How Gargoyles Inspired Me
A Brent Salmon Memoir
A thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled, and not much has changed if you watch any kind of mainstream media. Back in the 90s, Gargoyles was the pinnacle of Disney TV, especially for shows that didn’t insult the intelligence of children. It had drama, magic awakening in a pre-cyberpunk world, and creatures that were stone by day, but warriors by night. The three main things Gargoyles instilled into me were that your family can be anything, transcending race or even species; more inspiration to study science, technology, and even specifically physics as it pertained to magic (even their magic was semi-based in physics); and in the later part of the second season, like Johnny Quest, it instilled me with a desire to travel the world studying culture and metaphysics.
The titular Gargoyles of the show had family structures based on what they called Clans (as in Scottish Clans, one assumes since they were from Scotland). These Clans seemed to be able to be joined by anyone who mutually cared for and respected other members of the Clan. They had human friends/family, the main characters were a gargoyle and a human who had mutual feelings they could never act upon beyond friendship (likely because of their differences in species). All these different creatures, or species, or races, however you want to define them, helped reinforce to me as a young person that your family is anyone who has your back for anything. A person who would lay down their life for your and for whom you’d do the same. This is a value I still hold today.
The science in Gargoyles is typical mad science-fare, but it focuses a LOT on biology and bionics as the writers and show creator seemed very interested in those aspects of how such creatures could really exist and how they, and others, would interact with modern developing technology. There are chimeras created through recombinant DNA technology, cyborgs and people equipped with powered armor. All things for a burgeoning young scientist to get super excited over to the point of obsession and helping to direct his interests in high school and then university and auto-didactic hobby learning.
Gargoyles also paid a lot of attention to magic, but treating it less as a ritualistic movement of probability and subtle influence of esoteric energies the way many real world belief systems work in their faiths, and more of an actual way for words, gestures, and biofeedback to manipulate the fabric of reality. Almost like hacking the Matrix the world is made up of in ways that follow the actual laws of physics and aren’t subtle at all. Naturally, this helped spur my interest in things like biofeedback and how it pertained to physics.
As stated above, in the latter part of season 2, the group go on a world travelling quest to encounter other myths and legends that happen to be real and other clans of gargoyles as well. These travelling adventure stories to find the truth behind the mysticism of the world are a regular theme in media that I just love so much. It’s some of my favorite escapism I suppose.
All in all, it filled me with great joy to see one of the greatest animated shows of all time brought back to life on Disney Plus. I hope this small view into my love for it inspires many other people to watch it and maybe have the big bosses at Disney finally give in and bring it back or do that huge movie they’ve been talking about doing for like 20 decades now. I hear some big director is interested in it recently.
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