Minority Movie Report - Aisha

This past couple weeks I returned to my childhood, first I watched “Labyrinth” with my young brothers aged 8 and 10, and then with my 2 year old niece I watched “The last Unicorn”. I feel these are both classics, and wonderful examples of the insanity that was called “children’s entertainment” in the 80s.

Being an 80’s baby, I look back with great love on what passed as children’s entertainment back then. When my sister told me that her daughter had been watching the last unicorn I was a little bit surprised. “Do you think she’s okay to watch that?” I asked.
Perhaps it makes me look like a prude, but I remembered the first time I saw the last Unicorn. I was probably 8 or 9 then and I was quite shocked by the imagery as well as the messages in this movie. There was some just plain crazy stuff like the Harpy, the bird that had a set of hanging breasts. The Harpy just wanted to kill the crazy witch, and the witch was totally OK with it because that would give her immortality, she would live forever in the minds of people who heard the story. There was also the despair of the Unicorn, now in girl form. She would have chosen death before becoming human, she was so depressed. Cartoons don’t usually show that strong of emotion in such a dismal way. For some reason the part that got me the most was when the crazy hag lady (Molly Grue, voice by Tammy Grimes) that ended up following them on their travels had her nervous breakdown when she first saw the Unicorn. The ensuing rant and tears this woman had was scary to me. "Where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you! How dare you come to me now, when I am this!" I wondered if I would grow up, always looking backwards to the days when I was beautiful (although at the time I didn’t think I was or would be an attractive person). This movie was just too deep. I enjoyed it, but it also had a haunting quality, like I could see myself growing up, the woman who always just wanted to see a real Unicorn.

My other old school choice was scary for completely different reasons. While The Last Unicorn had some scary concepts for a child to try to comprehend, Labyrinth had David Bowie's junk in spandex. As a child I never noticed this or the fact that the Goblin King was wooing a child to be his queen, instead I was freaked out by the characters. Front and Centre I remember those psycho orange long limbed things. Eventually their song and dance became a flurry of heads and limbs bopping around. They just kept taking their heads off and passing them around. I think I really did get scared when I first saw them trying to pry the poor girls head off, I knew that’s not how we humans worked. Also, at the time, the visual effects they were using were not that standard, so the green screen look added a new dimension of strangeness for me.

But then again, as an adult, these movies have obviously stayed with me, and in a favourable light. I do own both of them after all. It is just a reminder what a different time it was when I was a kid, and the protagonists were not always typical superheroes. Sometimes they were bears that just cared a lot, or little short people with afros that wanted to save the environment or maybe they were carefree fuzzy things that could share dreams just by touching heads. I still think most of the entertainment I enjoyed growing up is thanks to the fact that a lot of these people were growing up during that period of time of free love and rampant drug use. Thank you 60's and 70's!

Do you have another favourite old school Cartoon, tv show, or movie? Then Leave a comment!