In some countries, black cats are often seen as a bad omen and are avoided. However, in China, many people are not afraid of black cats when they see them, but affectionately call them instead"Sheriff", which made the black cats themselves confused, and they didn't understand how they suddenly became a member of the **, and they also had a high status.
Foreign tourists are also curious, it turns out that China not only has police dogs, but also police meows. It's all thanks to an animated series with only five episodes, Sheriff Black Cat.
Although "Sheriff Black Cat" has only five episodes, it spans four years. From 1984 to 1987, it broadcast five independent stories: "Annihilating the Hamster", "Catching the Enemy in the Air", "The Thief Who Eats Red Clay", "The Praying Mantis Who Eats Her Husband" and "The Uncle Who Can Eat Cats".
Due to the scattered broadcast and replay of various local stations, the number of times the audience has each episode is also different. Some people may repeat an episode, while others may never have watched an episode.
For me, the episode I've watched the most is "Capture the Enemy in the Air", which is the episode of the Monkey Eater, and the least I've watched is "The Mother Who Eats Cats".
The reason why Sheriff Black Cat has become a popular phenomenal cartoon is that in addition to being well-made, the plot design was ahead of its time at the time. This is an animated version of the police drama with high-energy elements, with gunfights, tunnel battles, and air battles.
At the same time, "Sheriff Black Cat" is also a popular science film, and the first episode has biological knowledge such as a mole-like shrew and a female praying mantis eating male praying mantis. And if you want, you can also think of it as a sci-fi movie, both cops and criminals have sci-fi equipment, such as the black cat sheriff's air-land car.
Being reported, the director's retirement, and copyright battles. So, what exactly is the truth? ”
After watching "Sheriff Black Cat", some parents thought that the dark, cruel and tyrannical plot in it was not suitable for their children, so they reported it. Is this reasonable?
In fact, there are indeed some intuitive killing scenes, unlike the situation of "Cat and Mouse" that fights around but is unharmed, the killing behavior in "Sheriff Black Cat" is real, such as the scene of a monkey-eating eagle eating a monkey, which may be a shadow of childhood for some netizens.
Despite scenes such as the looting of a village by a monkey-eating eagle, the killing of Inspector White Dove, and the near-death of a White Cat pilot, it now seems that these episodes are indeed overly violent, and the images are somewhat eerie.
Compared with modern cartoons such as "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" and "Blue Cat Naughty 3000 Questions", it is simply incomparable. However, the fact that these shots of Sheriff Black Cat appear does not mean that there is a problem with the cartoon.
In the 80s of the last century, when "Sheriff Black Cat" was all the rage, there were also many works in the field of domestic film and television dramas that emphasized violence and horror, the most typical of which may be the Shaanxi version of "Fengshen Bang".
Let's look back on the post-70s and post-80s, and we will definitely think of several film and television dramas that have brought shadows to our young hearts. Do you remember?In 1989's "The Adventures of Shukbeta", there was also a scene of a mouse eating kittens, and those kittens were even made into various dishes, which is still a little disgusting in retrospect.
This can be confirmed by the multiple awards won by "Sheriff Black Cat" that year. In 1985, "Sheriff Black Cat" won the Golden Bull Award for Outstanding Film in China Children's and Juvenile Films.
In 1988, it won the Outstanding Film Award of the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television of China and the Outstanding Film Award of the China Children's and Teenagers' Film Oil Baby Award.
If Sheriff Black Cat had been taken off the shelves because of a parental complaint, the cartoon would not have won these awards. You can look at how many awards the Shaanxi version of "Fengshen Bang" has won to prove this.
In addition, even after the "Sheriff Black Cat" cartoon was on the air, the *** and albums around it have been selling well, which once again proves the excellent quality of this cartoon.
With the development of the Internet, some old things have also been posted on the Internet. One of them is related to Dai Tielang, the director of "Sheriff Black Cat". Some people wrote that Dai Tielang suffered unfair treatment within Shangmei Studios, including the denial of the style of his works, the rejection of his works, the reduction of directors' salaries, and the forced early retirement.
All this is said to be due to the personnel struggles and tilting within Shangmei Studios, which led to the failure of "Sheriff Black Cat" to be fully developed. However, despite these setbacks, Dai Tielang still insisted on his artistic pursuits and became a pioneer and outstanding representative of Chinese animation.
Sheriff Black Cat was criticized for its violent plot, but it was not ultimately sidelined. On the contrary, as the pioneering work of the animated series of Shanghai Mei Film Studio, "Sheriff Black Cat" has received some policy tilts.
The director of its production and broadcast was Yan Dingxian, who once said that one of the goals set when he became director was to develop animated series, and "Hulu Brothers" after "Black Cat Sheriff" was undoubtedly the most successful.
In the 80s of the last century, television was popularized, and since "Sheriff Black Cat", the animated films of Shangmei Film Studio have entered the era of series.
It's actually a misconception that Sheriff Black Cat was misunderstood as not winning an award. This classic animation has won three important awards, and director Dai Tielang is even more eager to win awards for foreign animated films.
However, at that time, the awards for foreign cartoons were mainly for single-episode cartoons, and "Sheriff Black Cat" was a series, which was one of the reasons why it did not win the award.
