![]() The theme is a mockery of the show itself, and the show is a mockery of the zeitgeist. The song lays it out in cartoon simplicity: Dot is cute and Yakko yacks, Wakko packs away the snacks while Bill Clinton plays the sax (or ‘we pay tons of income tax’). It’s all in the Emmy winning opening theme, which lays out the show’s discursive post-modern bent explicitly: Each episode was a Brecht like ‘Three-Penny Opera’ – radical politics hidden behind pun-heavy ditties. Yakko, Wakko (voiced like Ringo Starr), and Dot talked in a sing-song manner because they knew that if they were going to have to match the didactic tedium of lesser kid’s shows, they’d have to be entertaining. Its songs were a continuation of Groucho Marx’s "Lydia The Tattooed Lady," Tom Lehrer’s "Poisoning Pigeons In The Park," Springtime For Hitler, and Buggs Bunny’s screwball operatics. Pinky: Well Brain, I've learned that one thing's true, Every one of them has failed, and so have you.Īnimaniacs was part of a comic-musical tradition with dissidence baked into its core. Pinky: Don't forget the former Governor of Arkansas.īrain: That concludes my little rhyme, I hope this lesson wasn't just a waste of time. I find a ruler's tragic flaw, And gain a little wisdom out of each faux pas. Pinky, offers his innocent counterpoints:īrain: From Ghengis Khan to Charlemagne, From Alexander down to Tamburlaine. In "A Meticulous Analysis of History" Brain sings like a think-tank wonk explaining Western hierarchies and imperialism and the benefit of learning from historic cataclysms to forge your own global domination plot. Pinky and the Brain’s segments were similarly satiric takes on capitalism, politics, and history at large. Magellan said, "What?" and got hit by a spear. But then someone shouted, "I think they're attacking". They sailed due West to the Philippine Islands, Magellan was pleased as the natives grew near. The song sardonically riffs on the blind ego of European colonialism, suggesting that Magellan and his like were stuck-up aristocrats blows by greed around the globe, until being rightfully killed by ‘natives’: ![]() This song, so atypical of Animaniacs' pisstake approach to the idea of ‘ethical’ children’s television (see their ‘wheel of morality’ segments) is a brutal run down of the toxic additives in the snacks sold to children during ad-breaks: “hooray for sugar ‘cause we love it/chocolate chips we want more of it/cakes and ice cream watch us shove it/down our throats real fast.’Īnother anarchic ear-worm was the "Ballad of Magellan," a glib summary of the trials and woes of the Spanish explorer as he searches for the East Indies Islands. Let’s start with a classic, "Be Careful What You Eat": Stone, who died tragically young (47) of pancreatic cancer in 2001, was behind the themes to Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain (an Animaniacs spin-off), Freakazoid! – all of which he won Emmys for – amongst others.Ĭoupled with the sharp lyrics of Ruegger and writers such as Randy Rogel (who was behind "Yakko’s World"), and the voice work of Rob Paulson (Yakko, Maurice LaMarche (Brain), Billy West (Pinky) and the rest of the cast, Animaniacs offered up a jamboree of tongue-in-cheek showtunes that were as subversive as they were informative. Composer Richard Stone channeled classic Merry Melodies composer Carl Stalling to create a symphonic soundscape of slapstick punctuation and musical pun alliteration. Key to Animaniacs (Groucho) Marxist punkery was its music. Its creator Richard Stone cooked up a world of hypomanic shit-stirrers who critiqued children’s broadcasting and the pop-culture at large, while offering up a genuinely witty street-smart educational alternative to the pedantic ‘2 + 2 is 4’ pedagogy of Barny the Dinosaur and co. Animaniacs, for the uninitiated, was a 90s cartoon that brought the post-modernism of Chuck Jones era Loony Toons into the embittered self-regurgitating cultural landscape of the late 20th century.
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