‘Hanna-Barbera: A History’ (review)

Written by Jared Bahir Browsh
Published by McFarland Publishing

Hanna-Barbera: A History! Wow! That sounds like fun!

My generation, of course, grew up with Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and The Jetsons. Scooby Doo, Where Are You? One of the first cartoons I remember ever seeing was H-B’s Ruff and Reddy. And then, of course, the great 1960s Saturday morning cartoons like Space Ghost, The Fantastic Four, and Jonny Quest.

Let me make one thing clear, here. I have never thought of myself as a critic. I am a reviewer. I tell you whether or not I like something and if I think you might like it, too. Nor am I an academic. I would never have spent 15 pages on an Introduction to Hanna-Barbera, especially one that doesn’t even mention Hanna-Barbera all that much. To me, 15 pages should be a whole article on the subject.

But then, who needs the other 287 pages, you know?

One can’t blame author Jared Bahir Browsh.

I’m sure he’s probably a very nice man. Here, though, he was a slave to the typical academic formatting which, to me, as a reviewer, always comes off as pointlessly long-winded and pretentious. Does society really need that type of in-depth over-analysis when the subject is a cartoon partnership perhaps best known for its 7-minute cartoons of a cat and a mouse attempting to one up each other?

“Have Hanna-Barbera productions contributed to the white male heteronormative capitalist ideology?” is one of the questions we’re told the book will attempt to answer. And sure enough, there’s quite a bit of discussion in the pages that follow of racism, feminism, and all the other -isms.

The reviewer in me wants to interject here that the chronological litany of Hanna-Barbera TV series, specials, and films is interesting, with at least a little interesting trivia for each show.

Unfortunately, this being a MacFarland book, its typos and mistakes really jump out at the reader. One glaring faux-pas, for example, is when we’re told that the Laurel and Hardy cartoon series premiered just a year after Hardy died. Hardy died in 1957. The cartoon was syndicated in 1966. It should have read “Laurel,” as Stan had passed in 1965.

Reviewer me also likes the relatively few pictures dotted throughout the book as well. Most are old publicity images sent to newspapers back in the day and some are just screengrabs from various cartoons. Every once in a while, there are even a few interesting photos I’d never seen before.

I suppose it’s only fair that the forgettable latter-day Hanna-Barbera cartoons get as much coverage as the classic ones but just as they aren’t as interesting as their forebears, neither are their behind the scenes stories. Bringing the story up-to-date with the current and recent usage of the former Hanna-Barbera properties is kind of interesting, if only because I haven’t really been following that stuff all that much in recent years.

The behind-the-scenes stories of the studio and its creators seem sandwiched in between talking about Jabberjaw and The Harlem Globetrotters and Scrappy Doo. Hard to believe but according to the Index, Bill Hanna is only mentioned on ten pages while Joe Barbera is cited on only a dozen.

By the way, in keeping with the standardized format of these types of academic histories, that index follows a collection of footnotes that runs to 43 pages.

Disregarding the question of whether or not there is or would ever be an actual need for an in-depth psychoanalysis of Atom Ant or The Hillbilly Bears, this reviewer found this mistitled attempt at such a volume to be quite the slog.

I think I’m going to go dig out my Ricochet Rabbit VHS.

Now, THAT may be all the average fan may ever really want to know about Hanna-Barbera.

They made a lot of fun cartoons.