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by Lore Sjöberg
Speed Racer
What is it that makes Speed so great? Is it his injection-molded
hair? His Swedish-porn-star scarf? The fact that his eyelashes are larger
than most North American songbirds? He looks like a woodland creature,
if woodland creatures bought all their clothes from Fingerhut catalogs
and had poorly synchronized speech. He's the very paragon of glistening
nobility and he has a cool car. He's so dreamy. A+
Trixie
If Barbie is a poor physical role model for young girls, Trixie is a
poor physical role model for yearling gazelles. I don't know if her
coffee-stirrer legs and arms were designed to save valuable ink, or
if the head animator had a thing for coat racks or what, but
nonetheless she's still not as pretty as Speed. Is she Speed's
girlfriend? Their relationship seems based not so much on romance as on
her making little worried noises all the time. Soulmate or
designated fretter? C
The Narrator
The narrative voice isn't as active in the Racer oeuvre as it is
in, say, the Superfriends, but when it does show up it's always
awful. A sampling: "Meanwhile, in a secret hotel room, the
secret head of the Alpha Team, Mr. Wiley, is having a secret meeting."
Frankly, if it's that secret I'm surprised anyone showed up. The only
real purpose the Narrator serves is to say "And here are some bad guys,"
which isn't really necessary, because Speed Racer bad guys all look
distinctively like 1960's joke cocktail napkin characters. D
Racer X
It's not often you find masked riders at major non-wrestling sporting
events, which is a shame because they inevitably lend a jaunty air to the
proceedings. At any rate, Racer X -- secretly Speed's prodigal brother Rex --
is living proof of the saying "Any crash you can walk away from, disown your
father, leave home, return years later as a masked mystery figure and
nearly accidentally kill your brother in an impromptu night-time car
race is a good one." Profound. B+
Pops Racer
Pops exemplifies Lamarck's Theory of Evolution by Means of Last Name.
Each generation of Racers has gotten better and better at racing;
simulations predict that Speed's great-great grandchild will be
able to break the world land speed record in a Geo Metro.
If Pops's last name were "Typist" or "Pusher," it would have
been a very different, although probably still inexplicably entertaining,
cartoon. This also explains why you see so few people with the last
names of "Loser," Failure," and "High Insurance Risk." C+
Spritle and Chim-Chim
Really, really disturbing. If they didn't wear the same outfits,
or even if the outfits didn't include those Spanky-by-way-of-Dr.-Seuss
skullcaps, I could probably take it. I recognize how essential their
loathsome shenanigans are to the Speed Racer look-and-feel, but I'm hoping
Spritle's hard at work suppressing memories, because otherwise he's going
to have a lot of trouble forming functional relationships later
on in life. "Could you grunt like a monkey, baby? Yeah. Now do a
backflip. Now try to steal my candy. Oh yeah, baby." C
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