At that time, Shangmei Film Studio mainly sent national cartoons abroad to participate in awards in order to spread oriental culture and earn foreign exchange. Although "Sheriff Black Cat" was warmly welcomed in China, its popular science and science fiction content may not conform to the national characteristics valued by foreign awards at that time.
Director Dai Tielang was convinced that he had been involved in underground work before the liberation, and therefore he should be given a severance benefit rather than a retirement benefit (there was a big difference between the two). This controversy will undoubtedly have an impact on the director's mood, further affecting the creation of "Sheriff Black Cat".
However, the reality is that the director will eventually retire or retire, a controversy that is determined by the timing of the establishment of Shangmei Studios in 1957, which cannot be resolved by Shangmei Studios.
From 1987 to 1991, director Dai Tielang not only directed the fifth episode of "Sheriff Black Cat", but also directed cartoons such as "Police Dog Ambulance" and "Forest, Bird and Me" until his retirement in September 1991.
Therefore, blaming the verdict of "Sheriff Black Cat" on the director's retirement or unfair treatment is obviously not objective and is quite different from the actual situation.
Although copyright issues were still relatively chaotic in the 80s of the last century, the copyright dispute case over "Sheriff Black Cat" has attracted people's attention. According to the semi-monthly magazine Law and Life, after the fifth episode aired in 1987, the cartoon triggered one of the earliest copyright disputes in the country due to copyright issues, which was also the first such case in Shanghai.
Although the "Black Cat Sheriff" cartoon is adapted from Zhu Zhixiang's science fairy tale of the same name**, and the first five episodes indicate "adapted from Zhu Zhixiang's science fairy tale" at the beginning of the film, and the corresponding remuneration is paid, copyright issues still led to the abrupt cessation of the cartoon.
Zhu Zhixiang, the original creator of "Sheriff Black Cat", found that his work was stolen by publishing houses and periodicals after the cartoon caught fire, and his name was not marked in the single book and **, nor did he receive copyright fees.
What is even more infuriating is that the copyright fee for these publications is only about 240,000 yuan, all of which were taken by Dai Tielang, the director of "Black Cat Sheriff". So, in 1987, Zhu Zhixiang angrily filed a lawsuit with the court, demanding that the infringement be stopped, a public apology, and compensation of 10,000 yuan for economic losses.
He used his actions to tell everyone that the original creator should be respected and protected by his rights.
After the court investigation, it was determined that the real original creator of the fairy tale "Sheriff Black Cat" was Zhu Zhixiang, and Dai Tielang and Shangmei Film Studio were responsible for the production of the cartoon. For the journal "Sheriff Black Cat" and ***, the copyright fees they pay include not only the remuneration for the text, but also the remuneration for the painting.
Therefore, the court held that in practice, Dai Tielang did have certain infringements. After mediation by the court, Dai Tielang compensated Zhu Zhixiang 2,880 yuan from the remuneration he obtained, and Zhu Zhixiang withdrew the lawsuit in court.
Although the lawsuit has been settled, the relationship between the two has been affected as a result. According to people familiar with the matter, Dai Tielang had already completed the follow-up work of "Black Cat Sheriff" at that time, including the design of some new small animal images.
However, due to the problem of copyright, Dai Tielang was angry for a moment and tore up all the manuscripts. And Zhu Zhixiang has already written the story of "Sheriff Black Cat" of 300,000 words, and the number has reached more than 100.
As a result of the lawsuit, the relationship between the two has reached an impasse. So, is it fair to say that the abrupt end of "Sheriff Black Cat" was due to this copyright lawsuit?
Although the copyright battle undoubtedly had a significant impact on the subsequent creation of "Sheriff Black Cat", and there is no next episode, it is not the whole problem. In fact, after the copyright lawsuit, Zhu Zhixiang, Dai Tielang and Shangmei Studios also tried to work together again four or five years later in the early 90s, but this attempt ultimately failed.
In the final analysis, the abrupt end of "Sheriff Black Cat" is a manifestation of the laws of the market. If the sixth episode of the year could continue to be filmed and continued to the seventh and eighth episodes, maybe "Sheriff Black Cat" could become a detective drama like the Conan series, or a popular science and science fiction children's film, and the audience could complain while chasing the drama.
However, due to the change of the production team in 1987 and the changes in the audience's aesthetics and tastes, it is difficult for the sequel to reproduce the amazing feeling of the year, and it is difficult to attract the audience to return by relying on feelings alone.
Similarly, the first part of "Hulu Brothers" also performed well, but by the time of the second part of "Hulu Little King Kong", the market reaction dropped significantly.
Similarly, the 2010 "Black Cat Sheriff Movie Version" directed by director Dai Tielang himself did not have a good evaluation, with a score of only 56 points, most people probably won't go to the cinema again for nostalgia ** this classic story.
In 2015, "Black Cat Sheriff: Emerald Star" was released with a new story, but the word-of-mouth score was only 57 points, only more than 60 million yuan of box office revenue.
What's even more regrettable is that it is estimated that most of the fans of "Sheriff Black Cat" that year did not know that there were still two big movies of "Sheriff Black Cat".
The best destination is to treasure "Sheriff Black Cat" in the bottom of our hearts, although there is no next episode, but this regret is also full of our love for it.