I've seen an original Our Gang short in about 20 years. I did see the movie, which I thought was cute.
As much as I enjoyed watching them as a kid, I got a rather rude awakening when I saw the numerous things that Channel 5 had edited out. I try to watch movies and TV with the "product of their time" context in mind, but I can't deny how jarring some of the racist jokes are in The Little Rascals. It makes it even more jarring when one considers that the kids don't seem to see the color of Buckwheat, Stymie, and Farina. They just see other kids. It's the mean adults directing the pictures that corrupt them. That Borneo short is a perfect example. Except for Stymie, the kids don't even realize that the "savage" isn't the same color they are, so they accept him as their uncle without question.
I have such vivid memories of some of the shorts--the one with the grandmother on roller skates, the one with the gigantic cake that goes "wuh-wuh-wuh-wuhhhh" and has mouse traps in it--that my discovery of the unedited shorts in my late teens was like a loss of innocence. It wasn't as bad as when PBS ran Holiday Inn uncut--I had seen it 20 times or more on Channel 5 minus the number PBS put back--but it was still plenty fucked up.
I'm a big boy, so I'm certainly going to watch some more of the shorts on YouTube, but I wish I could be as clueless as I was when I was a kid.
Odie: "It makes it even more jarring when one considers that the kids don't seem to see the color of Buckwheat, Stymie, and Farina. They just see other kids. It's the mean adults directing the pictures that corrupt them."
My feelings exactly. The kids are thoroughly decent, much more evolved human beings than the producers signing their paychecks. When considering "The Little Rascals" -- or for that matter, any mass entertainment produced prior to the civil rights upheavals of the 50s and 60s, including Thomas Wolfe's novels, "Looney Tunes" and "I Love Lucy" -- the viewer must as him or herself the following question: "Are the indefensible provocations contained in this work outweighed by its artistry or entertainment value?"
The answer will vary, of course, depending on the individual and the work, but it must be asked every time we experience something for the first time. For Peckinpah -- in many ways a sexist, racist and overall Neandrathal -- the answer is yes, absolutely, because there's so much honesty, emotion and sheer aesthetic brilliance in his movies. For Sylvester Stallone, eh, probably not.
For me, "Casablanca" is a work that passes the test. Though Rick works for Sam, they act more like old friends -- or even war buddies -- than employer/employee. There is nothing in the actors' performances to suggest that either man thinks of the other as less than his equal. Yet Rick calls Sam "Sam" and Sam calls Rick "Mr. Rick." I've seen this movie probably 30 times, and this imbalance of power -- not applied to any other cross racial/national friendship in the movie -- always bugs me and takes me out of the movie. It's so at odds with the film's attitude toward human relations that it seems to have been imposed from without; it just doesn't fit. So I choose to forgive it and keep watching "Casablanca."
Is that a correct or incorrect decision? I don't know, but that particular offense doesn't seem grave enough to strike "Casablanca" off my list of favorite movies.
"Gone with the Wind" is a different story, though. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie, but I feel uneasy watching it because of its unabashed nostalgia for the myth of antebellum perfection, and its condescending attitude toward the slave characters, who are more complex than similar characters in other films made up till then, but still somewhat dehumanized compared to Rhett, Scarlett, Ashley, etc. Unlike "Triumph of the Will," which is sheer spectacle and mechanics, it's hard to divorce your reactions into aesthetic/emotional. Either you enjoy "Gone with the Wind" or you don't, and if you enjoy it unreservedly in this day and age, you've got a bit of soul searching to do. I'm not done with mine yet.
PS -- This discussion reminds me of the one going on in the comments thread for Jeremiah Kipp's appreciation of John Huston in "Chinatown." The question there is, if you know that an artist's private life is corrupt, depraved or evil, should that invalidate, complicate or otherwise affect your admiration/enjoyment of the work?
As for me, to this day, some of my friends (and me) refer to an any attractive blind date (male or female) as a "Miss Crabtree."
Wonderful article, Matt. I would toss Fred C. Newmeyer in with some of the great non-child talent the blessed the Gang. Whenever the racial aspects are brought up (for any comedies of this time), I almost always think of General Spanky, where Buckwheat is a masterless slave and Spanky (a vagabond? runaway? I can’t precisely remember) grudginly assumes the role as master. All the types of elements that alarmed Odie are front and center in General Spanky. The bizarro combination of innocence (not just with the kids) with the disturbing and offensive racial attitudes makes it infinitely fascinating. Still, to give it credit, there are some truly hilarious moments in the picture: Spanky and Buckwheat diving off a riverboat springs to minde. There was a pitched battle between the Yankees and the pint sized Rebels that started to turn the movie into Saving General Spanky.
Personally, though, I’m most thankful to Our Gang for introducing me to the goddesses that are: Ms. McGillicutty, Ms. Crabtree and Miss Pipps (in order of hotness, I think). I’m not sure where that school was, but with teachers like that, I’d still be in second grade - and I assure you that my nickname would be Spanky as well. I can’t remember Ms. Jones or if there were any others.
Everytime Jackie Gleason said the name Miss McGillicutty, the funnier it got.
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