Musings on genre writing, waterfall wandering, and peak bagging in the South's wilderness areas.
Saturday, January 03, 2015
I've Always Wondered...
I loved the old Jonny Quest cartoon when I was a kid. One of the villains on the show was the arch-nemesis of Benton Quest: Dr. Zin. And I've always wondered, when he announced himself: "It is I, the evil Dr. Zin!"; was he being sarcastic or objective?
When my daughter was small, three or four years oid, she settled in next to me while watching STARSHIP TROOPERS. She was unperturbed by the sight of human beings being torn apart by giant insects. But when I put in a 1990s JONNY QUEST movie immediately after (complete with token chick among the crew) she was frightened by Dr. Zin. I asked her why and she pointed to his liver spots, which they gave him in this movie. "He's UGLY!"
I mention this because it occurs to me while looking at your picture of this unblemished Zin, that for all their righteous political correctness in shoehorning a girl among Jonny and Hajji in the late 80s/early 90s cartoon, they had uglied up Zin by way of indulging that most ancient, vicious, false trope of all: Ugly People Are Evil. Come to think of it, I think they also de-Orientalized Zin, but I could be wrong. It's been 17 or 18 years since this, and we didn't watch the JONNY QUEST movie all the way, anyway. Aside from Zin's disturbing physical repulsiveness, like most of these super-earnest cartoon offerings from its time period, the show was badly paced and insufferably dull.
I never saw that later Jonny Quest movie. I did watch a few seconds of it and that was enough for me to know it sucked.
The old Dr. Zin had the Asian accent, but I recall him being pretty cool--at least that's the way I perceived him when I was a kid. He was pretty much an intellectual match of Dr. Quest.
Objective...of course.
ReplyDeleteWhen my daughter was small, three or four years oid, she settled in next to me while watching STARSHIP TROOPERS. She was unperturbed by the sight of human beings being torn apart by giant insects. But when I put in a 1990s JONNY QUEST movie immediately after (complete with token chick among the crew) she was frightened by Dr. Zin. I asked her why and she pointed to his liver spots, which they gave him in this movie. "He's UGLY!"
ReplyDeleteI mention this because it occurs to me while looking at your picture of this unblemished Zin, that for all their righteous political correctness in shoehorning a girl among Jonny and Hajji in the late 80s/early 90s cartoon, they had uglied up Zin by way of indulging that most ancient, vicious, false trope of all: Ugly People Are Evil. Come to think of it, I think they also de-Orientalized Zin, but I could be wrong. It's been 17 or 18 years since this, and we didn't watch the JONNY QUEST movie all the way, anyway. Aside from Zin's disturbing physical repulsiveness, like most of these super-earnest cartoon offerings from its time period, the show was badly paced and insufferably dull.
I never saw that later Jonny Quest movie. I did watch a few seconds of it and that was enough for me to know it sucked.
ReplyDeleteThe old Dr. Zin had the Asian accent, but I recall him being pretty cool--at least that's the way I perceived him when I was a kid. He was pretty much an intellectual match of Dr. Quest.