Michelangelo is (Indeed) a Party Dude!

“Oh, Michelangelo! What are you doing here?” April O’Neill exclaims as she stands in the doorway of the Channel 6 newsroom. She takes four confident steps toward the teenage mutant ninja turtle. Before she reaches him, however, she is intercepted by Splinter, Michelangelo’s sensei. Smiling knowingly, the mutant ninja rat fondles the trip wire that he is holding. “Ohh,” April gasps as she drops to her knees with nothing to break her fall except Michelangelo’s seemingly androgynous genital area. Nothing can thwart Michelangelo’s throbbing turtlehood as it breaks through his turtle shell in an explosion of desire. It appears that Michelangelo is half-turtle, but all man. “Hey April, don’t cut me no slack,” Michelangelo murmurs. April eagerly complies.

The lights dim as the soft techno beat—bown-chick-a-wown-wown—complements the action. And so begins Matthew C. Janicak’s ’04 animation piece, “The TMNTijuana Bibles.” Janicak, a VES concentrator, collaborated with Benjamin F. Dougan ’04 to create the animated teenage mutant ninja turtle porn for his final project in VES 53a, “Fundamentals of Animation.” The film received mixed reviews when it was screened at the end of the semester. “It was a mixture of keen interest and repulsion, leaning towards repulsion,” Dougan says. In comparison to other films shown that night, Dougan describes their piece as “more pornographic, more Ninja Turtle.” On second thought, he corrects himself, “mmm, equally Ninja Turtle, more pornographic.” Janicak received a B+ in the course but attributes the standard inflationary grade to his less than perfect attendance rather than the potentially offensive pornographic content of the film. “It was fair,” he admits, though adds that he thinks poorly of his professor.

Surprisingly, turtle-porn—or, at least, its genre—has a long history. “The TMNTijuana Bible” falls under the category of hentai, a pornographic subset of Japanese anime and manga. Janicak explains that hentai is a socially acceptable genre in Japan—so much so that businessmen often read it on the bus. The popularity of hentai is such that a rudimentary Google search on the topic yielded a massive 5,500,000 results. Links included sites promoting XXX videos and featuring erotic pictures of everything from Disney’s Ariel to Dragonball Z.

Within hentai, “The TMNTijuana Bibles” represents a sub-genre of “tentacle rape” stories. Monsters with penises protruding from the ends of long tentacles seek to have sex with young women for various magical reasons, such as the maintenance of state order or the continuation of their lineage. Janicak and Dougan recommend “La Blue Girl” as representative of hentai. The title of their film pays homage to the Tijuana Bible, a collection of pornographic versions of classic cartoons such as Betty Boop and Popeye.

Though nothing is currently in production, Janicak and Dougan see more collaborations on the horizon. Perhaps in a nod to FM or as an indicator of their stamina, Dougan boasts, “It’s going to happen about 15 more times.”

To check out the first installation, watch “The TMNTijuana Bibles” at www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~schapira/tmntnet2.mov.

But is it art? FM sought the opinions of The Crimson’s newest staff comic artists, Laura E. Yilmaz ’04 and Isabel S. Eisner ’04, who co-create the manga-inspired “This Space for Rent.”

Yilmaz:

The piece raises many intriguing sexual issues, not least that of bestiality. The sequence in which April quite literally rides Michelangelo down a series of stairs is no doubt symbolic of their descent into sexual deviance. The damp, cavernous subterranean lair into which they finally arrive is evocative of the darkness and secrecy of their Freudian subconscious. Interestingly, at this point April disappears without a trace, and is replaced by Krang, one of the Ninja Turtles’ most hated archenemies. The homoerotic sequence that ensues is, then, a double taboo, exploring both the issues of male-male eroticism as well as challenging the stereotypical roles of good and evil. This delicately handled glimpse into the subconscious fantasies of Michelangelo is made even more powerful by the presence of the enormous, one-eyed Technodrome that watches voyeuristically from the shadows—a monstrous and appropriately jarring manifestation of the voyeurism of the audience that looks on as Michelangelo’s deepest fantasies unfold.

Eisner:

“The TMNTijuana Bibles” is a classic tale of sex, betrayal and a voyeuristic boss who turns into a giant penis. I must admit that I’m kind of surprised at Michelangelo, however. I mean it’s OBVIOUS in the first movie that April has a thing for Raphael, not to mention that whole Casey Jones fiasco. I know Mike’s supposed to be “the party dude,” but he’s screwing two friends over. Well, I guess three if you count April. Also, the art was very well done, for something that totally destroyed a sizeable chunk of happy childhood memories. And I haven’t exactly been studying up on my mutant reptile reproductive physiology lately, but it appeared to work out well for them.

The uneasy verdict? Thumbs-up. Just leave the Thundercats alone.