Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Sundance Film Festival 2020, Wednesday 1/29

Happy Happy Joy Joy - The Ren & Stimpy Story (Cicero, Easterwood, 2019) is a documentary about the record-breaking animated show from the early 1990s. The directors had finished the documentary only a few days before the important BuzzFeed article by Ariane Lange “The Disturbing Secret Behind An Iconic Cartoon” came out on March 29, 2018 which reveals sexual abuse allegations against Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.

Needless to say, the entire documentary was reconstructed in light of this important story that rightfully recasts the story in a new light. A corollary unresolved site of tension which remains as well is the fact that the animated show was condemned by conservatives in the early 1990s by using the argument that this type of art and its creators live destructive lives, a conclusion they may argue is borne out by the claims made against Kricfalusi. So perhaps Robyn Byrd (see Lange's article) states it best in the documentary when she says, and here I paraphrase, that creators of works of art that push boundaries do not need to individually inflict pain on others.

BLAST BEAT (Arango, 2019) captures the lives of two teenage brothers from Columbia who emigrate to the United States during the late 1990s years of political turmoil. One dreams of a bright future one day in the aerospace industry in the U.S. while the other longs to return to Columbia. Both places are home, depending on their point of view. Along the way they face all of the typical highs and lows one might expect of U.S. high school coming of age films, which makes for a perfect story. Fueled by metal and hip-hop soundtracks respectively, each brother avoids tragedy but not pain.

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