Up in the Sky, Look!

In 1941 Paramount Pictures decided they wanted to get in on a good thing by producing a series of cartoons based on the latest craze, a new cartoon character called Superman. They went to the Fleischer studio, the guys who were already doing Popeye cartoons for them. What would it take to get them working on a Superman series? The Fleischers were stretched pretty thin. They had just finished their first feature and were working on another. They didn’t really want to take on a big new project, but they didn’t want to admit it, so they told Paramount that it would cost $100,000 per cartoon, four times what the Popeyes cost. Paramount said yes. And thus are classics made.

I just saw all seventeen of the Fleischer Supermans. I was going to write a little essay about them, perhaps with some links where you might see an example or two. I was going to do that, until I read the Wikipedia article. There I found a nice little essay, with stuff that I was going to write about and a lot more that I didn’t know, along with links to every one of the cartoons (down in the footnotes). So there’s no point in me writing it, you see.

Instead I’ll just tell you what I think. And I think I really like these things.

They’re just beautiful. The drawings, the shadowing, the rotoscoped animation, all great. I loved the fanciful deco styling and the thrilling-wonder super-science gizmos. They really captured the spirit of Superman and something of the spirit of the time too.

Okay, they’re great to look at. What about the plots?

Ah. Well. . . . Did I mention that they are great to look at?

They’re not bad, but there is little variation from formula. Something bad happens, Lois gets into trouble, Clark says “This look like a job for Superman,” Lois is rescued, day is saved.

Well, waddya want? It’s ten minutes of superhero joy. Wish-fulfillment. Science-fantasy. The mighty hero protecting us from whatever it is we are afraid of.

I guess that means that in the early 1940s we were afraid of mad scientists. The mad scientist is a personification of science gone mad, and that seems to have given folks the serious jitters back then. It makes sense. The pace of change in the previous fifty years was unprecedented. Before that life had gone on pretty much without change for millennia. Then comes the industrial revolution, automobiles, mass production, airplanes, machine guns, bombers, Zeppelins, radio, telephone, movies, sound recording, skyscrapers, light bulbs, beer in cans, women’s suffrage, and mimeographs. Today we are all neo-jaded, but then the idea of new was still new.

What would science give us next? Unstoppable robots? Rocket cars? Death beams? Living dinosaurs? Earthquake machines? Who will save us?

And sure, we were afraid of crime and natural disasters. But in 1942 and ’43 we were also afraid of Germans, Japanese, and saboteurs in our midst. The Man of Steel takes on those guys too. Some folks have criticized the way Japanese were characterized here. I think it is helpful to try to empathize with the Americans of that time. They weren’t like us. They didn’t know how World War II was going to come out. They felt that they were victims of a sneak attack. They were angry and they were afraid. Fear can distort thinking. Americans were desperate to see their enemies defeated, defanged, and humiliated. Superman could give us the fantasy of instant wish-fulfillment.

I’ll wrap it up with a word about one of my favorite people – Lois Lane. Yes, she is the requisite damsel in distress, but somehow Lois is always Lois. She is smart, strong-willed, courageous, and obviously a good writer. She also happens to be kind of a babe (at least as seen in cartoons 2 through 16). But I don’t think the Fleischer crew was particularly good at drawing realistic women. They got Lois right (through the magical rotoscope) but that’s where the work ended. Every other woman they draw looks just like Lois. Add glasses to this one, make that one a blond.

Whatever. See these for the pure fun of watching Superman while he was still new. See these for a glimpse of what fired the mind of folks in our past. Or just see them because you like good cartoons.