Almost 25 years later, a look back atRen & Stimpy in all its gross splendor
Jumping into the wayback machine to 1991, there was a time when children’s programming bordered on the avant garde and surreal with one simple and insanely popular cartoon. Ren & Stimpy, as created by John Kricfalusi, seemed simple and sweet enough on paper: the adventures of a dog and cat who are friends and the various shenanigans the duo get into on a weekly basis. However, in practice, that simplistic premise would undergo a hideous transformation into a treatise on the absurd, a fascination with bodily fluids and functions, and a painstaking focus on the details of the animation.
As Evan Puschak, a.k.a. The Nerdwriter, points out in his latest video, Kricfalusi rejected the morality lessons of most cartoons and the formulaic plotting that had become way too common in animation at the time. Perhaps this was due to Kricfalusi’s apprenticeship under Ralph Bakshi, another animator who rejected the standards of his time.