Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted animation festival was a milder mix this year (2001) than in its previous incarnations; the irony is, the less over-the-edge cartoons chosen for this anthology were also some of the funniest.
My favorite was The Ghost of Stephen Foster, a derivative yet thoughtfully made sendup of the dark, surreal Max Fleischer cartoon shorts of the early Thirties. The models used for "Stephen Foster" are undoubtedly Minnie the Moocher and Snow White (both starring Betty Boop), and probably Bimbo's Initiation (introducing Ms. Boop in a brief yet pivotal walk-on). In pre-Code Hollywood the suggestions of sex and perhaps even drug-induced sensibilities in such protean fantasies were allowed to find their audience -- including adult, although most of what an audience of that time would have found objectionable likely traveled right over the heads of children. Left alone, and minus the intervention of the Depression era's new-found conservatism, such classic shorts would, at worst, have been appreciated as innocent fun.
The formula in Minnie and Snow White centered on heroine Betty traveling through a cave (how Freudian is that?), accompanied by a musical performance by Cab Calloway, which song, in turn, is acted out or lip-synched by a host of ghostly visions. The Ghost of Stephen Foster parallels Fleischer's storyline with one of a young honeymoon couple walking through a haunted hotel. A skeletal "host" conducts the innocents as the retro-novelty title song, from a recording by contemporary group Squirrel Nut Zippers, is featured. It's a shorter cartoon than one would expect, but it hits and then leaves us amused without our sitting still long enough to analyze. The black-and-white artwork is especially authentic in achieving both moodiness and humor, and the principal acting characters are drawn with professional cuteness that recalls the work of the earlier animation studios. The song Ghost of Stephen Foster is so catchy/insane that we've been playing it at my house several times a day for nearly a week.
The original Fleischer shorts are perhaps seen, and exploited, as "head shows" in more recent times, no doubt similar to the intent of this modern cartoon, but the real achievement in both cases is the way in which they allow us to go deeper into our own unhindered minds, bring out the demons and laugh at ourselves a little. It's fun.
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