Can't Make the Scene if I Ain't Got That Green: An Appreciation of "The Mask"

When my paternal grandparents migrated to Canada, they became indoctrinated into the ways of the Presbyterian Church. My father, refusing to let his ailing parents live on their own, stayed and raised his own family within the confines of his father's home. My immediate family, then, consisted of God-fearing, Christian folk: the kind that says grace, never takes the Lord's name in vain, did church on Sunday,s that whole thing. And I followed the religion with as much fervour, not knowing any better. Life was simple: go to school, get good grades, go to church, be pure and don’t screw up.

So, I was left to my own devices as a child. Both my parents worked, and my grandparents entertained themselves with various church gatherings and community activities, leaving me as the lone child among adults for most of my childhood. I was taught to read young and devoured books voraciously as I tried to pass the time between homework and school. I memorized Aesop’s fables and read Bible passages at Sunday school, and everything was very “Little House on the Prairie”. My grandparents were very conscious of what was playing on the old television at any given point in time. We could watch anything on Turner Classic Movies most of the day, but none of that daytime talk show trash. Nothing like “Montel" or “Jerry Springer” could be remotely close to passable television habits in our home. God forbid the poor girl’s brains rot with such filth!

The one thing I could get away with watching was cartoons. And I get it. The train of thought was simple: drawings and colours to stimulate the child's mind made cartoons children's fare. But have you ever seen a "Looney Tunes" cartoon? How incredibly violent and ridiculous the whole thing is? Take the 1951 Warner Brothers short "Drip Along Daffy": The scene opens with Daffy Duck and Porky Pig riding into a town where the sheriff has been killed and an onslaught of shootings, robberies and deaths plague the town. Or "What's Opera, Doc?" where Elmer Fudd succeeds in killing Bugs Bunny. Sure, the shows are painted bright and colourful. And cartoons really appeal to kids because of their aesthetic appearance. But they paint questionable states of morality and ethics: Did Fudd really need to strike Bugs with lightening? Did Bugs really need to fool Fudd by cross-dressing as a beautiful heroine? Was he even that convincing? This questioning of cartoon violence targeted towards young minds isn't anything new. Every year at Christmas, all the latest video games are “too violent”, and “spoil” the young mind. It has always appeared that certain forms of entertainment have had some sort of ulterior motive when it comes to exposing children to the horrors of real life, even in the most palatable way. But I would rather consider the horrors of life more as the possibility of anything happening, the spontaneity of life if you will - be it as obtuse sticks of dynamite held by a coyote or the terrifying thought of a gun held by a thug. The trouble comes with the inability to separate a screen from real life.

Imagine my surprise, as a seven-year-old, to see the cartoon world infused into the live-action world. One night, as my grandfather napped on the sofa next to me, I channel surfed until I saw "The Mask" on syndication on TBS. Keep in mind, because it was on television, most of the naughty bits were cut out, leaving a rubber-faced Jim Carrey and an adorable dog sidekick battling local thugs and getting in heaps of trouble. I stifled laughter as I sat and watched the whole film, trying not to wake my grandfather from his nap. I stayed up until two in the morning that night, the latest I had ever stayed up. But I was fascinated, I had never seen a man act so much like a cartoon while still having a third dimension.

The story follows a hopelessly unromantic young man, Stanley, who comes across a magical mask that transforms him into an animated carpe diem-ing maniac. Trouble ensues: Banks are robbed, thugs are shot, blood is shed, crude jokes are made. Stanley realizes that he is the Mask and gets the girl, everyone lives happily ever after. It’s ridiculous and completely unrealistic, but to be honest, to this day I still don't care about the story when I watch the film.

Stanley's interest in "Screwball" cartoons are made clear from the beginning of the movie - he watches a few after a long night of being kicked out of The Coco Bongo and jumping into a river to get the mask. It was from that moment, just a few minutes into the film, that I immediately understood why it had to be "Screwball Classics" on VHS: cartoons, the animation, the absurdity of the characters, the morphing of lines and colours to create characters so outlandish creates a boundary between the world of three-dimension and the world of two. Because one is flat, with drawn black lines filled with colours, it's incomparable to the real world. Stanley, just like seven-year-old me, wanted something lesser than the third dimension - a world where literally, anything is possible. He's not the guy in the gutter outside the swanky Coco Bongo, but instead, the wolf that whistles at the table for the Tina Carlisle, a young Cameron Diaz, who performs on stage. Stanley, like me, wanted a world where anything goes, and you can be whoever you want to be - a fantasy that's been stubbed out in both of us.

But here it was, ignited in Stanley with the discovery of this mask - a mask that essentially, makes your id loud and proud. The mask made Stanley's fantasies come true, not always in the most legal ways, mind you, but he managed to figure out how the world could become his own cartoonish, two-dimensional playland. And I was enthralled by my cinematic late-night discovery, and insanely jealous of the protagonist.

I, by no means, was a cynical child. I was simply a little bummed out. Little time was left to be a real child. But in those few stolen moments that fateful night, "The Mask" was my answer. It was real-world situations - a young bank teller who was sick of being pushed around and lonely - stirred with the madness of a Warner Brother's picture. His face was painted green, he donned crazy costumes, he changed personas at the drop of a hat, becoming whomever the mood called for. He was wonderful, and I wanted to blur the boundaries of real and picture so bad.

I think seven-year-old me wanted that freedom. Here I was, stuck in a home where there was a routine to be followed every minute of the day, and in those few hours, in the middle of the night, in front of an old wood-paneled television, I managed to own a few moments of freedom, a few moments of careless childhood as I watched a man in green face paint take Edge City by storm. I watched with eyes glassy from exhaustion, ridiculous scenes of exaggerated actions: the way the Mask walks out of the apartment when trying to be quiet, superfluous and breathtakingly funny. The way he danced as Cuban Pete with the police, when he ate a bomb to save the girl, it was magical those moments of pure pleasure I had, those moments when I lost myself to the idea that really, anything could happen. Those moments of childhood, when the belief of rationale was suspended even for a microsecond, prompted by the ridiculousness of the illicit film I watched, suppressing girlish giggles for fear of getting caught.

To this day, and it may be that I regress to a seven-year-old's state of mind when I watch it, but nevertheless, I laugh like I'm seeing it for the first time. Carrey is dressed in a yellow suit, probably the reason why I insisted on painting my room yellow as a kid, looking in a mirror and exclaiming, "Ssssmmmokin'!"; "Somebody stop me!" and "P-A-R-T-why? Because I gotta!" are just a few that's been uttered from my lips over the past eight years. I may not be holed up on the sofa, playing it at the lowest audible volume so I don't get grounded for watching something inappropriate, but I still feel like I'm doing something secret, something I'm not allowed to enjoy, but enjoy regardless, taking secret pleasure in the punishable action.

For me, getting to watch "The Mask" was a way of wearing the mask - I was able to, for a few quiet hours - be someone and somewhere else. I was able to live in the moment where anything was possible for humans, not for an anthropomorphized duck or a talking rabbit. And while I didn't rob a bank, get framed for a murder, go to jail, and save the day with a casino brawl as Stanley did, I did manage to be a child for a few moments, save my day with a small dose of imagination and humour.