Thursday, July 20, 2017

Laws of Creativity

I know all the lyrics to the extended theme song of "Pinky and the Brain." 

. . . This twilight campaign, 
Is easy to explain: 
To prove their mousey worth, 
They'll overthrow the Earth, 
The Pinky, 
The Pinky and the Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain BRAIN!
NARF! 

And I didn't even google them beforehand.

For us elderly people, "Animaniacs" was our childhood, chock-full of fabulous segments: "Katie Ka-Boom," "Buttons and Mindy," "Slappy Squirrel," and, of course, "Pinky and the Brain." Then P&B got a show in their own right. 
https://bfmbrainfall.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/are_you_pinky_or_the_the_brain_featured_large.jpg
Consider my delight that it got a "Letter of Recommendation," by Jonah Weiner. Brilliantly, he connects the show's predictable format to a concept I found inherently Jewish. 

To explain: P&B, for those who know, has the same setup, episode after episode: 

1) "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" 
2) Elaborate, insane scheme goes awry; 
3) "What we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!" 

And yet, as Weiner elaborates, there is genius insanity in-between, despite abiding to a limited frame. Pinky's befuddled responses to pondering were so hysterical I would be in stitches ("I think so, Brain, but me and Pippi Longstocking—I mean, what would the children look like?") Brain's elaborate plots were so complex and calculated to exploit mundane human weaknesses that you wondered if the writers were high. 

Weiner is saying that constraint allows for wacky creativity. And is that not the Jews? 

We have waaaaay more rules and regulations, yet a multitude of sects flourish with individuality, never mind the individuals within the individuality. Then there are those who do their own Judaic thang without an identifying sect. If anything, a life free of restriction results in the boringly repetitive. Hedonism is same-old, same-old. 

1 comment:

Daniel Saunders said...

I've had a similar thought. While I don't have a problem with free verse per se, I increasingly feel that poetic creativity flourishes with the limits of set metre and/or rhyme. I've often thought it a shame that the poetry on Hevria.com is usually free verse as Judaism to me means being creative within the limits, as you say (for what it's worth, I have a poem coming out there soon that uses set rhythm and rhyme, albeit with some deliberate deviations for effect).

I used to watch Animaniacs too, although I don't think I got to see it very much for some reason.