STRANGE TOONS: Bill Plympton's YOUR FACE

your face

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I first saw Bill Plympton's short Your Face as part of an animation festival when I was a kid, and I don't think I have ever laughed so hard at anything since. And I wasn't the only one in hysterics; the audience around me was shrieking with laughter, people were this close to dropping dead in the aisles.

The cartoon is still weird and gross and funny today, but it wouldn't shock audiences like it did when it was new. For one thing Plympton has done plenty of commercial work since then, so he's hardly an unknown quantity. You see a Plympton cartoon, and you already know that his characters are probably going to squish around and transform in cheerfully disgusting ways. But beyond that, the kind of grotesque facial transformations that were so novel in this cartoon can now be accomplished by any kid with a good morphing program. Plympton did it all with pencils and paper and his work is still technically dazzling, but we're no longer freaked out by the sight of somebody's head inflating like a balloon or turning into a cube and spinning around. We see that stuff in flash e-cards we get from grandma.

Actually, the most unsettling part of the cartoon today is arguably the title song. Written and performed by Maureen McElheron (with her voice slowed down to an androgynous warble,) Your Face is sweet and confusing and utterly creepy, like a lullaby sung by the monster that lives under your bed. Your face hums...

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