Word: pinocchio
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...animation, this is a Golden Age. Not since the 1940s -- with Pinocchio and Dumbo from Walt Disney and the great cartoon shorts by Tex Avery at MGM and by Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. -- has the form been so commercially successful and artistically exhilarating. Moreover, at a time when mass art is fragmented, even divisive -- when virtually no species of entertainment has universal appeal -- the hip, comic ingenuity and emotional breadth of the best cartoons reunite the consumers of popular culture with Hollywood's surest instinct to please in a vast Saturday matinee of the spirit...
...videocassette market, animation appeals both to adults nostalgic for their Roadrunner days and to ) kids, whose attention span just about carries them from one frenetic cartoon frame to the next. "Video has made children discriminating consumers of cartoons," says Simpsons creator Matt Groening. "My son's seen Bambi and Pinocchio countless times, so he won't put up with bad TV animation...
...onscreen, the Genie makes dozens of eyeblink metamorphoses: a Scotsman, a Scots dog, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senor Wences, Ed Sullivan, Groucho Marx, a French waiter, a turkey, the crows from Dumbo, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, a rabbit, a dinosaur, William F. Buckley Jr., Robert De Niro, a stewardess, a bashful sheep, Pinocchio, a magician, a Jean Gabin-style Frenchman, Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid, Arsenio Hall, a finicky tailor, Walter Brennan, a TV parade host and hostess, Ethel Merman, Rodney Dangerfield, Jack Nicholson, a talking lampshade, a bee, a U- boat, a one-man band and a quartet of cheerleaders...
Bill Clinton says George Bush is "just like Pinocchio." A Democratic statement accuses the President of "intentionally lying to win the election." Presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater contends that Clinton's "regard for honesty and veracity is so low that he has no business calling anybody else a liar." Al Gore, Clinton's running mate, describes G.O.P. campaign strategy as a "big-lie technique." Dan Quayle argues that detractors are lying about his position on single motherhood...
That task would be easy if humans resembled Pinocchio (as Clinton claims Bush does), with their noses growing longer each time they told a lie. People, unfortunately, can fib without suffering physiognomic changes. It would be helpful, then, if there were some hidden manifestation of lying, invisible to most people but clear to psychics or visionaries. The closest that real life has managed to come to this fictional power is the polygraph machine, which has a few serious drawbacks. It can be stumped by accomplished actors or those delusional enough to believe their own statements, and even experts disagree...