In Defense Of Space Jam: A Personal Catharsis

Hey, it’s Space Jam Week! 

Among totems of ’90s nostalgia, few remain as prominent and present in 2016 as Space Jam. The film was Warner Brother’s attempt to turn Michael Jordan‘s cultural capital cinematic, as well as the first use of their iconic stable of cartoon characters in a feature since the compilation films of the ’80s. It was generally panned by critics, but that didn’t matter much, as it raked in a disgusting amount of money and produced an endless sea of disposable merchandise, much of which rests comfortably in my apartment.

Since its release, Space Jam has enjoyed a rather benign existence, residing in the back of our minds, being brought back up from time to time due to various tangential elements such as its multi-platinum soundtrack (which is still wall-to-wall), and the retro novelty of its still functioning 1996 website, both bearing a number of signifiers of their era, which they in turn helped to define. But it is generally looked upon if not with reverence, at least with understanding and mild enjoyment; we recognize that circumstances of the film’s production and environment in which it was produced probably resulted in some compromised quality, but still enjoy its zany idolatry all the same. In short, it’s harmless. That’s why I was so taken aback when in 2013, now-defunct film culture website The Dissolve published a ruthless attack piece on the film titled “Space Jam’s Character Ruining Tackiness“.

This totally came out of left field; written by site co-founder Nathan Rabin, the piece was published as part of his “Forgotbusters” series, the basis for which being a film that was a top-25 grosser in its year of release but has since “receded culturally” (I’m already seething). Before founding The Dissolve, Rabin was one of the defining voices of the most important years of The AV Club, which more or less defined cultural criticism in the modern age. As such, he seems like a cool guy, hey what gives?

Coming from someone whose opinions I have a great deal of respect for, it felt a little like a personal attack, and I’ve held onto that feeling going on three years now. Ironically, without the inspiration Rabin helped to provide, I likely wouldn’t be rebuking him right now. I didn’t have the forum to challenge his assertions then, but now that I do I intend to take the opportunity to claim the catharsis that I so clearly need.

The Tunes Belong To All

Rabin opens his piece quoting that unassailable force of artistic integrity in cartooning, Bill Watterson. Watterson rightly claims that in “selling out”, what you are selling is not so much your creation, but your creation’s ideals, which are now those of the purchaser, and that is the main reason why he has chosen not to license out his iconic characters Calvin & Hobbes. Already in this opening, a false dichotomy has been created; Calvin & Hobbes was a daily comic strip that ran for ten years starting in 1985. By equating Watterson‘s characters with the Warner Bros. stable, as the reader is meant to, knowing they are reading an article about Space Jam before the film is even mentioned, Rabin seems to be setting up the Looney Tunes as pure icons, unsullied by commercial interests, despite having existed since the ’30s, and having always been owned by their parent company and never their creators.

Though Rabin correctly notes that the men behind Bugs Bunny and co. were innovators and artistic idiosyncratics by the time of Space Jam‘s conception, their creations were decades removed from their origins, and their subversive behavior already long ago co-opted for corporate interests. He even mentions the ubiquitous “urban” airbrushed shirts of Taz and Daffy Duck that you could buy from any Six Flags in the mid-’90s, which for me defined this era of Warner Brothers trying to set up the Looney Tunes as viable competitors to Disney; iconic unto themselves, wholly outside the context of their original representations, and able to be molded and adapted at will. It is an unfortunate truth that this happened, but do not lay the blame on poor Space Jam.

Where the article really starts to irk me is in Rabin’s suggestion that his generation grew up experiencing the Looney Tunes in a more pure, higher way than those of my unfortunate age range. What he fails to recognize, probably because he was rightfully busy being a teenager, is this was a time when Cartoon Network had just launched, and a significant portion of their programming was filled with Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies (as well as the deepest dregs of the Hannah-Barbara universe). Before Adult Swim, late night programming was filled with shows spotlighting Chuck Jones or Tex Avery. Nickelodeon also had large weekend morning program blocks of WB cartoons, so we were just as familiar of Bugs in his Brunnhilde getup or Porky Pig’s adventures in wackyland as anyone, perhaps even moreso, being a generation of latch-key kids raised by TV as much as any human parent.

By the time Space Jam came out, Warner’s activity around Bugs Bunny et al had reached such a point that it made total sense to me as a kid to pair them up with Michael Jordan, who for those of us living in Chicago at the time was the biggest, most infallible, and only God that existed. Bugs was the logical cartoon equivalent, his coolness and Groucho Marx-attitude far surpassing Mickey’s family friendly corporatism; like the Sonic to Disney’s Mario, always cooler, if less ubiquitous. Either way, to suggest that folk a mere ten or so years my senior have any sort of “deeper” appreciation for cultural media that was already over 40 years old when they were born, reeks of the sort of ambivalence regularly visited upon “millennials” by Boomers and Gen X-ers.

Why?

