R.I.P Mufasa

I miss the 90’s. It was a simpler time- pop stars could wear training bras without being deemed as psychotic sexual predators, children’s films were animated, and leggings were allowed temporary visas as pants.

Yep- S Club 7, The Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls… then on the flip side Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam… whichever way you swung, things were swell.

My little cousins turn their noses up at the animated classics my sister and I try to enlighten them with- its realistic computer animation or nothing. Apparently, kid’s films now have to appear as ‘real’ as possible to get kids to watch them. I’m sorry, when did 7 year olds become sahhh postmodern?

I’ve also been made aware of this game you can play where you keep and train dogs. It’s like a tamogotchi, except the dogs are animated and realistic, and they kind of just walk around until you touch them with the little pen the console comes with. (It’s a touch screen, because everything short of laptops these days is.) I had a tamogotchi when I was about 7 but got bored of it quickly and I’m fairly sure it’s dead by now.

And then there’s kid’s movies then vs. kid’s movies now. Then there was lots of singing. And the majority were animated via cartoon so movements and musical numbers were obviously exaggerated for dramatic effect. It was that coupled with the songs that helped teach my imagination how to work, not to mention harbour an interest in music. Now, whilst I do love a fair few of the animated flicks, and there are obvious exceptions, (ahem Toy Story, Monsters Inc.,) generally I just don’t think they are quite as rounded an experience.

whatever

Sure, computer technology is CLEVER. And you know, kind of useful. But all musical numbers in kid’s films are gone. I mean completely.  It’s all either an animal/a car with a personality realizing they don’t fit in, and go on some kind of implicitly self-searching quest which ends in them finding peace and happiness without appearing too dramatic so that no-one gets upset.

In the end of The Lion King (spoiler alert… but seriously if you haven’t seen it by now you deserve to have it ruined,) Simba and Scar fight to the death against a background of flames, just following Scar’s confession that he killed Simba’s father by throwing him off a cliff in order to become king.

Today that just sounds like a plot off neighbours. Which completely kills any budding notion of taking it seriously as a plot, so again, no one gets upset.

Maybe this is just my 90’s patriotism talking, but creative juice seemed to have more leeway. Noddy was allowed to run free before someone decided the show had homosexual connotations and subsequently stabbed it in the head, so that it was barely recognizable come round two. The Spice Girls had a song called ‘Two Become One’ which we all only realized was actually very, very sexual once childhood conceded to puberty. Well, once Political Correctness took over and Ideological and Cultural Soundness were brought to our attention.

(Slight aside but: The once “Baa Baa Black Sheep” is now “Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep,” even though this is not directly related to my rant. The original nursery rhyme was actually about wool taxes in old England.)

The 00’s aren’t really so bad. They just lack the magic of the 90’s. I wonder what the Fresh Prince ended up doing with himself. Not to mention Ash Ketchum.