Ren & Stimpy is a critique of the accepted norms of good taste of status quo cartoons as well as of today's society. Ren & Stimpy attempts to make beautiful that which is base, vile or taboo. Beauty in Ren & Stimpy is defined as that which provokes laughter. All that is base, vile or taboo can easily be shown to be such because of the repressive nature of society. Ren & Stimpy is truly a psychoanalytic cartoon. When I say that, I don't mean in the clinical sense; Freud probably made greater contributions to the art world than the health world (for example the entire Surrealist movement owes its existence to Freud). The repressed world of the collective psyche is the murky foundation from which Ren & Stimpy shows grow like bacteria. Ren & Stimpy is an opera of mental health succumbing to the libido. In visual imagery that only the art form of 2d animation could, Ren & Stimpy sets free our deep, dark thoughts locked up in our subconscious as laughter.
"THE REN AND STIMPY SHOT"
The greatest technical innovation of Ren & Stimpy is its use of the microscopic extreme close-up. Extreme close-up shots are a weakness of 2d animation (the flat nature of 2d animation doesn't do well blown up to a large scale and therefore it isn't used alot). Ren & Stimpy however pushes it as far as it will go, i.e. to reveal abhorrent skin imperfections of the character. This should probably be known as the "ren and stimpy shot" in film lingo. Ren & Stimpy is an expression of the child's bewilderment and microscopic gaze at the world through the body. Up close, the skin is porous, hairy, and full of imperfections. It secretes fluids and it smells. The body is not a porceline thing of perfection; it farts, burps and does other embarassing things.
POSTMODERNISM IN ANIMATION
Disney movies often have in-jokes. They will show a Disney character from another Disney movie faintly in the background like Belle walking through the streets of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The specific departments will try to immortalize themselves through caricatures of staff members or other ways like the infamous SFX cloud in THE LION KING. While Ren & Stimpy does similar in-jokes, it goes further. Ren & Stimpy makes reference to other cartoons in a postmodern play of cartoon iconography. For example, take the episode of John's second coming, courtesy of Spike TV, REN SEEKS HELP. On the surface, it is about Ren's trip to a psychologist and his description of his childhood spent torturing a frog. However, the frog is very similar to the Al Jolson frog from the most heralded of Looney Tunes episodes, ONE FROGGY EVENING. Is this an accident or coincidence? Stephen Spielberg described this Chuck Jones episode as the "Citizen Kane" of animation. John K is subtextually telling the world what he thinks of Stephen Spielberg's animation appreciation. John K is the one torturing the frog not Ren and that's not just any frog, it's Chuck Jones' Al Jolson frog in a Ren & Stimpy episode. Although, it was his childhood friend (albeit object of sadistic abuse), he can't bring himself to kill the legacy. Finally at the end of the show he shoots a gun through its mouth. The show ends abruptly with the familiar Looney Tunes rings around John K characters. This may appear to be John flipping the bird to Looney Tunes, but the whole show is actually John's tribute to the late Chuck Jones in the highest compliment that can be made by an animator (note: this episode may have been in production before Chuck Jones' death. One of John K's heroes is the late Bob Clampett who had an infamous war with Chuck Jones. This episode may actually be John K's continuation of the "war" on behalf of his late mentor.) Nevertheless, this is a story about animation through an animation and yet to most viewers, it was a hilarious display of mental breakdown in an entertaining way. This is the "genius" of John K: his ability to tell an entertaining story while at the same time thumbing his nose to the powers that be. As Ren & Stimpy did in its original heralded run, the new episodes are displaying the semiotic dexterity of playing with cartoons as signs to be referenced as cultural icons in ironic situations.
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