Cartoon Laws

Cartoons played a pivotal role in my TV viewing experience as a kid. In retrospect I'm able to draw many conclusions about cartoons. Cartoon's manipulate physical law on a regular basis, but it is fairly consistant in it's manipulation. Oddly enough, it begins to make sense in it's own idiosyncratic way.

An example that comes to mind almost immedately is cartoon's application of a very fundemendal law: Gravity. If you've ever watched a Road Runner cartoon you'll notice that Wile E. Coyote (Spelling?) is able to run off a cliff and hover in the air, so long as he is unaware of the fact that there is no ground beneath him. Then, eventually he'll realize the awful truth, perhaps by looking down, perhaps by reaching down. Either way he's just delaying the inevidable and he will fall (perhaps his body first, elongating his neck to exagerate the look of terror on his face for the longest time). This is funny to the audiance in a dramatic irony sense which if you recall involves a particular truth that the audiance is wholefully aware of however the character is oblivious. This works best if the event, truth, situation, etc., is a painfully obvious one for the audiance and such is the case with our friend Wile E. Coyote.

Coyote always favors elaborate and intricate methods for capturing the road runner, many of which involve rockets, TNT, or other dangerous and/or combustible objects. Ocassionaly he'll strap rockets onto his person so as to match speed with the road runner. All of his plans have great potential for backfire and naturally calamity ensues. Why he continues to buy ACME products remains a mystery to me. He shows a lot of consumer confidence by purchasing products that consistently land him in harm's way. Perhaps he has a good line of credit with ACME.

Cartoons also have a funny way of playing with our favors. Favors as in who we are favoring to win out, or get what they want in this seemingly endless struggle. Did you ever wish just once that the coyote would nab the road runner once and for all? Did you ever wish the Trix rabbit could have just one bowl of trix? Seriously you friggin brats. How much of an elitist do you have to be to prevent someone from having a bowl of Trix? Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. How discriminatory. How does that send the right message? While I could continue on (and you're begging me not to), I think I'll move to another one of my favorites: Tom and Jerry.

Here we have two characters that are opposed at a very fundemendal level. No action was taken by either party to wrong the other. The cat tries to eat the mouse ex officio, that is, by virtue of position. The plot requires absolutely no subtext. The beauty is in it's simplicity and it's ability to reach all audiences.

To level the playing feild from any physical advantages of size, speed, and power, the cat might have, the mouse is quite clever, and we the audiance are naturally compelled to favor the proverbial underdog. Ocassionaly a large dog is thrown into the mix and here we are placed in an animal taxonomy where somehow the mouse and the dog are able to cooexist and occassionaly collaborate to cause the cat undue pain and discomfort. Children are able to easily digest that yes the dog and cat are enemies, the cat and mouse are enemies, but the dog and mouse are not necessarily enemies. They are not friends per se, they find themselves diplomatically alligned with a common objective, destroy the cat. These plot developments require no explanation of the character's internal motivations, and rightfully so, it would interfere with the comedic violence. Bringing me to my next point.

There's something inherinetly funny about violence in certain degrees and in certain situations. To examine why is too deep of a topic for a blog that began about cartoons, but I have several theories to offer before launching into a tangent of Cartoon's use of violence.

1. Conditioning - It has been more or less ingrained into our culture as far back as circus clowns and the three stooges that the physical pain and suffering of others can be humerous, barring there are no actual injuries.
2. "Better him than me." - I couldn't think of a better way to phrase this, but perhaps by our seeing damage inflicted on someone else of our own mortality and we somehow laugh out of relief.
3. Universal - Yes, pain is a universal thing. It's natural that things to which we can relate strike a cord, because we draw on our own experience and are able to experience with either party. That which is accessable is more humerous, because we really know it.

The comedic use of violence in cartoons is over the top and thus cannot be taken seriously. When people are shot in reality yes holes appear in them. It's unpleasant. In a cartoon, more than likely holes will just appear in your body, and when you drank water it would pour from them.

In conclusion, today's cartoons pale in comparison to the cartoons of old.