First off, in Section One, I am going to tell the world how highly I regard the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.
Secondly, I will use two frames from this show to try and explain my newly-crafted world-view that the common misconception that in trying too hard to find an opposite to something... we create more problems than we solve.
If you are one of the handful of people who follow me on Twitter, I was kicking the second topic around on there last week, and the second section of this essay shall be a longer more-thought-out version of that.
As for the first section...it's self-evident what that shall be.... for I cannot keep this inside any longer.... for I think I Love Rocky and Bullwinkle. I think it is a great show.
Rocky and Bullwinkle
A common theme of late on this blog has been the term "Humorist"... which has been thrown around in regards to George Ade, L. Frank Baum, Jean Shepherd, the video game "Earthbound" and a few others. I think "Humor" and the "Humorist" are terms that are taken for granted now but were terms that carried more weight in the 1900s.
I will go on record and say this, just like I brazenly (and with no regret) placed Earthbound (a video game) in the pantheon of Great Humorist Works of the 1900s.... I shall now make another brazen, and with even less regret opinion, that... Rocky and Bullwinkle belong in that category as well.
Now, I bet, a lot of people read that and wondered aloud how I can make such brazen pronouncements as this. How some rube with zero diction for the arts can start anointing video games and cartoons as some of the most masterful Humorist works of the last century. I might be a rube, and yes, I might have zero diction, and I might be of rudimentary intelligence and of only lowly wit....but.....
...when it comes to Rocky and Bullwinkle..... I know my stuff. This is not a gag, or the merest of boast, no sir, this is more like a hot butter on a breakfast toast!
Over 7 years ago, I wrote passingly on Rocky and Bullwinkle with little fanfare. They are mentioned in the Writings on Subjects piece, "Stayin' Up All Night? Oh That's Alright...."
"......so then I thought, "hey now, I hafta be up for school in like 5 hours, what the hell is the point of going to sleep for 5 hours?" Naturally, the sanest thing to do was just to stay up all night long. After Conan, I'd switch to the cable channel 18 who had the GREATEST all night programming I'd ever seen to this day...
1:30 am to 2:00 am: Rocky and Bullwinkle (this show had class)
2:00 am to 2:30 am: The Young Ones (starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson)
2:30 am to 3:00 am: Bottom (also starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson)
3:00 am to 3:30 am: Speed Racer (oh man, this song was so catchy!!!)
3:30 am to 4:30 am: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (with Captain Lou Albano!)
4:30 am to 5:00 am: Muppet Babies (shit's tight yo...)
Then I'd go to school and sleep with my eyes open in class. I heard of that technique in a late night movie once where Toshiro Mifune and Charles Bronson were walking through a desert. Mifune said he can sleep while he walks...so I figured if he can do it while he walks, it shouldn't be too hard for me to sleep while faking to pay attention in class."
-Writings on Subjects (1.0)
Rocky and Bullwinkle was the lead-off show in my Stayin' Up All Night long routine in my high school years. This show has deep personal significance to me, as such. In the sense that I would at least sometimes make an effort to fall asleep while it was on... which worked 0% of the time from what I remember. After it ended they hit you with high octane stuff! The Young Ones was a rebellious punk rocky show with a catchy theme, Bottom was an out-of-control violent thrill ride, Speed Racer was beyond high octane...that theme song was impossible to not shake me back awake... then Super Mario Super Show? Forget it, there was no way I was sleeping through that. Then conclude with Muppet Babies on a half-awake note.... and then it was time to start "waking up."
Trying to fall asleep to Rocky and Bullwinkle, but failing to each time, has placed it in this odd Zone of Memories inside of my head. Episodes of this show, or even just still frames from it exist as this sort of window to a world of half-awake dream-like reality for me. It was a show I would watch daily (or nightly I should say) in a state of trying-to yet-failing-to fall asleep.
Between the main segments of the show, the commercials (that's a prime time to shut your eyes a bit), the mini-segments, the Identifier segments where they ID their own show a lot and it's different each time (Rocky and Friends, Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, The Bullwinkle Show, etc.), the "Fractured Fairy Tales", more commercials, the Peabody and Sherman part, etc.....I watched a disjointedly presented show in a highly-lucid state of being half-awake.... every, single, night.
