Special School: Halloween
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
One thing that really bugs me about the great pumpkin charlie brown special, when Trick-or-Treating, all the kids get candy but Charlie just gets rocks. WHO DOES THAT?! Have you ever walked up to a door and the owner of the house refused to give you anything because they didn't like you costume!? And why rocks? Rocks are destructive, if I was a kid and someone gave me a rock in my candy bag, they'd get it back, through their window. Assuming they closed their door fast enough to avoid getting it back between their eyes.
Man, I saw the Worst Witch as a kid but it looks far, far more terrible then I remember. I also oddly remember the Tim Curry character being cuter (I'd rather have Frank n Furter Tim Curry today). Man, those special effects were just top budget!
I also remember their being Garfield's Halloween Adventure [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield%27s_Halloween_Adventure], which while not as good at the Christmas special wasn't to bad either.
I also remember their being Garfield's Halloween Adventure [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield%27s_Halloween_Adventure], which while not as good at the Christmas special wasn't to bad either.
I could never have told you the title, but I watched The Worst Witch enough times to immediately recognize the references. I have fond memories, but I'm not entirely sure they would hold up if I watched it again.
Now if only someone could tell me the name of the animated dealie with the puppet-dude who turns people into tetrominoes for building his fortress...
Now if only someone could tell me the name of the animated dealie with the puppet-dude who turns people into tetrominoes for building his fortress...
No mention of the Star Wars Holiday Special?
I wonder why...
Oh...now I remember.
I wonder why...
Oh...now I remember.
Maybe they were just Taken For Granite? [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TakenForGranite]Geoffrey42 said:
Well, apparently nobody saw It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown because today I went to school in a Charlie Brown costume with the ghost costume over it and the bag of rocks, and I got a lot of weird responses. The top 3 were
3: The Ghost of Charlie Brown
2: An egg
1: A condom
3: The Ghost of Charlie Brown
2: An egg
1: A condom
I think you are missing half the point of Charlie Brown and what a dishrag he's supposed to be, which is where a lot of the humor comes from. He gets picked on because he can be picked on. Let's not forget the whole thing with Lucy and the football, the way he's treated during baseball games, and everything else. Getting rocks on Halloween is just part of the same recurring gag, and the fact that he wouldn't do something like that is exactly the point and why it's supposed to be ridiculous/funny.angel85 said:
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That said, I myself have fond memories of holiday specials and the like. However I think Moviebob is missing part of this as well. In today's left-wing, politically correct world holidays tend to offend some rather vocal minority groups who are then given a platform to be obnoxious.
Understand that right now TV networks want to be seen as being neutral. Doing things like holiday specials can be seen as supporting the holidays, especially if they are heavily promoted. They want to be seen as being as generic and ambigious as possible nowadays. If you say promote Christmas the way they used to, your going to have Jewish people coming up and going "what, why can't we have specials for our holidays?" or Islamics and Hindus claiming that they feel threatened and excluded by the special focus on the holidays in the mass media. As a result things are kept mostly to generic "Happy Holidays" type messages without specification, the commercial aspects, and what specials are shown tend to be ones that are recycled and defended as classics "from a differant time".
A lot of people might not see it that way, but understand that right now we live in a country where despite being a democracy where the majority is supposed to rule, every single year we see battles somewhere over towns doing things like putting up Christmas decorations. Inevitably someone gets upset, or just wants attention, and starts screaming about how even if 99% of the town votes to use their tax money for Christmas decorations, or to have a tree lighting ceremony in the town green like they might have been doing since before there was officially a United States, that it's wrong because a handfull of people in the town don't believe in, or celeberate Christmas, feel it's offensive, or whatever else.
With Halloween the situation is a little differant as there are both safety issues (the handfull of whack jobs who actually poisoned candy and stuff), and legal issues (the police no longer turn a blind eye on kids performing phranks), which cause networks to want to downplay the traditional aspects of things. The of course you also have people in the "New Age" type movements (even if they choose not to use that label) who also make noise about how the holiday negatively stereotypes their beliefs, and/or makes fun of one of their holy days.
It's a case where the alleged "protection of freedom" has actually limited the freedom of the majority of people, created paranoia, and taken the spirit out of a lot of holidays.
At some point I'd imagine everyone has been approached by someone during holidays campaigning for changing something, or how some aspect of it was offensive to some group, or how it's unfair to have any acknowlegement of Christmas despite traditions due to "seperation of church and state" (despite precedents by our Founding Fathers showing that this is obviously not what they intended... for example I remember hearing that at one time Norwich Conneciticut was a cantidate for the national capitol, even though we all know what happened with the creation of DC. Apparently George Washington himself lit the tree on the Norwich town green when he was passing through as President... Norwich is now a mess of urban blight, but at one time it was a ridiculously important city).
At any rate I was young and liberal once, and at one time I got behind a lot of that "Thanksgiving shouldn't be celebrated because of the Indians, it should be a time of national guilt", various things about Halloween, and how Christmas should be celebrated quietly. However nowadays with greater perspective I feel all of that stuff was pretty ridiculous especially when I came to eventually learn that when you really look into it a lot of the reasons behind the protests were bunk.... still the cumulative effect of things like that seems to be less focus on the holidays and things like "specials" in the media. Pretty sad when you think about it.
I just watched The Great Pumpkin a couple hours ago. God that movie is a classic. Also, thanks for bringing up Grinch Night. My little sister and I used to watch that but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called. I'm going to see if I can find it. It truly was creepy and just different.
I would largely bet that, like the Simpsons, Treehouse of Horror has just gone on too long to be considered a "classic". They have classic installments, but I don't think that's what Bob had intended with this. Especially since he mentions these specials coming about as opposed to doing a Halloween themed episode of a popular show.wildcard9 said:
I agree with Bob on the post. Although centered around another holiday, I have certain specials that, if I don't watch on TV, it just doesn't feel like Christmas. And it seems that it's getting harder to find the classics being broadcast. Although, thankfully, a combination of DVD and YouTube keep me basked in beautiful nostalgia.
Unfortunately, I'm currently in China and behind the Great FireWall, which prevents me from accessing YouTube, so I can't watch Great Pumpkin this year...Rats...