first I'm gonna tear you lips out yeah
that's what I'm gonna do we don't like
this room I'm gonna oh yeah out of the
socket I'm gonna pitch it and we're
gonna so this is a scene that came out
of a 90's television show for children
that may be hard to believe but then
again a lot of the scenes that came out
of the Ren & Stimpy show pretty hard to
believe I'm a child of the 90s and
though I haven't seen many of the
episodes of this show for well over a
decade on rewatching the series I was
amazed by how much of the imagery was
lodged deep in my memory like the walls
of tears that welled up and were
injected out of Stimpy's eyes in this
episode called the Little Giant or the
nerve endings that were excruciating Lee
plucked out of Ren's gum sockets and of
course every gruesome yet painterly
extreme close-up that became a staple of
the show and a few that followed along
with The Simpsons Ren and Stimpy was a
seminal cartoon of the animation
Renaissance that hit TV in the early
1990s whereas the Simpsons was focused
on sharp satirical writing Ren and
Stimpy and its creator John Kricfalusi
were obsessed with unique detailed and
highly very animation techniques I think
this is why the imagery of Ren and
Stimpy really leaves a mark on your
brain Kricfalusi was coming from a
notorious Dark Age in commercial
animation in which the production of
shows was fragment in an outsourced
overseas to places like Taiwan in the
Philippines plot lines were simple in
cliche and facial expressions were
relegated to happy sad and confused and
that's about it
there's a million versions of happy and
sad and perplexed and then there's all
these other kinds of emotions that have
labels but you can draw them I urge my
artists all the time to never draw an
expression that they've drawn before us
and you're not allowed
Kricfalusi found his sensibility
apprentices and working who were Ralph
Bosch an animation legend who was
producing some of the only interesting
commercial work of the 1970s he married
the surreal often disturbing feel of
Bosch key stuff with dense energetic
style of Bob Clampett cartoons of the
1930s and 40s like Clampett Kricfalusi
wanted rented Snoopy to be filled with a
new idea every second I mean just take a
look at these handful of frames from
what's probably the best episode of the
series Stimpy's invention every frame is
a completely new drawing the script Lucy
once said of Clampett doesn't even look
like it animates yet in real time it
works perfectly it communicates a
totally unique emotion that's what quick
Valusia has team we're after with Ren
and Stimpy two characters that actually
got under your skin two characters that
were so unique and dense in their
movement and speech that you had to see
a soul in them however twisted that soul
was and this quality has to be what
makes the show so disturbing to every
slimy gunky sweaty hairy who's had an
unnerving reality and the show played on
anxieties about bodily fluids at a time
when the United States was at the height
of its fears about the AIDS epidemic I
believe that they should have separate
hospitals so that the people that have
AIDS can go in there and not be in
regular Hospital but kids loved Ren and
Stimpy it had higher ratings in its
first year than fellow nicktoons Doug
and Rugrats combined the creators
maintain that they were on the kids side
spoon-fed morals in school at home and
on just about every children show
animated or not Ren and Stimpy offered
lesson free zany gross ridiculous humor
what Kricfalusi Willy was the point of
cartoons anyway and escaped parents
groups protested the show but the
audience had spoken and indeed in that
first year 35 percent of the people who
watched Ren and Stimpy were over 18
years old
MTV started rerunning the first season
at 7 p.m. instead of 11 a.m.
viewing parties were arranged at college
campuses and for good reason like the
Adult Swim cartoons that are in many
ways its spawn rent
Stimpy mixed absurd character-driven
action with sly parodies of earlier
cartoons satirical and sometimes
treasonous gags like when powdered toast
man burned the Bill of Rights in the
Constitution to keep warm sexual
innuendo that was off the charts and
just genuinely terrifying moments call
the police
ren and stimpy didn't hold back on the
insanity of its characters number of
times ren goes completely psychotic and
the honesty and Kripke Lucy's voice
acting coupled with the manic animation
including glaring abstract backgrounds
and sound effects is enough to pull the
viewer into the cartoon and into that
palpable distress the creators of Ren &
Stimpy had a healthy disdain for the way
cartoons had aggressively commercialized
and commodified childhood with
merchandise as simple well as simple as
a log yes log and they regretted that
their peers were force-feeding ethical
norms to their audiences on a weekly
basis so they made a show that
brilliantly mocked these things but I
don't think Kricfalusi zalta McGoldrick
ID's to marvel at something that yanked
your attention the way the old Clampett
cartoons did something as dark and seedy
as the original fairy tales but
gloriously funny and inventive in every
frame to do this Kricfalusi pushed the
system to its limits and was eventually
fired after the second season the show
went on but the richest episodes were
during his reign in 91 and 92 the series
masterpiece Stimpy's invention took a
full year to produce now maybe that was
overkill but at the same time it's no
doubt that obsessive attention to detail
that burned Ren and Stimpy onto all of
our brains forever
Hey
hey everybody thanks for watching my
brain is complete mush after watching a
week of renin simpie but it was so worth
it it's genius genius show anyway follow
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