Here is an example of a cartoon image that requires extensive familiarity with the popular culture of a specific time period. The viewer needs to know:
(1) What a club scene with dueling DJ's looks like...
(2) What the 1980's incarnation of the Transformers looked like--not that Michael Bay shit...
(3) That there are two competing Transformer factions, i.e. Autobots and Decepticons, as well as which characters are associated with each faction...
(4) Even more specifically, that the two primary characters in the image--the largest figures--have an alternative form that is sound-related in nature, so they were not just randomly chosen for this cartoon but carry an inherent relationship to the context...
(5) That the smaller robots in the image "belong" to the two primary characters, including knowledge about which of the small robots are associated with which larger robot...
(6) That the smaller robot in the lower righthand corner is performing a dance pose made famous by John Travolta in the 1990's film Pulp Fiction--and even though that pose almost certainly existed earlier, the target audience for this cartoon were children in the 80's and, thus, the proper age in the 90's to have seen the film and understand the joke reference... and lastly...
(7) What a vinyl record looks like, because those ain't CD's they're spinning. This really does narrow down the target audience, because those who spent their childhood in the 90's were more likely to have had their first musical experience in the form of CD or, possibly, cassette tape...
...whereas there is a reasonably good chance anyone from my generation wore out a genuine vinyl copy of Alvin & The Chipmunks by the age of 7, not to mention the soundtrack to Star Wars.
No comments:
Post a Comment