WHAT'S UP WITH YOGI BEAR AND BOO BOO?.. AND OTHER CARTOON MYSTERIES

I never questioned cartoons when I was a kid. Animals that talked and behaved like people were a part of the game and I just accepted the situation. Ours was not to question why, ours was merely to accept the cartoon reality.

But now I have to ask a few questions about the cartoons of my youth and try to find some answers.

Yogi Bear and Boo Boo Bear are a source of puzzlement for me. Yogi was clearly an adult bear, but what was Boo Boo? Was he a short adult bear or a young bear with a deep voice? And let’s not even get into the relationship between Yogi and Boo Boo during the long winter months.

That’s just a little too unsettling to think about.

Yogi had a serious addiction to picnic baskets that might have provoked a tranquilizer dart and an unconscious ride out of the park for Yogi. But he was free to roam the park and scare the hell out of tourists. Most of his antics might even have earned him a very large caliber bullet from Ranger Smith, but cartoon bullets appear to have little effect on cartoon characters beyond briefly scorched faces.

In fact, a cartoon character cannot be killed by anything other than bad ratings and young fans that have grown up and beyond the reach of cartoon laws.

The laws allow Huckleberry Hound to be a genetic freak show that speaks English with a clear southern drawl, while many of his canine brothers act and bark like real dogs in his show.

Huckleberry never explains how he became a mailman and sworn enemy of his fellow dogs. It was simply part of the cartoon.

I can no longer understand how Quick Draw McGraw was a stage coach driver in the opening credits. The team of horses in front of him served their more logical role as locomotion for the stagecoach. But clearly Quick Draw and his sidekick Bubba Louie (a donkey) would have little use or need for a stagecoach ride. Except that they only walk on their hind legs: More mystery.

Another issue would be Quick Draw’s ability to use a handgun. Hooves would shuffle the task well into the impossible range. Therefore any gun battle would result in a heavy loss by a horse with a gun in its hoof.

The saving grace would be the cartoon laws of gunplay, so bullets wouldn’t kill Quick Draw anyway.

I always loved the Flintstones, even though they seemed to live in a strange cartoon world where dinosaurs and humans were not separated by hundreds of millions of years. But the biggest question mark for me is how comfortable Fred and Barney were in drag. Both had many episodes where they pushed a gender-bender agenda and seemed to enjoy their time in a dress.

Fred always seemed more at home in Wilma’s clothes, but Barney’s initial protest against another one of Fred’s hare-brained schemes always seemed to end in a sense of real enjoyment on Barney’s part.

So I guess cartoons from my kiddie days are just one big question mark for me now that I have to ask the tough questions.

You can’t go home to cartoon world once that happens.

COMMENTS

DENNIS:"These cartoons are tame compared to the "modern" ones. Try to make sense out of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force", for instance?