Honey

 Okay so this is a weird ramble that I didn't expect to have at age 34, but here we go. 

The other day I was thinking about the old Tiny Toon Adventures episodes where Babs Bunny, the main female character, was bummed out because it was mentor day at school. Buster Bunny had Bugs, Plucky Duck had Daffy, and even Elmyra had Elmer Fudd. But Babs didn't have anyone to look up to. 

Long story short, she discovers Honey and Bosko. Babs become infatuated with her newfound idol (as one would) and the episode occurs to get Honey (and Bosko) to reemerge from obscurity. It was a legit nice ending, and was one of the most distinct episodes of the show I remember. Instead of making three short Looney Tunes-esque cartoons, the episode had one full story arc centered around Babs. 

And as a kid, I didn't think about it much because at the time when Tiny Toons came out they were still showing Bosko cartoons on Nickelodeon. I didn't think of Honey, Bosko's partner, necessarily as a character on the same level of fame as Bugs or Daffy, but I thought it was cute. Now I definitely see it as an exemplary case of "Representation matters."

Even when I was little, though, I was confused why they made Bosko and Honey look different. In the Tiny Toons episode, they're kinda dog-like, sorta like the Animaniacs Warners. But in the old cartoons, I just thought Bosko was a monkey kind of guy who played a lot of musical instruments Oh boy, was I wrong, but we'll discuss that later. 

I remember being like 7-ish, and Nickelodeon had already been creating their own cartoons while still playing a lot of the "classics." Then I remember one ad-thing where they were touting about all the new cartoons and characters and then they just said, "Except for Bosko. Sorry, Bosko." They then literally faded him out of existence. I think they had stopped airing all the black-and-white cartoons right around that time, which was a shame because I liked a lot of them. I remember the one that was like Roger Rabbit, but in the 40s or something, and Porky Pig is talking with Leon Schlesinger, the cartoon director guy, and I was just amazed by that talent they had to pull that off (the Roger Rabbit movie had also come out by now, but this was literally decades before). Again, I was 7 and I was witnessing this marketing trend of "Out with the old, in with the new" right before my eyes. 

Now, slightly older and with access to the internet, I see a lot of things are blending together at once. Not only was business occurring, but also so much cultural clashing. Again, I just thought Bosko was a monkey guy with pants and a silly hat and a love for musical instruments. But Bosko was drawn to be a homeless Black kid during the height of Vaudeville and the birth of animation. The monkey lips and the southern accent make it glaringly evident now. But I thought he was cool. That being said, Bosko was apparently the "good" representation of Black people, and it seems the animators tried to avoid some blatant sterotpyes like gambling or watermelon. He and Honey would sing, dance, and be entertaining. But they still literally had to sing for their supper. They did what they could to get by in that gig economy.

You think of all the years that have come between when those cartoons were first made, and then they aired until the 1990s, and you realize how much race and racism still plays a massive role in people's thoughts, perceptions, and decisions. I remember when the Comedy Central show Drawn Together tried to discuss censored stereotpyes (Indigenous Americans like Aleutians and Apaches, Asians, Blacks) and they tried for half a second to start a narrative, but then quickly retreated to laughing at other people because they were different. I think I hate that show now, and I hate that I used to like it so much. 

Not really sure where this was going, I mean it's been two years since a legit blog post, and THIS is what my brain thinks up at 12:30 AM? You're still weird, Mitch. At least you got that going for you, still.