Taken For Granite

[candy17]

Here's an essay I found on the Internet about the mystery behind the Flintstones (you'll have to excuse some of the offensive language. It's not mine)

(link deleted)

[Mynd Hed]

Sorry, buddy, the language rules here at Toonzone include materials you link to. However, if you want, you can just copy and paste the text into a post and then edit out the objectionable language. I'll give you a freebie today and do it for you:

Without a doubt, The Flintstones is clearly one of the greatest cartoons of all time. First appearing over 40 years ago, the prime time cartoon created the mold that so many other toon shows followed from The Jetsons to The Simpsons. Though originally conceived as a Honeymooners parody, the show took a life of it's own and has entertained in one way or another 'til this day.

But The Flintstones are far more than a cartoon phenomenon. Within this series lies a wealth of mysteries that have baffled the world's great philosophers for years. Let's explore them together, and find out why this modern Stone Age family, is in the middle of a puzzle so puzzling, even Enro Rubik would run away screaming trying to figure it out.



A scene from the rare episode where Wilma wears blackface

Ever wonder why there weren't any black people in The Flintstones? I mean we're talking about an ancient society that predates the great Pharaohs in Egypt, surely there would be someone in town with darker skin. Bedrock must have been The Stone Age version of Salt Lake City.



Though Bedrock apparently had a problem allowing black folks to live in their town, letting freakish monsters with talking squids buy choice property was A-OK!

And though Fred definitely looked like a goofy fat slob, the guy had to be stronger than a brontosaurus in order to start that solid stone and wood car courtesy of his two feet. Yep, The Flintstone family car is a marvel of science that can make hairpin turns, despite having a giant granite cylinder with a single axle for the front wheel. Perhaps if late NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was driving one of those heavy duty vehicles, he may have been alive today.


Where was PETA in The Stone Age, anyway?

And what about those poor animals that had to help the Flintstone family by living a slave like existence as household appliances? Sure, a pig that lives under your sink as a garbage disposal seems like a good idea at first, but what about the mountains of pig (expletive deleted) that would accumulate as the weeks came on? And you can only imagine the horrible lung and respiratory damage that this poor elephant vacuum lackey suffers with.


"Wilma, what the hell is this tree doing in our living room?"

Clearly The Flintstones had an amazing ability to look into the future. Not only were they able to figure out how to watch television without any form of electricity, but as their celebrations of Christmas demonstrate, they were able to predict the birth of Christ millions of years in advance.

Hell, if they could see that far into the future, you'd think they'd have looked a little further and done something about keeping Rosie O'Donnell from playing Betty in THE FLINTSTONES movie.

Many kids have been exposed to The Flintstones, through the oddly conceived Flintstone Chewable Vitamins! What genius looked at that heart-attack victim in the making and decided that he should be a spokesperson for good nutrition? I mean Fred ate dinosaur ribs and brontosaurus burgers like there was no tomorrow.

Check out this description of Flintstone Chewables from drugstore.com:



"It's yabba-dabba-do time. We won't say that kids will line up to take their vitamins if they're promised a Barney or a Wilma or Fred himself, but we will say that it's more likely. Flintstones chewable vitamins, a vitamin classic if there ever was one, come in six flavors and seven character shapes--so even the fussiest kids are sure to have an acceptable choice. This modern Stone Age family provides 10 essential vitamins needed for long-term growth and development. Pediatrician recommended."

Jeez, with kids lining up to take these things, you'd think it was Flintstones Ecstasy! There's actually a pretty large variety of different Flintstone vitamins up for grabs. If you thought that description was one was bad, check out this one for the Flintstones with Extra C:



Kids have all the fun. Adult vitamins are usually big old pills without any character, and you certainly wouldn't want to chew on them. Kids, however, get to have a yabba-dabba doo time taking Flintstones Chewable Vitamins. Packed with 10 essential vitamins plus enough vitamin C to fill four oranges, this Stone Age family includes Fred, Wilma, Barney, Dino, Pebbles, Bamm Bamm, and the car. Kids will look forward to biting the heads off first; you'll just be glad they're taking their vitamins.

