Happy Saturday Morning to Everyone (even though I know it's Saturday afternoon that I'm posting this-- I like to sleep in!) and hope you're ready for this week's Saturday Morning Cartoon profiling of THE FLINTSTONES. Admittedly a cartoon series more of our parents' generations, having originally run in the early 60's, but one I feel had a resounding impact on popular culture and entertainment.
A premise we are all very familiar with, The Flintstones took the day to day happenings of 1960's everyday life and translated it as to fit within a Stone Age structure, adapting technological features of modernity to exist through various prehistoric vehicles. Something I always notice about The Flintstones if I watch it now is their wild manipulation of the environment and their shameless exploitation of animals to serve their utilitarian purposes.
The two families profiled through the cartoon series are the title family of The Flintstones, comprised of blue-collar working everyman Fred, his disproportionately attractive wife Wilma (more on that later), their canine companion Dino, and their precocious strawberry blonde daughter Pebbles, who inspired a trend in female American toddlers' hair stylings with her signature ponytail. Fred's endearingly dopey best friend is Barney Rubble who has a wife named Betty and a son Bamm-Bamm, constantly carrying a turkey-leg shaped wooden club. Interesting side-note, Bamm-Bamm is not in fact the biological child of Barney and Betty but was abandoned on the family's doorstep and then taken in and cared for by them.
What both Fred and Wilma as well as Barney and Betty's marriages reflect is the commonly noted patriarchal precedent in many American sitcoms, animated and live action, of hot wife with overweight, incompetent and obviously less attractive husband. Examples of this just fly through your mind right when you realize it, Homer and Marge Simpson (The Simpsons), Doug and Carrie Heffernan (King of Queens), Peter and Lois Griffin (Family Guy), pretty much any Judd Apatow movie. I can't pretend to be profound about this, it's really talked about a lot, and is hardly anything new. The Flintstones were conceived by Hanna Barbera to be a paleazoic animated representation of The Honeymooners, who absolutely fit that mold, as Alice was certainly more attractive than Ralph.
Deconstruction aside, The Flintstones' presence in our generation's life was certainly rooted in the reruns of the original series, but was hardly limited to that. Their family became the face of their own line of children's vitamins, and of gluten-free breakfast delicacy Fruity Pebbles, and the chocolatey counterpart, Cocoa Pebbles.
They then went on to be represented in the live action movie in 1994 starring John Goodman as Fred, and Elizabeth Perkins as Wilma (Celia of Weeds--thought don't you think Kathy Griffin could have done this?). Funnier casting went to children-shrinkin 90's icon Rick Moranis as Barney, and professional lunatic lesbian Rosie O'Donnell as Betty. There was even a follow-up cinematic gem in 2000 with the prequel The Flinstones in Viva Rock Vegas, but that's just too pathetic to even yabba dabba get into.
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