Shadoks

Shadoks were the invention of the seminal French cartoonist Jaques Rouxel (February 26 1931 – April 25 2004) and became a major French TV phenomenon in the 1960s.

The Shadoks were bird-like in appearance (in the tradition of cartoon birds they had beaks with teeth), were characterised by ruthlessness and stupidity and inhabited a two dimensional planet.

Another set of creatures in the Shadok cannon is the Gibis, who are the opposite to the Shadoks in that they are intelligent but vulnerable and also inhabit a two-dimensional planet.

Rouxel claims that the term Shadok obtains some derivation from Captain Haddock of Herge's Tintin and the Gibis (who wear Bowler hats, which unlike their heads, contain their brains) are essentially GBs (Great Britons).

Pre-dating and in many ways exceeding the strangeness of the bizarre humour "pioneered" by Monty Python nearly a decade after the Shadoks first appeared, the Shadoks were also a significant literary, cultural and philosophical phenomenon in France.

The Goons and Python connection

The Pythons freely admit (as is shown in the Wikipedia Monty Python article) that the 'degree of strangeness' of their material was 'spurred on' by Spike Milligan's Q series (i.e., series of series, starting with Q5).

Essentially, the distinguishing feature of Milligan's and the Python's material (from other comic forms) was the introduction of 'stream of consciousness' surrealism, where the connections between successive elements was, although not necessarily entirely absent, not dependent upon any 'traditional' or at least familiar thematic consistency, and even if a thematic aspect was being developed at any point, it was not necessarily obvious or necessarily sustained throughout the rest of the material.

What the Python's Terry Gilliam did in his animations (which where, it seems, a not inconsiderable driving force behind certain aspects the overall Python approach) was to exploit the additional freedom gained from not having to use sets and actors, in terms of scale, cost and abstractness, to add a degree of bizzarreness which even Milligan's most surreal material could not exceed.

There was something which characterised the preceding surrealistic comedy of the Goons and their material where the audience interaction (mostly 'timing' to get laughs) of the 'actors' intrudes uninhibitedly (and essentially intentionally) into the overall 'feel' of the material, which makes it possible to characterise the material as 'surreal music hall comedy', or 'radio pantomime' where traditional music hall and pantomime comedy actors were essentially live theatre 'artistes' whose skill was primarily derived from successfully building a direct rapport with the audience (Kenneth Williams perhaps being the master).

What the Pythons did which was different, was to avoid the 'direct' audience interaction (although there was a live audience soundtrack).

The Pythons material, gave a more more 'subversive' impression because, despite being comedy, it seemed to be 'taking itself seriously' in a way that Milligan's Q5 (essentially a direct transfer of Goons-type ideas to television) only did with the material that was not 'recorded in front of a live studio audience' (typically 'outdoor footage').

What Rouxel's Shadoks did, was what Gilliam did, but in a completely animated format (rather than in a live action-animation combination) and did it nearly a decade earlier.

Rouxel used original and innovative animation techniques in a series of short films which strove to (subliminally and overtly) caricature French social attitudes.

Although in the UK there was a short series of broadcasts of Shadoks on ITV in 1973 (with an English speaking narrator, Kenneth Robinson, whose 'deadpan' delivery somehow gave the otherwise inexplicable antics of the characters an unaccountably consistent logic) the Shadoks remain an almost exclusively Francocentric phenomenon.