People don't believe it when it's stated that people can have "Lucid" highly controlled dreams. Lucid dreams are defined as having dreams where the sleeper KNOWS they are DREAMING and once they know they are dreaming they can CONTROL the dream as if playing a video game inside of their mind. I can attest that I can do this, easily. Watching a whacky cartoon which had disjointed sequencing whilst being half-awake as a young teenager (14-17) every single night.... had a pretty decent sized influence on that formulating hunk of cauliflower inside of my skull.
I know I have seen probably every episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle ...yet... if you were to ask me to describe in great detail one of the main plots of one of Rocky and Bullwinkle's adventures... I could not. I really couldn't. If you asked me to recite to you one of the shaggy-punch-lines from Aesop's Fables... I could not. If you asked me to describe any of Peabody and Sherman's plots in detail... I could not.
This show, honestly, exists in its totality in my brain... yet on a fractured subconscious level. I know it's there but in a Zone of Memory soooo strange that it's more conducive to a Non-Reality than to a Real-Reality. A Non-Reality with pale-pea-green, submarine-interior-grey, not-so-Van-Dyke-brown, and dis-jarringly-drab-orange Backgrounds.
I shouldn't feel bad for not being able to describe a plot of this show in detail.... for even if you asked the LEAD CHARACTER of the show to explain the plot of one of their adventures to the other LEAD CHARACTER.... they could barely even do it!
If you skip to the 20:21 point of the video below you can see what I'm trying to say...
(or click here for a time-sensitive link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnU0UIVwVtw&t=20m21s)
Did you watch Rocky try and explain the plot of the segment that probably happened a commercial ago and a weird fairy tale or fable ago to his friend? If you've never seen or heard of "Our Boys" (as portrayed by Rocky and Bullwinkle) that scene above at the 20 minute mark is the crashest course on it you'd need.
This show.... was the Greatest. I love this show. It is beyond absurdity, it is beyond organized chaos, it is beyond REALITY even, it is a lucid dream about a flying squirrel and a moose... and it should be regarded as one of the greatest works of Humor of the 1900s....It truly should.
...and I will go as far as to say it may, without even me knowing it, it may be one of the most important subconscious influences on my view of the world. As weird as that sounds.
Half-awakingly watching Rocky and Bullwinkle in a state of lucid dream-like reality definitely had an impact on how I understand the world and how I interact with it. I'm not even joking. That's true.
I want the entire world to know it. I want the entire world to know that I....
...Love Rocky and Bullwinkle!
Society's Need and/or Obsession with trying to find Polarized Opposites in All Concepts
Now here's something that I hope you really like.
I really do, at times, observe some old Rocky and Bullwinkle still frames and let my brain zone out to back when it was a 13 year old kid's brain, when times were simple. Take my brain back to that pale-pea-green, submarine-interior-grey, not-so-Van-Dyke-brown, and dis-jarringly-drab-orange, World of Not-Being-Awake but Not-Being-Asleep.
I call it the Rocky and Bullwinkle Zone.
I was looking at two frames the other day, and I came to a stunning conclusion about Society, gang. In the Zone, my brain festered upon the notion of why we need an opposite for everything. I think it is a very unlooked-at problem in today's world, I do.
So many people NEED to find polarized opposites for they feel being the polar opposite of something they don't like will remedy a problem they believe exists. However, the notion of opposites to begin with is misleading and confounding though.
If you asked a person, what is the opposite of the following terms; Day, Down, and Monday.
They would more-than-likely respond with: Night, Up, and Friday.
I believe that to be a very rudimentary understanding of opposites. Let's look at a Rocky and Bullwinkle frame:
Here we see "Our Boys" (as portrayed by Rocky and Bullwinkle) in a boat, against a grey-purply-blue background, whilst Rocky points to his head whilst Bullwinkle looks confused.