"Kids will look forward to biting the heads off first???" Yeah, maybe Ozzy Osbourne's kids. How exactly will kids bite the heads off "the car", anyway? In the early 80s, the TV Commercial song for these sugar coated Soma tablets went, "We are Flintstones Kids (clap clap) 10 million strong, and growwwwww-wing!" If they've been growing at the forecast rate since then, it's obvious that at least every kid in the world eats 3 of them a day.


The scary effects of Flintstone Roid-Rage

Many folks aren't aware that the different Flintstones Vitamins actually have different effects. Barney produces a euphoric high not unlike huffing spray paint from a brown-paper bag, Fred increases the size of male breasts, Wilma is known to make red-headed women particularly vulnerable to suggestion, Betty gets rid of (deleted), Dino works like Viagra with a pesky (deleted) side effect, while Pebbles, Bamm Bamm, and the car, when taken together, let you talk to God.



Another great Flintstone mystery is BAMM BAMM's birth. Though Pebbles was conceived the old-fashioned way (Fred did Wilma from behind against the wall), Bamm Bamm's arrival to the world was a little more bizarre. Longing for a child of her own, Betty merely wished on a falling star for a child, and the next day he was sitting on their doorstep. Sadly, Barney's wish for a wife with larger breasts the next evening was not met with similar success.

And how about their pet saber-toothed tiger cat? You see Fred kick him out in the closing credits of the cartoon, but never in any of the episodes?

Perhaps the biggest Flintstone cipher is learning what exactly the phrase "Yabba Dabba Doo" means. Though not listed in Webster's Dictionary, the shows creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbara wrote in their 1978 book History of Hanna Barbara, "Sometimes we would drink a lot of zombies. You know, it's this drink with pineapple, orange, and lime juice, and you put in rum, brandy, and vodka. It's pretty damn good! Anyway, after about 9 of these, the two of us would toss our inhibitions aside and (deleted). When we were both through, we'd lay down, sweaty, with the ceiling fan blowing down on our nervous trembling bodies, and scream in unison, "YABBA DABBA DOO!"

A disturbing quote, indeed, but it at least makes the final verse of their the theme song, "When you're with The Flintstones, you'll have a gay old time" more significant than ever.

[Brainatra]

As Fred would say, "hoo-boy"... let's see if I can attempt to answer the following "questions" with my own answers:

>>A scene from the rare episode where Wilma wears blackface

Don't recall ever seeing any such episode of "The Flintstones" w/Wilma in blackface... plus I'd have figured by this point in time, such a scene wouldn't have been allowed by network standards & practices in a newly-produced series, even at this less-than-"PC" point in time...

>>Ever wonder why there weren't any black people in The Flintstones? I mean we're talking about an ancient society that predates the great Pharaohs in Egypt, surely there would be someone in town with darker skin. Bedrock must have been The Stone Age version of Salt Lake City.
<<

There weren't any Black people in the original Flintstones series for the same reasons there weren't any Black people in "The Dick Van **** Show"/"Donna Reed"/any of the show's other early-60's contemporaries: there just weren't any Black people on TV *period*---as my mother (who grew up then) could easily attest. Outside of "Ed Sullivan" appearances, Blacks were pretty much nonexistent on TV until the mid-60's hit...

Thus, Bedrock was a "Stone Age" representation of the typical sixties TV town (i.e. "lily white") in its original run; as seen in current/recent specials and whatnot, obviously it's since then become more integrated (like real-life America)...

>>And though Fred definitely looked like a goofy fat slob, the guy had to be stronger than a brontosaurus in order to start that solid stone and wood car courtesy of his two feet. Yep, The Flintstone family car is a marvel of science that can make hairpin turns, despite having a giant granite cylinder with a single axle for the front wheel. Perhaps if late NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was driving one of those heavy duty vehicles, he may have been alive today.
<<

I wondered why their legs didn't tear off when they "hit the brakes," at the speeds they managed to get their cars going :-)

>>
Where was PETA in The Stone Age, anyway?

