By Karen Feigenbaum
[* out of *****]
Born in 1975, I grew up with everything from "Thundercats"
to "Gem and the Holograms" (Gem is truly truly truly outrageous!).
I survived junior high with my pals on "Ducktales," continued
through high school with "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,"
and squealed in delight in college with the dawn of a new cartoon
age via the spectacular introduction of "Batman the Animated
Series." To this day, when I scan the television channels, Cartoon
Network is one station I always check…particularly in hopes of
catching an episode of "The Powerpuff Girls."
But upon logging onto Cartoon Network's web-site, I was immediately
disheartened to discover that the homepage is like a wasteland…after
Blain the Monorail and The Who have left from sheer boredom. There's
an attempt at a site map bannered across the top of the page, but
the links are nonfunctional; they merely tease me with the promise
of games and something ambiguously labeled "cartoon orbit."
There's little else to this barren homepage - it is namely a large
blank white screen with some links. The bottom has another banner,
begging visitors to "choose a character." There is also
a lot of text underneath this second banner, but, much like the children
predominantly comprising Cartoon Network's audience, I have attention
deficit problems and found I couldn't be bothered with so much reading.
But with a hastened heart rate, I clicked on the picture of Buttercup
from "The Powerpuff Girls," hoping that this would bring
me to a page heralding the same fun in which the show delights. Unfortunately,
after the page loaded, I merely arrived at another series of links.
And in stark contrast to the Gap-commercial white landscape of the
homepage, this Powerpuff page was a mess of brilliant green backgrounds
and flashing animation that created instant overload in my mind and
assaulted my eyes. Through the visual din, I tried to scan the hyperlinks;
the only one that didn't appear to be merely a vehicle for purchasing
companion paraphernalia, such as Powerpuff CDs and dolls, had to do
with choosing my favorite character.
Becoming somewhat annoyed with the amount of click-through and attention
being demanded of me, I clicked on a picture of Bubbles. Again, more
links appeared, promising information on items such as "significant
others." Shaking my head in growing anger, I chose the link…which
actually told me nothing about Bubbles dating life - it was just some
bizarrely random "fact" about how Bubbles likes to collect
tin foil (I'm sorry - What???). Another link called "clips"
caught my attention, which led me to yet another set of hyperlinks,
where I had to choose a cartoon clip to view based on a single picture
cel. Unable to determine what I was going to see, I randomly chose
one. And yes, I had to click again.
After waiting with drooling anticipation for my 56K modem to download
the clip, I realized that watching the 30-second snippet of my girls
in action was the only saving grace to this entire web-site.
I was about to exit in indignant disgust when I realized that the
links across the top banner apparently became functional once the
web-spelunker had delved deeply through enough of the mess of initial
hyperlinks. Rolling my eyes at the sinking feeling that I was somehow
being tested for web proficiency…and failing…I finally clicked
on "games." My browser was instantly subsumed in a blur
of 8-point font text descriptions of each game with which I instinctively
knew no child would ever bother. I quickly moved my mouse to the 'x'
in the upper-right-hand side of my browser and shut down.
The words that immediately popped into my head after logging off
were: hectic, chaotic, and thoroughly disappointing. The site's sole
purpose seems to be to sell toys, as opposed to exploring all the
possibilities of being an interactive companion site to their shows.
For all the cleverness the network demonstrates in the television
medium, I would have thought that their web-site would be a much more
intelligent and interesting provider of content for an audience born
and raised on the Internet. To paraphrase Ron Wells' from Filmthreat:
the hard-sought out cartoon clip earns the only star I give the site;
I wipe my ass with the rest of it.