Remembering Joe Barbera

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You can't say Joe Barbera's passsing 18 December at the age of 95 signals the end of an era in pop culture--not really. The impact he and collaborator Bill Hanna (who died in 2001) had on animation, and our pop perceptions in general, will never be forgotten. The Hanna-Barbera team didn't only define television animation--they singlehandedly invented it. From Tom and Jerry to Huckleberry Hound to the Flintstones to virtually any what used to be called Saturday morning cartoons, Hanna-Barbera molded generations' ideas of what cartoons are.

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They were a team for over 60 years, with Hanna acting primarily as producer, and Barbera handling directing chores. While we think of their creations as "Hanna-Barbera", it was Joe Barbera's drawings that provided the visuals ingrained into our collective consciousness. Hanna once said of Barbera the could "capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than any one I've met in my life." Indeed, Barbera knew how to make a wiggling brow or a dour frown pace a story. He had to. The studio was constantly working under time and budgetary constraints, and it was essential to make their point immediately.

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Animation "purists" were often fond of citing his limited animation style as instrumental in the decline of of the art. In reality, though, the studio probably saved the cartoon from an ignoble fate. At the time, making cartoons was a painstaking and prohibitively expensive process that the major studios had all but abandoned, particularly for television. Barbera had the creative impulse, and Hanna had the bottom line moxie, to recreate animation for the small screen.

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What followed, for better or worse, was nothing less than revolutionary. Before Hanna-Barbera introduced Ruff and Ready in 1957, television had relied on retreading theatrical cartoons, not considering the form a priority. Huckleberry Hound followed soon after, with Yogi Bear hot on his heels. By 1960, the studio had made the leap to primetime with The Flintstones. And without the Flintstones, the Simpsons would never have existed. And had it not been for the Simpsons, it's a safe bet the Cartoon Network would never have progressed beyond the planning stages.

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Barbera did more than sketch the concepts for what would become icons--he provided some of the lines that would become part of the American language. "Yabba-dabba-do!" and "How 'bout a little pic-a-nic basket?" are a part of our cultural lexicon. He had an inate talent for tapping into the common man's psyche and breaking it down to its roots. Sure, the Flintstones were rooted in The Honeymooners, but it went a step further with the premise that we are all alike, always have been, and always will be, as evidenced by The Jetsons.

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In a career stretching more than six decades, missteps are bound to happen. Yet, the Hanna-Barbera team managed to roll with the punches, and put a spin on every trend that came along. There's not a comic book fan alive who would admit to actually liking Super Friends, their kid friendly take on DC superheroes, but there are very few comics afficionados who can deny watching it on at least a semi-regular basis. Scooby Doo always grated on my nerves, but growing up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons, I couldn't help but appreciate the fact that he was the grandfather of Astro, the Jetsons family dog.

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Think about any television cartoon character you loved as a kid, and odds are it began life as a Joe Barbera sketch. They're in your head, the ones that are triggered to life by the oddest of circumstances--Quick Draw McGraw (and his alter ego El Kabong), Secret Squirrel, Josie and the Pussycats, the beatnik hip Top Cat, the Smurfs--jeez, the floodgates open and the characters keep cascading through.

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Here's the simplest testament of all to the immortality of Joe Barbera. My niece was born in 1995, and obviously knew nothing about the legacy of the Hanna-Barbera studio. She had access to every cartoon ever created. Her favorite? Tom and Jerry. She just couldn't get enough of the cat and mouse team created in 1940 by the Hanna-Barbera team.

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A good gag lives forever. The guys who bring them to life last even longer. Joe Barbera dedicated his life to bringing the gag to life. Thanks to him, we're still laughing.

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