And what about those poor animals that had to help the Flintstone family by living a slave like existence as household appliances? Sure, a pig that lives under your sink as a garbage disposal seems like a good idea at first, but what about the mountains of pig (expletive deleted) that would accumulate as the weeks came on? And you can only imagine the horrible lung and respiratory damage that this poor elephant vacuum lackey suffers with.
<<

I guess the Bedrock denizens probably considered them as "just domesticated animals" or there was some sort of "hired help" relationship between the critters and the humans (given the number of animals who stated "hey, it's a livin'" over the show's run). As for "cleaning up after the animals", I presume like all other good domesticated/household-dwelling critters, they're clearly housebroken :-)


>>"Wilma, what the hell is this tree doing in our living room?"

Clearly The Flintstones had an amazing ability to look into the future. Not only were they able to figure out how to watch television without any form of electricity, but as their celebrations of Christmas demonstrate, they were able to predict the birth of Christ millions of years in advance.
<<

It seems implied from the original show (and a few specials/spinoffs) that the Flintstones *did* have electricity---some of their appliances/machines actually apparently worked more-or-less like "real" ones do (see: their radios and TV sets, which, save for a real live rabbit serving as a "rabbit-ear" antenna, has tubes/wires/picture tube inside of it---see the amusing ep where Barney is forced to repossess Fred's TV for a new job). One episode had Barney nearly get electrocuted plugging in a DC-circuit electric guitar into an AC outlet; a 90's special had electric eels generating electricity to power their Christmas tree lights. Of course, there was the episode where they travelled into the future and met Ben Franklin, and seemed bewildered by the notion of electricity.

Unless, of course, there's some yet-to-be explained method of getting their TVs to work...perhaps they're all mechanically-driven (as the earliest experimental TVs in the 1920's were)?

As for how they can celebrate Christmas, my suggested answer (besides "it's just a cartoon, d00d"):

In the tradition of the "gangster 20's planet" episode of the original Star Trek, some hapless time-traveller left behind on a trip to the prehistoric past various books/magazines on 20th century culture, which the cavemen of the time managed to read/absorb/figure out somehow, and decided to try to duplicate that existence for their own world, but (lacking modern plastics/steel/etc.) had to use animals and whatnot to make it happen. Which easily explains the whole Flintstones' culture (and why they celebrate the secular aspects, at least, of Christmas, even if Christ wasn't born yet). Of course, the time-traveller, returning to his own time (millions of years after the prehistoric civilization was wiped out by whatever means brought it to an end [ice age? comet killing off their dinosaurs? discovering how to make bronze, pyramids, and coliseums?]) wouldn't notice this temporal boo-boo at all...



>>Hell, if they could see that far into the future, you'd think they'd have looked a little further and done something about keeping Rosie O'Donnell from playing Betty in THE FLINTSTONES movie.

Heh.

(Nonsense about vitamins snipped)


>>Another great Flintstone mystery is BAMM BAMM's birth. Though Pebbles was conceived the old-fashioned way (Fred did Wilma from behind against the wall), Bamm Bamm's arrival to the world was a little more bizarre. Longing for a child of her own, Betty merely wished on a falling star for a child, and the next day he was sitting on their doorstep. Sadly, Barney's wish for a wife with larger breasts the next evening was not met with similar success.

Bamm-Bamm, of course, was adopted, as all viewers know (and not Betty and Barney's biological child), and was an abandoned child (there was a note attached to his basket asking whoever found him to take good care of him). His origin might be a take-off of that of Superman's, though (parents seeing something falling out of the sky, wind up finding a baby with phenomenal strength, try to take him to the orphanage to adopt him, etc.).


>>And how about their pet saber-toothed tiger cat? You see Fred kick him out in the closing credits of the cartoon, but never in any of the episodes?

The cat's official name is "Baby Puss", and he does show up once or twice in the show's run...

>>Perhaps the biggest Flintstone cipher is learning what exactly the phrase "Yabba Dabba Doo" means. <<

Caveman lingo for "hooray?"

>>A disturbing quote, indeed, but it at least makes the final verse of their the theme song, "When you're with The Flintstones, you'll have a gay old time" more significant than ever.<<

Well, in the 1960's (pre-Stonewall riots/gay rights movement/the more enlightened 70's), "gay" still had to most of the public the meaning of "happy"...hence the song's usage of that particular word (shrug).

-B.