Got a language all my own

[austin_dern]

Another little something I forgot to mention about the zoo: the Animal Friends show, in the children's zoo, was suspended for the time being, so that they had performance space and time available for the Mighty Dog show. As a side effect of that there were a slightly higher than normal number of trucks and zoo attendants driving around with various models of mid-sized dogs in the cars or on the truck beds. Happily, it looked like all the dogs were eager to be driven around and presented.

I've also got the slight problem that the word Mighty has been used so much in purely ironic or silly senses that it's quite difficult to take it seriously as an adjective anymore. To say a dog is a ``Mighty Dog'' is right away to smirk at the very notion of dogness. At least I'm pretty sure there was a time mighty didn't come with some sense of the opposite. It seems functionally a lot like Nimrod, which Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck managed in one short decade to turn from a classical allusion to a kindergarden insult.

Myron Waldman, animator for Fleischer and Famous cartoon studios, has died. He animated for more Betty Boop cartoons than anyone, and while he did create Pudgy, and the Hunky and Spunky cartoons (which have a certain charm, admittedly), he also directed the two-reeler Raggedy Ann and Andy, the movie Mister Bug Goes To Town, and for the Superman, Popeye, Casper, and Little Lulu cartoons. And it turns out one of his favorite cartoons, 1935's A Language All My Own, was created to send Betty Boop to Japan because she was quite popular there. There's one Fleischer cartoon where a mother cat goes crying for her lost kitten, meowing out, ``Myron, My-y-y-y-ron'', and that was the animators having fun with him.

Trivia: Between 1809 and 1850 there were 479 patents issued to residents of New York State's Capital District; 123 of them had to do with cast-iron stoves or furnaces. Source: Troy: A Collar City History, Don Rittner.

Currently Reading: Tower of Zanid, L Sprague de Camp. I was irritated when one of de Camp's stories was adapted to ... I think it was X Minus One, which I heard on old-time radio, because if you believe the announcer then I had the wrong idea of how to pronounce `Sprague,' and it annoys me when I pronounce names wrong.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

You know, I had always wondered how "Nimrod" came to be a generic insult. Now I get it. I had never made the connection with Bugs Bunny before. Presumably the meaning shift resulted from kids who didn't know who Nimrod was watching the cartoons and assuming it was just a generic slander. I'll bet this school (http://www.watersmeet.k12.mi.us/nimrod.html) isn't too happy about the change.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It really shows the power of sarcasm, too, to make words mutate. And I suppose it also shows the power of cartoons to influence cultural development.

You do have to feel sorry for institutions that try to respect tradition and get caught in the changes of language, though.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Insults tend to be a very fast-shifting part of language, I've noticed. It was only back in Sixteen Candles that the word 'dork' was a slang phallic term; by 1993 it had passed fully into PG territory. I wouldn't have associated it with Bugs Bunny and Elmer fudd as the soursce, either.

I think the animated Tick saying "I am.. mighty!" sealed it permanently into overacheivism.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I think ``dork'' was reasonably innocent earlier than Sixteen Candles, really. But actually some insults are surprisingly ancient; I forget which offhand but while reading the London, A Biography book I was startled to see some of the insults hurled around a millennium ago weren't that far off what were hurled around when I was in elementary school.

The Tick certainly sealed the fate of ``mighty'', but it was in trouble for a long time before that. Much as it pains me to admit, Mighty Mouse may have marked it for the sarcastic implication.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

*hugs.. at the loss of mighty and Myron....*

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's a shame -- Myron is, anyway -- although he did live to be 97, and he had a long and successful career for which he was well-recognized, so there's some comfort to be drawn from it.