[ExI] Simon bar sinister

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] Simon bar sinister

 

>…Totally non PC.  Refers to a bastard, of course.  One wonders how many children got that.  Or was that name telling us that the show wasn't really written for children?  Or even the average adult.

 

>…Nowadays that term is usually not taken literally, but just refers to someone who acts in an aggravating way.

 

bill w

 

 

 

No way!  Oh this is so cool.  Aside: I have never thought of the term bastard as referring to the offspring of an unwed mother, however I encountered that usage in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, so I have no doubt it is an antiquated term that was adapted for a general bad guy, usually male (but of course in the antiquated context it could any gender (so long as it was one of the two most common ones.))

 

When I saw Lionel Barrymore as the evil Mr. Henry F. Potter (what does the F stand for, Mr. Capra?) I busted up laughing but none of my companions in the room understood why.  They had never seen Underdog, so they didn’t know the ambitious mad scientist Simon Bar Sinister.  I thought Barrymore did a PERFECT spot-on impersonation of Bar Sinister, and of course the two characters shared the desire to rule the world.  Every time Bar Sinister showed up, he had some kind of invention that would give him unlimited POWER!

 

Only afterwards did I realize it was the creators of Underdog who were doing Barrymore rather than the other way around, but it occurred to me that old cartoons are filled with adult humor, insider stuff, particularly Bugs Bunny, all of which went over our youthful heads.  

 

My grandfather saw Bugs for the first time when he was in about 60 and I was a young child.  He thought that was the funniest show, enjoying it far more than I did.  Later I asked him about it, and he explained that Bugs is the caricature of the 1920s teenage hipster, with the attitude and sayings that were common in those days, including his signature “…Ehhh…What’s up, Doc.”

 

My grandfather knew a lot about that subject because he was a 1920s hipster.  Elmer Fudd was the caricature of the hapless grownup who had power (symbolized by Fudd’s ever-present shotgun) but not brains, allowing the peaceful Bugs to outwit him every time.

 

The creator of Bugs Bunny and my grandfather were born the same year.

 

spike

 

 

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