PAPA SMURF'S GONNA TAKE UR WEED, MAN: Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue

Though 1990 may have been the start of new decade, some of the most obnoxious trends in 1980s entertainment continued to be annoyingly omnipresent. For instance, hair metal not only stuck around, but was almost at a commercial high point, with even fourth or fifth tier bands like Warrant able to achieve Top 10 success. Somehow.

This is a real thing that exists. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Shifting away from music, a television trend that continued to exert its influence well into the early 90s was something called The Very Special Episode. This is something many of you no doubt have at least heard of - The Very Special Episode was, in brief, when a comedy show attempted to wrestle with some sort of serious or controversial topic, usually somehow involving teen sex or drug use. What show holds the honor of presenting the first Very Special Episode is up for debate, though my money goes to Diff'rent Strokes, with its infamous episode where Gary Coleman is molested by the owner of the bicycle shop. Yeah, that's a thing that happened.

From this point onward, The Very Special Episode became virtually unavoidable, with shows like The Facts of Life and Family Ties airing multiple VSEs throughout their history. For some shows, almost every episode was a VSE - I know there are a lot of you out there who love Full House to death, but you have to admit, that show was VSE overkill.

Now, I understand sitcoms have been dealing with heavy shit since long before Diff'rent Strokes aired - hell, All In The Family's entire reason for existing was trying to make sense out of the brave new world that was (and still is) post-1960s US Culture. But here's the thing: shows like All In The Family are primarily for adults, while any show with a Very Special Episode is "family friendly." There are a lot of young kids watching these shows - because of this, I think writers feel they have to talk down to the audience, to make the issue easy to digest. Here's a clip from Full House to demonstrate my point:

This provides no insight into the world of child abuse whatsoever - for the fuck sake, they actually used the "I walked into a doorknob" line unironically! Full House doesn't think the children in the audience can comprehend the serious reality of child abuse, and so reduces it to a collection of cliches and stock phrases we've heard a hundred times before. Ironically, this does exactly the opposite of what they're intending to do: by taking the complexity out of the issue, by treating it like a condescending stereotype, we actually understand it less than when we began watching!

This whole divergence on the Very Special Episode is, I think, essential with regards to what I'm going to be talking about today: Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue.

Basically, this is a Very Special Episode raised to the tenth power. McDonald's (yes, the Big Mac guys) and Disney decided to address the issue of childhood drug abuse by producing a 30 minute short film in which cartoon characters from ten different popular franchises (remember, this was 1990, so popular meant The Smurfs and Looney Tunes and Garfield) come together to help out two human teenagers with their drug problem. Yes, it sounds so stupid, and so patronizing, but oh my god, was this show a big deal back in the day.

Just how big? Consider: when this movie first aired on April 21, 1990, not only did it air, simultaneously, on all four major networks, but also on most independent and cable channels as well!  George and Barbara Bush, of all people, took time away from running the country to introduce the damn thing! You know, I was only 11 days old when this thing aired, so I don't remember it at all, but I do remember when I was a bit more grown up, there was another time when President Bush introduced something that was aired simultaneously on every major TV station in the country. Oh, what was it, oh yeah, it was the 9/11 attacks.

Basically the same thing as Papa Smurf.

I'm not saying this to be insensitive - it's more that when the only thing I can compare your broadcast schedule to is the coverage of the most deadly terrorist attack in US history, then you sure as hell better have some justification for airing on that many networks at the same time. Does Cartoon All-Stars have that justification? Oh, I don't know, take a fucking wild guess.

So, the whole set-up of this show is that Corey, an innocent young girl, is sleeping in her bed one Saturday morning, when somebody reaches into her bedroom and snatches her piggy bank. Corey, being an innocent young girl, has posters, books, etc of basically every major cartoon character from the 1980s scattered around her room, and, witnessing the theft, they all come to life. This scene was a red flag for me for two reasons: first, though the movie's run time is just under 30 minutes, this scene lasted about five. Yes, this one scene lasts around 20% of the run time. Toy Story was able to pull off something similar in about a minute, and that movie was over three times as long. Secondly, one of the cartoons is Alf. You know, the sitcom alien that likes to eat cats. Yeah, that's how I knew this was going to be a thing of beauty.

After our Cartoon All-Stars (and Alf) come to life, they soon discover the criminal responsible for the piggy bank theft. Of course, it was her older brother Michael, a boy who looks to be about 15 going on 45.

What's wrong with his face!? Well, it turns out the answer to that question may have something to do with why he stole the money from his sister. Thanks to some Solid Snake-caliber stealth, our Cartoon All-Stars find (gasp) a hidden stash of marijuana hidden under his bed! But that's not all - Michael uses the money to buy more weed for him and his friends. They end up smoking the whole lot, which, of course, causes an anthropomorphic cloud of smoke to appear and start talking to Michael.