I simply can not grasp Rabin‘s vitriol for this film, claiming that Space Jam ruined “the Looney Tunes legacy, reducing it to something vulgar, cheap, and dumb.” As he stated earlier in the piece and I have claimed here, that is not the fault of Space Jam; the damage had been well before, and the film’s zany plot points, to me, are an homage to the source material. While Daffy, Elmer and co. may have lost their original motivations and subversiveness, that’s only to be expected from a 60+ year old property. Being a young nation, culture is America’s mythology, and it rarely remains static. Most often, what was once deemed groundbreaking and subversive is inevitably appropriated and codified by prevailing hegemonic structures, and cartoons are certainly no exception.

Then the article begins to actually get to the film and its (perceived) flaws. The opening scene with Jordan shooting hoops as a young boy is the target of some ridicule, but it is a scene that to this day gives me chills. As a boy, you always heard the story of MJ being cut from his High School squad, but you never really consider that he was once a boy just like you. This scene serves to help relate the viewer, by and large young children, to the seemingly untouchable idol that will serve as the film’s protagonist. At that, with no small amount of help from R. Kelly, it’s effective.

There is one character in particular that Rabin sees as embodying all that’s wrong with the Looney Tunes’ role in the film: the newly introduced Lola Bunny. He sees her merely as an over-sexualized love interest for Bugs, further contradicting his gender-bending history. But Lola can also be viewed as a ’90s feminist icon; not only is she the first prominent female Tune (if you don’t count Granny and a perpetually sexually-assaulted cat), but she’s also the only Tune with any actual basketball skills. This gives her a degree of depth not really present in her colleagues, who are mostly defined by their goofiness. The Spice Girls had yet to emerge on the world stage, but Lola was already touting “girl-power”, holding her own among cartoons, aliens and global athletic superstars alike. Furthermore, she has transcended her movie-origin tokenism to remain the lead female Tune to this day, filling a sorely needed hole within the Warner Bros. line up of characters.

You Come At The King, You Best Not Miss

Rabin then takes aim at the very idea of centering a film on Jordan, whose legacy has since been brought down to human levels since his playing days. The critiques of Jordan as being difficult, demanding and a walking billboard are not unfair, but they seem to me to be gripings irrelevant to the matter at hand. Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan, and if it’s 1995 and you have the opportunity to make a film with him, you do it. They did, a slew of merchandise followed and the money printed itself. But why call out this film for that when so many have followed that model ever since Star Wars created the blockbuster merchandising juggernaut?

His next target is Jordan the actor, whose participation he sees as undignified of the world’s athletic ideal. But like the opening scene, Jordan‘s performance serves to humanize him, if only in that the audience would most likely struggle through their lines in the lead of a Hollywood blockbuster as well (some might argue that MJ’s time in baseball already did that, others like myself might respond: “Michael Jordan never played baseball what’re you talking about you’re crazy. He never played for the Wizards either).

Furthermore, critiquing Jordan‘s performance is just entirely missing the point. Who cares if he can act? He’s Michael Jordan! Are you also going to take Prince to task for his role as The Kid, he’s freakin’ Prince! Rabin claims that “It seems sadistic to force [Jordan] to spend much of the film pretending to interact with colorful cartoon characters”, but I’d argue that it’s equally sadistic to call him out on the job. It was never anyone’s goal to turn Michael Jordan into a respectable thespian, he just had to do enough that an entertaining film could be built around his mere existence, and I think at that Space Jam is successful. I have a strong appreciation for concept, independent of execution, and I think it would be wise to take a minute to just acknowledge the story that was crafted around Michael and the Looney Tunes as the inspired piece of absurdism that it is.

Not Just Passable, but Great

Moron Mountain, a space amusement park run by the gluttonous Mr. Swackhammer (Danny Devito), is in need of a new attraction. The cigar-chomping alien decides that the Looney Tunes, who delight his simple-minded employees, would be the perfect fit for the job. He sends the nerdlucks to Earth(?) in order to retrieve them for use as theme park shills (this is no doubt a subversive plot detail inserted to comment on the Looney Tunes’ status as ubiquitous mascots for Six-Flags amusement parks). The Looney Tunes, noticing their distinct height advantage over the diminutive invaders, pull a Seventh Seal and challenge them to a game of basketball in exchange for their lives. We haven’t even gotten to the greatest basketball player in history yet, and this outline already sounds incredible.

The Nerdlucks then use the power of a magic basketball, which by the way, very prescient of them, to steal the talents of some of the NBA’s most prominent stars and Shawn Bradley, which both turns them into fearsome and formidable Monstars, and causes Porky Pig to wet himself. Seeing that they are now in over their furry heads, the Tunes kidnap Michael Jordan via lasso through a golf hole to defend their freedom. If I were president of Warner Bros. at the time, I would have been happy with pretty much anything that landed on my desk for the Jordan vehicle, but when I actually received the treatment for Space Jam, I would have been overjoyed by its inventiveness and originality. Before or since, there are just no movies that are even close in similarity, and for that, this overproduced blockbuster deserves some credit.

