Dave Jeser, Matt Silverstein
Drawn Together

THE REVIEW

Are you tired of the abominable skits offered by reality shows? Do you want something that thoroughly ridicules them to the point of desecration and complete evisceration of that sticky syrup of falsehood, foolishness, illiterate gym enthusiasts, anorexic-like girls, and depressed boys? Are you ready to witness the dystopian metamorphosis of such crass individuals into cartoons?

"Drawn Together" is the ideal antidote to the media farces of various Big Brothers on TV and beyond: a respectable collection of bizarre characters, seemingly harmless and calm, confined in a villa with charming aesthetic outlines. So far, nothing exceptionally extravagant and abnormal, but try, even if just for a timed nanosecond, to cross the borders of the aforementioned building, to knock on the door of these friendly roommates: should you manage to leave intact, you might want to knock on another door, that of your trusted psychiatrist or any other shrink available.

Indeed, because the protagonists of "Drawn Together" are the perfect nemesis of all Mickey Mouse entities that have appeared (or rather "drawn") on the face of the Earth: a troop of friends who burp, change their appearances at their personal discretion, express feelings of mutual affection and cordiality (including brawls, orgies, chases, accidental murders, passions, deaths & resurrections, quick marriages, freely satisfied sexual instincts, profanations, robberies, and frauds), flaunt their (notable) bodily emissions and stroll calmly on parallel worlds and remote planets; a company that intrudes into the most imaginative and rocambolesque situations, on the brink of dementia, coming out of them with such ease and originality as to put the most twisted and daring minds of the universe to shame.

In this sort of cartoonish Milano 2, pleasantly "libertine" and terribly avant-garde in its lifestyle and customs, the company I was discussing earlier is nothing but the "mirror" alternative to the most famous animations, with the good-naturedness and naivety of the protagonists transformed into diabolical flaws and abnormal vices: we have Captain Hero, a fake perverse, sadistic Superman, an anti-hero utterly licentious, Princess Clara, a Disney-like queen with tentacles in intimate parts and character far from regal and refined, Ling-Ling, the moody fake Pikachu eternally at odds with the rest of the crew, Spanky Ham, a delightful piglet more akin to the muddy trough than to terraced houses.

But that's not all. What about the sensual, spicy, and teasing Foxxy Love, the perpetual desire of her lecherous colleagues? And the aesthetic counterpart Toot Braunstein, a strange attempt to revisit the black & white myth of Betty Boop? And the poor Xandir P. Wifflebottom, pseudo-hero effeminate, victim of others' sadism and mockery? And again, the naive and childish anti-Spongebob Wooldoor Sockbat, the one who perhaps comes closest to "normality"?

Cartoons have a lot to offer: they simultaneously show us enchanted worlds and neglected realities, they trigger sugary good-naturedness and roguish wickedness, they can abolish human defects but are also capable of hyperbolizing them in a vortex of "perfect" negativity. The unique fictitious reality show of "Drawn Together" is probably the culmination of so-called "bad intentions": a cartoonist's pencil can extrapolate more malicious dystopias than any cinematic blockbuster. The battle between the Disney armada and the army of South Park, Family Guy, and Drawn Together is thus destined to continue for a long time in the history of institutionalized fantasy.