Musical Parody and Nostalgia in Pinky and the Brain’s “Mouse of La Mancha”

Starting in the very late 1980s and early 1990s, moviegoers and television watchers in the United States saw a wave of high-quality animation. These included movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988), The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989), and Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991), as well as TV shows like The Simpsons (Matt Groening, 1990-), Rugrats (Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó, and Paul Germain, original run 1991-1994), The Tick (Ben Edlund, 1994-1997), and Batman: The Animated Series (Bruce Timm, Paul Dini & Mitch Brian, 1992-1995). While these may seem like a disparate collection, they do have a few things in common – most notably, the use of parody and/or a sense of nostalgia.  For example, Roger Rabbit not only uses some of the early Golden Age cartoons as a reference point, but also makes use of (and perhaps gently parodies) the Tex Avery style in the characters of Jessica and Roger Rabbit. The Disney Renaissance also films hark back to earlier Disney features and classic Broadway shows, while The Tick pokes fun of superhero comics and animation.  And of course, The Simpsons makes fun of just about everything.

Fig. 1 - Pinky and the Brain (1995-1998).

Animaniacs (Tom Ruegger, original series 1993-1998) and its spin-off, Pinky and the Brain (Tom Ruegger, 1995-1998) (Fig. 1) fit neatly within these trends of parody and nostalgia of that time. Both shows consciously look back to the classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons in numerous ways. For instance, the style and plots of each short were not designed for children. Rather, the writers (many of whom had a background in sketch comedy) wrote material that they themselves thought would be funny (Animaniacs 2006). Like the Warner Brothers films, they included numerous musical and visual parodies and references too. In addition, the music for most of the shorts that were not parodies was purposely in the vein of Carl Stalling, who did most of the music for the classic Warner Brothers cartoons (Goldmark 2002, 225). Given that Steven Spielberg, the shows’ producer, purposely wanted to make the cartoons a throwback to the original Golden Age Warner Brothers shorts but with new characters, this approach worked extremely well.  Here in this blog post, we’ll take a look at how the music supports the elements of parody and nostalgia in both shows, specifically in the fantasy/sci-fi-based Pinky and the Brain.

Pinky and the Brain - “Mouse of La Mancha.”

Man of La Mancha - “Man of La Mancha.”

Though both Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain contain some fantastic original material, some of the best moments in these shows stem from parody. Their story and visual parodic elements are often obvious to those who know the original, so as to make it clear what source text is being made fun of.  The music, however, can be a bit trickier to pin down. Often (though not always),[1] the parody in these shows does not use music from the original, as it falls under copyright regulations, which means considerable expense. Instead, they parody the music – not necessarily looking for humour, but looking for it to be recognisable without being so close to the original that they would get sued. Steve and Julie Bernstein, two of the composers for both Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain (as well as the recent 2020 Animaniacs reboot), have noted three techniques that they used when creating such music, both for these shows and others (Paulsen 2012). First, they work to match the rhythms of the original as closely as possible.  Second, they use similar orchestration. Third, they use melodic inversion – in other words, going the opposite direction in pitch, so as to avoid those copyright issues.

How does this work in practice? Let's look at “Mouse of La Mancha” (1996), from season one of Pinky and the Brain, as an example. The short is a parody of the musical Man of La Mancha (story by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion), which, in turn, is based on the novel Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes.  As one might expect, the overall story of the episode is (very) loosely based on the musical (in particular, the movie adaptation of the musical), but set in the world of Pinky and the Brain, where the Brain wants to take over the world, and Pinky strives to help him. It features two songs: “Mouse of La Mancha” (a parody of the musical’s title tune) (see above) and “To Scheme the Improbable Scheme” (a parody of the song “To Dream the Impossible Dream”). Both clearly use the Bernsteins’ parody techniques.

Fig. 2 - Excerpts from “Man of La Mancha” and “Mouse of La Mancha.”

“Mouse of La Mancha” falls near the beginning of the story in a similar position to that of the movie. In Man of La Mancha, Cervantes and his assistant have been thrown into a prison and are trying to distract the other prisoners with a story, starting with a song to introduce the main characters (see above). Likewise, Pinky and the Brain have been put in a new cage with other mice and are trying to distract those mice with a story set in 16th-century Spain. They set the scene with a song introducing the fantasy and the cartoon-within-a-cartoon’s main characters: Don Cerebro and his squire, Sancho Pinky. As you can tell from the excerpted lyrics in Fig. 2, the syllabic patterns and emphases correspond very closely with the “Man of La Mancha,” allowing the melody of the Pinky and the Brain tune to match the rhythms of the original. Indeed, the text of the parody often parallels what it’s based on (e.g., “listen, lower creatures, you do what you’re going to do, but I’m going to follow my destiny!”). The biggest difference is in tone: Don Quixote’s expectations are glory and honour, while the Brain wants (as usual) to take over the world.  Orchestrally, both songs use guitar to emphasize the Spanish setting, with trumpet fanfares to highlight the pseudo-knighthood that each character possesses.  Admittedly, the orchestration is not spot on, but the changes that the Bernsteins make in their parody (such as the heavy use of oboe to parallel the vocal line) look toward stereotypical Spanish music as a whole, and as such, would be more recognizable to American television viewers at the time.

Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is the melodic contour of the original compared to the Pinky and the Brain version.  Figures. 3-5 (a portion of the lyrics for each with accompanying graphical representation of the melodic phrases) shows how this works. If Don Quixote is going up in pitch in a particular phrase, for instance, Don Cerebro (the Brain) is often going down during the parallel phrase. If Don Quixote is going down, then Don Cerebro is often going up. When Don Quixote is staying on the same pitch, Don Cerebro is changing one direction or the other. The style and rhythm are close enough that, if you know both well and aren’t paying attention, you can start singing the words to one with the melody of the other, but if you listen closely, you’ll hear the difference. It’s part of what makes the musical parody so convincing.

Fig. 3 - Excerpts from “Man of La Mancha” and “Mouse of La Mancha” with Musical Contours.

Fig. 4 - Excerpts from “Man of La Mancha” and “Mouse of La Mancha” with Musical Contours.

Fig. 5 - Excerpts from “Man of La Mancha” and “Mouse of La Mancha” with Musical Contours.

The second song of the cartoon, “Scheme the Improbable Scheme,” plays near the end of the short, right after Pinky finishes the story of Don Cerebro (see below). Sadly but unsurprisingly, Don Cerebro fails in his quest, which upsets the other mice. The Brain, however, notes through music and thought-bubble flashback that the quest and his hopes that are encompassed by it are more important. While this timing is similar to the show cast’s reprise of the parallel song “Dream the Impossible Dream,” its optimistic tone more closely mirrors the first iteration sung by Don Quixote, where the knight sings about his ideals. As with “La Mancha,” the syllabic patterns and emphases of the parody are remarkably similar to the original, with the tone also matching quite well: reaching for the world (or the stars), even if it isn’t likely to happen, albeit without the closely matching specific line references that were heard in the first song.  Perhaps even more clearly than the first song, the composers invert Don Quixote's melody for the Brain, making it particularly obvious in the first few phrases.  Here and with "La Mancha," the inversion of the melody not only helps to avoid copyright issues, but also emphasizes musically the difference in textual meaning (as the lyrics turn from altruistic in the original to self-seeking in the parody): both the plot’s theme and the melody are basically "flipped on their heads."

Pinky and the Brain - “To Scheme the Improbable Scheme.”

Man of La Mancha - “Dream the Impossible Dream.”

In using Man of La Mancha as the basis of the cartoon, the creators also employ nostalgia in a few different ways. First, they hearken back to a musical (particularly the 1972 movie version) that the ostensible audience of children would not be aware of. While the average American child would still enjoy the short, understanding those references makes the cartoon that much more special. Pinky's seeming non-sequitur of, "I think so, Brain, but why would Sophia Loren do a musical?", for example, suddenly makes sense, and the parallel segues from prison to outdoors on horseback during the title tune make one marvel at the attention to detail that the animators and writers took in making the parody. Second, by throwing in these references, the writers and directors were looking back at the original Looney Tunes creators – not only the writers, but also Carl Stalling, who regularly used popular music references that made no sense unless you knew the name of the song that was being referred to. With one short cartoon, then, this Pinky and the Brain episode encapsulates the musical parody and nostalgia that permeates this series and its progenitor Animaniacs. I think that Steven Spielberg would ask for nothing less.

**Article published: October 29, 2021**

Notes

[1] See, for example, the cold opening of the first episode of the Animaniacs reboot (“Jurassic Lark”, dir. Scott O’Brien, aired November 20, 2020 on Hulu), in which the actual music from Jurassic Park by John Williams was used verbatim.

References

Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs vol. 2. 2006. “The Writers Flipped They Have No Script” (DVD extra feature). Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video. DVD.

Goldmark, Daniel. 2002. “An Interview with Richard Stone, Steve Bernstein, and Julie Bernstein.” In The Cartoon Music Book, ed. Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor, 225-238. Chicago: A Capella Books.

Paulsen, Rob. 4 Feb2012. “027: Interview with Steve and Julie Bernstein.” Talkin’ Toons with Rob Paulsen. Podcast.

Scoggin, Lisa. 2016. The Music of Animaniacs: Postmodern Nostalgia in a Cartoon World. Hilsdale, NY: Pendragon Press.

Biography

Lisa Scoggin completed her Ph.D. in Musicology at Boston University and received degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  Though her specialty is music in American animation, she is also interested in and writes on film music, music in television, ludomusicology, and 20th-century American and British art music.  She has presented papers internationally and has published on works by UPA, Disney, and Cartoon Saloon, with a book out on the music of Animaniacs.  She is currently working on an edited collection on the intersection of music, animation, and video games. 

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