The Ren & Stimpy Show
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Ren and Stimpy are the eponymous characters, a neurotic chihuahua and an obese cat wandering around in nonsensical adventures reminiscent of the golden age of American animation. The Ren & Stimpy Show had a reputation for subversiveness. Its level of gross-out humor, often involving nasal mucus and flatulence, was surpassed only by shows such as Beavis and Butt-head or The Brothers Grunt. While primarily controversial for its grotesque imagery, the series also frequently lampooned elements of western culture, such as materialism and superstition. The show was canceled around 1998. |
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The Ren and Stimpy Show is an American/Canadian animated television series created by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi.
Music
The Ren & Stimpy Show features a wide variety of music, spanning rockabilly, folk, pop, jazz, classical music, jingles, and more. The opening and closing themes are performed by a group of Spümcø employees under the name "Die Screaming Leiderhôsens". Three Ren & Stimpy albums have been released: You Eediot!, Crock O' Christmas and Radio Daze. In addition to music written specifically for the show, a number of episodes used existing works by composers such as jazz musician Raymond Scott, Claude Debussy, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Ludwig van Beethoven, Alexander Borodin, Antonín Dvořák, Gioachino Rossini (particularly The Thieving Magpie), and selections from production music libraries such as APM Music, which fans later compiled into several albums. In 1993 a compilation album, You Eediot!, was released as a soundtrack album. The album's front cover is a parody of The Beatles' 11th studio album Abbey Road.
Stimpy's rousing anthem titled "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" was composed by Christopher Reccardi and written by Charlie Brissette and John Kricfalusi. A cover of this song, performed by Wax, is included on the 1995 tribute album Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, produced by Ralph Sall for MCA Records. The line "happy, happy, joy, joy" is first used in episode three of the series; the song is first played in episode six. It is sung by a character introduced as "Stinky Whizzleteats", who is named in the episode's script as Burl Ives, an American folk singer and actor. The song liberally quotes numerous lyrics and lines of dialogue from Ives's films and records, creating a series of non sequiturs.