Almost as smokin' as Jim Carrey. Almost.

This guy, of course, is the proverbial devil on Michael's shoulder, who'll do everything in his power to keep him convinced that continuing to do drugs is the best idea ever. From here on out, the entire movie consists of a series of encounters between Michael and the Cartoon All-Stars, who tell him the dangers of drugs but are never quite able to convince him 100%, before he finally kicks the habit when his sister Corey knocks some sense into his punk ass.

Alright, let's start with the easiest target, and shockingly, it doesn't have anything to do with Alf. If anything in this video betrays its 1980s feel (despite it being made in 1990), its the fact that it takes 90% of its time to demonize marijuana, a drug that, as of 2017, is legal, whether recreationally or medicinally, in a good portion of the US. A drug that study after study confirms is a hell of a lot less dangerous than these Reefer Madness types lead us to believe it was. They even use, via Smoke, the old argument that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder shit, which, again, isn't as true as people once thought it was. I'll put it bluntly - this film is dated. Not as dated as Reefer Madness, but hell, it's not too far off.

So fine, marijuana isn't as big of a deal as we once thought. People can still, while not being addicted, take their hobby way too far to the point where it consumes their life - I get that, and I think this movie did too, because Michael is an asshole. He's mean to his sister, he commits petty theft, etc etc. How does these cartoon characters try to get him to see the error of his ways? Oh god, the best example has to come right after Michael and his friends are smoking - they hear a police siren and scatter, and Michael finds himself trapped in an alleyway, with a policeman walking slowly in his direction. After about 30 seconds, we're shown that it isn't actually a policeman, it's Bugs Bunny, who just happens to be wearing a policeman's hat and in possession of an authentic police siren.

The irony of this scene is astounding - they want to convince us of the danger and moral bankruptcy of taking drugs, and the one they conscript into convincing us is a cartoon rabbit who, for literally no reason whatsoever, was impersonating a police officer, something that I'm 98% sure is a felony in every state in the nation. Setting up the scene in this way makes it virtually impossible to claim any sort of moral high ground.

To add a swift kick in the balls to what's already been something that I'm pretty sure the 8th Amendment considers unconstitutional, when Bugs starts giving Michael his anti-drug spiel, it's honestly the most banal advice on the planet. Shit like, "what's important is inside you!" is said without a tinge of irony. The way I see it, there are two potential scenarios at play here. One: Michael is a recreational pot smoker, in which case everyone is blowing the entire situation way the fuck out of proportion. Two: Michael has some deep-seeded psychological issues that cause him to be consumed (note how I didn't say "addicted") by marijuana, in which case it's going to take a fuck of a lot more than Dr. Bugs Bunny MD, whose Mr. Rogers caliber pop-psychology convinces me he has nowhere near the necessary APA certification to be treating someone like that professionally.

That scene embodies every single problem with this show, and makes it perfectly clear that, despite its "star power" and cultural prestige, Cartoon All-Stars is really no different than any other terribly written, offensively condescending Very Special Episode. Aside from Michael being an asshole, we aren't shown or told why drugs are bad - they're just this thing that we're all supposed to know is bad and that's all we have to say on the matter, young man. Aside from a vague suggestion about wanting to fit in with the crowd, we aren't shown or told why people turn to drugs - even if that was given as a legitimate suggestion, it's too simple to be taken seriously. Nobody watching this is going to learn anything about drugs - they're just going to be given a message that exactly reinforces what society has been telling them for decades. This is propaganda, pure and simple, and I guess propaganda is socially acceptable when it comes in the form of an old blue man and a stuffed bear talking to kids.

And that's the final irony concerning this piece of shit film. The Cartoon All-Stars are, clearly, the centerpiece of this movie. But really, they have very little impact - Michael's final encounter with his sister does more to change his way of thinking than all of the preceding 30 minutes of encounters with fictional characters put together. Honestly, I think there's something important to be taken away from that: reconnecting with the ones you love, in times of crisis, is a more effective method of intervention than any sort of conversation with Bugs Bunny will ever be. But I don't think the movie understands this - I think that scene was included because they needed some quick way to wrap things up, and any sort of epiphany it provides must, as I've just done, be taken out of context, in contrast to how it was probably written and directed.

I can't tell you how successful this movie was, but I can tell you that very shortly after this aired, sitcoms like Seinfeld started taking over US airwaves, and soon enough the whole idea of the Very Special Episode became seen as an antiquated embarrassment. This can only be a good thing. I know kids are still using drugs, and, depending on the circumstances, that can be a serious problem. But you know what? If we want that to change, we can't rely on a feline-eating alien and a group of talking chipmunks to do all the heavy lifting for us.