Chapter 11 tells us how Popeye was a very successful cartoon that ran for more than twenty years and was very successful. However, the cartoon fell into a rut of regularity and the artists at Famous Studios started pumping out recycled material. Even some of the new ideas produced dry animations which had lost a lot of the “fun” that had made Popeye so successful in it’s glory days. I thought I would compare two episodes of Popeye and find some of the differences myself. What I found is that the 1950′s Popeye had not advanced much farther from the 1930′s popeye. The humor was basically exactly the same and the 1950′s version was not even as silly as the 1930′s version.
In the 1950′s version, Popeye has lost some of his funny speech patterns which are very unique to Popeye. Besides that, and the fact that it is in color, nothing has seemed to change for Popeye. He still gets into the same fights with Bluto, and somehow Olive Oyl seems to get caught up in the middle of it. But ahh yes, spinach comes to the rescue! The exception to the rule of Popeye is during the 1940′s during WW2 when Popeye was used as a propaganda tool to make the Japanese look bad. This put Popeye out on the sea’s and gave him an enemy besides Bluto. This cartoon, while it was wildly successful, fell into the same trap that so many shows fall into…mediocrity and lack of enthusiastic, creative ideas.
BP #11- Popeye Cartoons
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April 13, 2010 at 9:44 pm |
Popeye is one of my favorite cartoon characters of all time and I remember fondly watching some vintage black and white cartoon shorts of Popeye on Cartoon Network’s Late Night Black and White program. I remember once as a kid, after watching a Popeye cartoon, I tried eating spinach. Unfortunately, the spinach tasted awful! Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed this!
May 5, 2010 at 10:35 pm |
Popeye, quite the classic. My father would tell me stories of how when he was growing up that parents would use Popeye as a way to get their children to eat spinach. It seems like most famous cartoons during WWII were given a role for propaganda and it demonstrates how universal a cartoon character can be.
May 5, 2010 at 10:49 pm |
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