For over a year I’ve been meaning to watch The Illusionist. We’ve exhausted, for now, the anime series worth watching, so it finally went to the top of the Netflix queue. We really enjoyed The Illusionist. It’s fun in the same way that Sherlock Holmes stories are, but it’s also a romance with a strong fantasy element. Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti are both exceptionally good.
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Hajdu, Don’t Make It Bad
Peanuts, June 22, 1952
Comic books, like the movies, were under attack in the 1950’s. Movie people were accused of being communists, and comic book people were accused of causing juvenile delinquency. A book by David Hajdu, called The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, gives some serious thought to what happened and how it influenced later events beyond comic books themselves. Stephen Colbert, who’s obviously a comic book fan, interviewed Hajdu a couple of weeks ago.
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There’s irony in the “TV 14” rating that’s so prominent during Colbert’s introduction. It’s almost like the Comics Code Authority seal that appeared on comic books after the big scare. Oh no! How did that commercial get left at the end of the interview?
EC Comics publisher William Gaines did a lousy job testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954. His entire testimony is at this link. He should have emphasized that his horror comics were inspired by radio shows such as Inner Sanctum, Lights Out, and The Whistler. But there was probably no defense against the public sentiment of the day. In a way, losing the comic book business was the best thing that could have happened to Gaines, because he was left with MAD Magazine, which was far more subversive and influential anyway, and it ended up being vastly more successful.
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Crossover Success…. and Failure
More Xuxa? This video features Latin superstar Ricky Martin when he was starting his solo career. He wouldn’t make the jump to success in English until the end of the decade. Xuxa made the attempt only a few months later, and failed utterly. But at the time of this appearance Xuxa was the superstar, and Ricky Martin was the kid who used to be in Menudo.
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Xou de Xuxa
Sociologist Amelia Simpson says in her 1993 book, XUXA: The Mega-Marketing of Gender, Race, and Modernity…
She descends from her spaceship as if it were a fashion show runway, her blondness on display along with her other physical attributes, highlighted by the revealing costumes she never repeats. The ritual of arrival places the star in a glamorous context that conveys the modernity and sophistication of the first world.
I first heard about Xuxa on an NPR segment. My curiosity piqued, the first Xuxa show I saw was also the last that was shown on Univision. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. The cultural differences between mainstream America and Latin America were as stunning as, well, Xuxa herself. The blending of catchy songs, weird games, and an unbelievably flagrant display of hotpants went way beyond the Mickey Mouse Club and boys staring in wide-eyed wonder at Annette Funicello and, my favorite Mouseketeer, Cheryl Holdridge.
See for yourself in this video of Xou de Xuxa I edited from a recording made on January 9, 1993. It’s in Spanish, and not Portuguese, Xuxa’s native language. It features a few songs from the show. They are, like the K3 tunes, exemplary examples of the craft of Pop music.
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From Brazil to Belgium
OK, you’ve had your little break from K3, but now we’re back with more of Karen, Kathleen, and Kristel. I can’t say if Xuxa’s success in Brazil 15-20 years ago had any influence on Studio 100’s introduction of K3 as a Pop act that hosts a children’s show, but watching these videos I have to wonder.
This is K3 with a Latin beat. The second video, “Feest” (Celebration), has some bizarre CG models of the ladies. The last video is a live version of the same song, and at the moment it’s having buffering problems on YouTube, and that’s why it’s last. If it locks up, drag the button past that point and it should pick up again. The third tune is their brand-new single, which is somewhat evocative I think of ABBA’s “Fernando.”
But now let’s meet Xuxa. This is a 1993 feature from Inside Edition, and it’s introduced by none other than…. Bill O’Reilly.
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CSI: Cardboard Submarine Immersed
When FiOS kicked in with all of the HD channels I wasn’t getting, but should have, I also started getting HD Video on Demand offerings. I like Gary Sinise’s work, so I watched a few episodes of CSI: NY. One was really good, another was pretty good, but one was flat-out lame. Here’s the big finish.
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This really gets my comic book fan hackles going. It portrays comic books as having a bad influence on kids, and I’m really tired of that misconception. In fact, it makes comic book readers look stupid, and their parents too, because in the show what those kids needed was some adult supervision.
How old is the character supposed to be whose friend drowned in the cardboard sub? At the oldest I’d say he’s 35. And the death happened when he was, say, ten years old. Better make it eight. Ten-year-old kids aren’t that stupid. OK, so that means the flashback takes place 27 years ago, in 1981. The drawings appear to be the character Bullseye, from a Frank Miller issue of Daredevil. Miller took over writing the series in late 1980, and that type of ad was long gone from comics by then. The age of the newsstand comic book was pretty much already over, and comic book shops had taken over. Further, there weren’t any “Laughing Larry” type figureheads that I can recall, for any of the cheap outfits advertising in comics. And the idea that he’d still be in business is, well, silly. But I bet the character actor playing Laughing Larry had a good time with the part, because he looks like he usually gets stuck playing a gangster.
Above is one of the original ads for the cardboard submarine, taken from a 1967 Marvel comic. I never owned one, but Boing Boing has a picture of the real thing, also from 1967, at this link. Hmm… maybe they’ll do a show where some kid dies abusing the Digi-Comp 1.