So, the topic this time is Gremlins. In case you don't know, or lived in a box during the '80s, Gremlins can be gnomish creatures bent on causing meyham. Actually, they probably have nothing to do with this blog at all, except I want to write about them, and its my blog.
A few things about gremlins: contrary to popular contemporary beliefs, the gremlins depicted in the 1984 Joe Dante film arent exactly from the same gremlin mythos popularized during World War 2, from which the name entered the lexicon. To demonstrate, let me sum up the movie: kid recieves a strange looking pet with the instructions to not feed after midnight, or get wet.
So of course, during the movie these rules are broken and the cute little furry gremlin-thing turns into an evil lizard that likes to smash stuff and light things on fire. The movie synopsis uses the word "hijinx" to describe the events of the movie. The phrase "disaster ensues" would be more appropriate. I think it more accurately portrays the smashing and burning, raping and pillaging. The word hijinx would never be used in the summary for a viking, pirate, or gangster movie. Jason never committed hijinx on Friday the 13th.
The 1940s gremlin mythos is thus: The Murphy's law of "if something can go wrong, it will", or the acronym SNAFU (situation normal, all fucked up) is explained by these little creatures that hide in machines and break things. Sabotage by small unseen demons MUST be why shit goes wrong. There is no water involved, no caretaker regulations, no condemnation of midnight snacking. Its just ugly little, often invisible, monsters that sabotage technology for there own personal enjoyment of creating chaos.
The painting I've included above is from the Collier's magazine article "What every Pilot should Know" by Quentin Reynolds in 1942. Painted by Gustaf Tenngren, it shows gremlins riding a plane into ruin. Roal Dahl (before his other cool-ass books like Witches, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) wrote a book for Disney in 1943 called The Gremlins. Dahl created two genders of gremlins, the widgets and the fifinella. The fifinella would be used by WASP of the US airforce as a uniform patch.
The last cool portayal was in the cartoon the Real Ghostbusters. These gremlins retired from destroying aircraft, and moved to sabotaging automobiles at a plant in Detriot. It took me awhile, but I found a picture. This was a good show. No one makes cartoons like that anymore. It was well written, clever, production value was good. The show was not dumbed down for a younger audience, and still was appropriate enough to be shown on Saturday morning. It also didnt rely on support from a toy line.
Speaking of gremlins... the AMC made a cheap car called the gremlin in the 70s. Probably not a good plan to name your product after a mythic superstition known to make machinery malfunction. From what I hear, the AMC Gremlin lived up to its namesake.
My point today is... the 80s ruined alot of things, Rock music almost didnt recover, hairstyles got stupid, but with regards to this post... the films the Gremlins and Gremlins 2 damaged the perception of a cool old-school cultural symbol. Goddammit '80s!