Now this is a concept as much as any other concept is a concept.... indeed? Yes, indeedement. Now if our opposite-finding obsessed society was asked to conjure up a total polarized opposite to this concept.... they would say...
It's Boris, the polar opposite of the hero Rocky, pointing to HIS head whilst Natasha looks confused. Right? That's right, right? I don't think so.
We have to assume so many intangibles about Concept A (Rocky in Boat pointing to Head w/ Bullwinkle appearing Confused) for Concept B (Boris in Boat pointing to Head w/ Natasha appearing Confused) for this polarization of concepts to pass the litmus test of truth.
First of all, this is a TOTAL visual opposite. Who is to say a polarized opposite of something has to be visual? Who is to say the opposite of Rocky in Boat w/ Confused Bullwinkle would not just be something as simple as Rocky NOT IN A BOAT and Bullwinkle NOT IN THE SCENE AT ALL? That is perfectly as acceptable a polarized view of Concept A as the previous proposed opposite was.
Each concept is inherently born with a self-canceling out Non-Version of Itself... thus in the simplest form and terms... the opposite of any concept is its own self-cancelling concept of its own self.
Thus.... the opposite of "Day" is not "Night". The opposite of Day is the self-canceling concept of Not-Day or Un-Day. The opposite of Down is not Up. For when you are not Down you are simply Not Down or UnDown. The opposite of Monday is not Friday. It is Un-Monday, Non-Monday, or Anti-Monday.
How can Friday be the opposite of Monday anyway? Saturnalia (AKA Saturday), the precursor proto-version of Christmas, is far more the visual opposite of Monday than Friday is, no? Indeedement. Saturday under this polarized-oriented logic is more conducive to the opposite of Monday than Friday is.
I don't see Saturday or Friday as the opposite of Monday though... I see Not-Monday as the opposite of Monday.
The world can become so polarized under the weirdest of ground rules at times. In the Real-Reality of Everyday Life we have some of the most non-sensicle and un-logical polarized non-nuanced views of the world from millions of bizarre angles and think nothing of it. In this Black and White, Up and Down, Right and Wrong, Left and Right, Good and Bad World of ours.... we get hung up on what "side" of "things" we are all "on".
There's a common saying that Grey is the Balance between Black and White... that Justice is the Balance between Right and Wrong.... Forward is the Balance between Left and Right.... etc....
...but that's a bunch of hokey phony bologna too, Bullwinkle. There's so much more than just the Grey Area between Black and White, gang. There's endless color combinations that exist in between those polarized concepts. There's pale-pea-green, submarine-interior-grey, not-so-Van-Dyke-brown, and dis-jarringly-drab-orange... like the background colors in the World of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Colors that are disjointingly out-of-placingly almost uniquely odd in their own inherent nature.
In the silly polarization of Rocky/Bullwinkle in a boat and Boris/Natasha on a boat... what would society deem as the "Balance" between the two polarized concepts? Why this of course....
...Bullwinkle confused, on a boat, but not with Rocky... but with Boris (dressed here as actor Spencer Tracebeck). Now, how is this Balance? I mean it is the merged concept of both concepts .... but in the end doesn't it just leave us more confused?
What was I writing about again? I wish I had a Rocky to explain these articles to me as I write them... but I don't.
It seems we try our best to understand concepts, and sometimes we don't like those concepts we conceptualize... so we create polarized opposites of these concepts to try and cancel the original concept we conceptualized out....and then we feel the polarized opposite may have gone too far... so we trace it back a bit and attempt to find "balance" between these concepts we have conceptualized...
....yet in the end... it still MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!
Now watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat, you guys. Have any of you ever thought that Life doesn't make sense but in a shocking shaggy-dog twist of fate... that not only does Life not make sense but that.....Life Is Not Supposed to Make Sense?
Is it fair to say that, under that logic, that the Notion that Life Doesn't Make any Sense... totally makes Life Make Sense?
Okay, I have to exit the Rocky and Bullwinkle Zone now. This is getting a bit out of hand here. Mayhap one day we shall return here.... but this is enough for now.