Aside from the film’s plot, its other major strong suit is the supporting cast. The NBA players that provide the talent for the Monstars are mostly on point, but Mugsy Bogues and Charles Barkley really stand out for me in their albeit limited performances. Mugsy‘s scene in the therapist montage always gets me, as does Barkley‘s delivery of “Hey, can I play?” before he is unceremoniously dubbed a wannabe look-a-like by a female street baller. And Bogues‘ acting like he’s being possessed by a nerdluck is as fine an act of physical comedy as anything I can recall.

But you can’t write an article on Space Jam without bringing up Bill Murray, who delivers his lines with a deadpan that would anticipate his other work playing himself in films like Coffee and Cigarettes. Murray has gone on the record as stating that Space Jam is his least favorite role, which is baffling to me since he plays himself, is on set with NBA legends all day, and went on to be in TWO Garfield movies. Here, he is building on a character he had been developing through NBA-produced TV shows, a version of himself that harbors an insatiable dream to play pro ball. Thus, in addition to giving Murray its best lines (“Larry’s not white, Larry’s clear” anyone?), Space Jam can also be viewed as the Return of the Jedi to Bill Murray‘s Anakin-arc, but with a decidedly more positive ending.

Everybody Get up, It’s Time to Slam Now

Rabin ends his attack piece by claiming that the 2003 live-action animation crossover Looney Tunes: Back In Action, a film starring Brendan Fraser, is a superior example of Looney Tunes on celluloid. I can’t contend on that point, because I never saw it, because no one did, because Brendan Fraser is not Michael Jordan. But the fact that he cites a later Looney Tunes film as having more of the original spirit of the franchise which he found to be lacking in Space Jam directly contradicts his chief claim that Space Jam ruined these characters, and further proves the fluid nature of our dreamed-up myths. In his closing paragraph, Rabin pays those for whom Space Jam was created, people who were roughly ages 5-12 in 1996, some token lip service, saying we latched onto the film at a “pre-critical age”.

However, we were a generation raised on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, The Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy, so I would argue that we were the most culturally literate adolescents of the pre-internet age, able to decide for our own damn selves if a piece of media was one of quality or condescension. I think the reason why it has endured so well for folks of our age, becoming one of the main cultural signifiers of an entire decade along with Tamagotchis and Bill Clinton, is because it’s an above-average Hollywood blockbuster that could have turned out so much worse than it did. Space Jam could have easily been Kazaam, a joke of a footnote in an otherwise illustrious basketball career. But instead it has remained as a gateway for a generation who never had the opportunity to see Jordan actually play to acquaint themselves with greatness. Because if Space Jam does one thing perfectly, it’s being able to capture the idea of Michael Jordan in 1996, the feeling of his stature and cultural dominance.

This is the main thrust of the film, a theatrical vehicle for His Airness; like it or not, the Looney Tunes are a secondary consideration. To focus on their characterization, to me, is to miss the entire appeal of Space Jam, so it’s merely a small, but still baffling, wonder that Rabin found it so distasteful. Basically what are at odds here are two childhoods, separated by a decade, both formative and subjective, a combination that inherently rejects compromise. The childhood labeled “mine” will always be truer, more correct, and superior to “theirs”.

I understand what it is to have my sacred cows from childhood decontextualized and trampled upon; one need look no further than the current cinematic incarnations of Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for evidence. And now it is happening all over again, with the announcement of Space Jam 2 starring Lebron James, which gives me a feeling in my gut that is entirely specific to thinking about this just announced film, something like anxiety and dread mixed with jealousy and resignation. While it may be unfortunate, it will always be the case that our cultural totems are recycled and repurposed to match the prevailing zeitgeist, and while that may make your beloved characters mean something else to someone who you’ll never meet, it shouldn’t at all diminish what they originally meant to you, (looking at you, Ghostbusters detractors).

In discussing Spirited Away, an animated film of unquestionably superior quality to Space Jam, Roger Ebert stated that “movies made for everybody are actually made for nobody in particular. Movies about specific characters in a detailed world are spellbinding because they make no attempt to cater to us. They are defiantly, triumphantly, themselves.” To me, there is no doubt that Michael Jordan is unquestionably characterized as himself, unique among leading men, despite the Looney setting in which he finds himself. Hell, the film even plays with his more notorious personality traits, like his reputation for gambling and unflappable arrogance, by having him put his liberty, and one can imagine the well being of his family, on the line for the sake of cartoon characters. The world of Space Jam is entirely its own, and to this day I don’t think a film has captured the feeling of youthful idolatry as potently.

Is it possible that I may be viewing Space Jam through the rose-colored glasses of youthful nostalgia? Almost undoubtedly. But if that movie wasn’t made for an 8-year-old boy from Chicago who wore a backwards Bulls hat and one red and one black sock to school every day, then I can’t imagine for whom it possibly could have been. That boy may now be taller, hairier, and in the habit of matching his socks, but I’ll be damned if I ever let go of Space Jam.