Disney has always been aggressive about extending their copyright to the various Disney characters — they keep going to congress and getting more years tacked on. It’s clearly past due that we should revoke all that (come on, Ol’ Walt died when I was in 4th grade, and I don’t care if his cryogenically frozen head is occasionally revived to dispense marching orders and consume baby brain smoothies). As evidence, I present to you the latest atrocity from the Disney channel, “Disney Blam!” What they do is take classic old Disney cartoons from the 40s, 50s, and 60s and ‘update’ them by adding obnoxious voiceovers. The narrator yells out grating descriptions of what’s going on visually, shouts “BLAM!” too frequently, and adds slo-mo instant replay to scenes where characters get bonked on the head. Really. It has to be seen to be believed.

Don’t you feel dumber for having watched that? Or at least, that Disney Corp. thinks you’re an idiot?

Why, in my day, I remember when we could expect five year olds to be able to watch these with comprehension, without some jerk on the soundtrack pointing out “BLAM! He got hit in the head with an anvil!” It’s not as if these things were ever intellectually subtle, you know.

Stop the disease before it spreads to Tex Avery and Chuck Jones! The Idiocracy will have arrived when the media overlords decide that Roadrunner cartoons need a play-by-play for their audiences to appreciate them.

(via Jhonen Vasquez)