Soupe Opera


Soupe Opéra is a French children's stop motion television programme created by French animation studio Marlou Films, known for their stop motion tv shows, in the early 1990s and aired on FR3/France 3 in France, and was also aired in Australia, originally on free-to-air, non-commercial channel ABC1, but is now shown more commonly on sister channel ABC2 on the ABC 4 Kids line-up, if at all. In the UK it aired on ITV in its CITV children's block and later on the CITV channel. Soupe Opera also aired on Cartoon Network as part of Small World.

Visuals

In each episode, fruit and vegetables spontaneously exit a basket, moving by themselves, and cut themselves up to form animals and objects. The animals formed then perform actions, such as eating the left over food. In some episodes, the food comes out of a garbage bin to form the animal, such as a possum.

Soundtrack

Soupe Opera features a distinctive soundtrack by French artists C.I.P/Garlo. The score consists of two pieces of music, re-used every episode in the same order. The first track is played during the stop motion scenes, and features four voices singing in an a cappella fashion. The voices are a mixture of live performed singing, beatboxing, and sampled vocal sounds played back on a synthesiser. The second track is an electronic funk arrangement of the same tune played over the credits.

Following

This show has developed somewhat of a cult following, particularly in France and Australia. This is mainly among adolescents of the present time, who watched the show when it was aired in the early to mid 1990s and 2000s. The whole series of 26 episodes have been posted on YouTube.

Controversy

For a similar incident, read Pokémon Shock
A 2000 episode of Soupe Opera featuring a bat rapidly flying its cabbage wings resulting in them flashing on the screen has caused over 450 young children in France to have epileptic attacks and seizures. The infamous episode has since been removed from French Television.