Everybody knows something about cartoons and comics. They are for children, but they are also for adults, sometimes. They make simple pictures and caricatures, just for fun or for more serious purposes. Cartoons come in different forms and styles, and they are made for different audiences in different countries: Mickey Mouse and the Disney Corporation, the Fleischer Brothers, Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers, Japanese Anime and Manga, Rocky and Bullwinkle and their Fractured Fairy Tales, Ralph Bakshi, Peter Max, Marvel Comics, Matt Groening, Stan Lee, Wallace and Gromit, Dr. Seuss, Maus, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight: from Georges Melies to Wall-e, they have been a part of popular culture for more than a century.
Like movies, animated films and novels can be analyzed academically, and this can be a common, fun way for university students to practice their critical reading and thinking skills – not too seriously (but maybe yes, seriously,)without having to read a lot. How many movies have you seen, and how many cartoon movies? Do you know things about their history? How are cartoons movies different from live-action movies? What do all of those Disney movies (Pocohontas, Mulan, etc) have in common? What are cartoons really saying? Do they have secret meanings? Can they criticize society more than other movies and escape punishment? How do they tell their stories? Do the different styles of different times and places tell us something about history and cultures?
We investigated some cartoons from different times and places, just to see what we could figure out by ourselves. Here is what we decided.
For example, there is the 1966 Japanese anime TV series Speed Racer and the 2008 Wachowsky Brothers movie version, Speed Racer. Alex and Feng showed us clips from both. The original Japanese show was made from a comic book. The animation style was quite simple compared to the style of a company like, for example, Disney. In a way, it was "underground" comics for the U.S. audience. Maybe that is why the Wachowskys, who made The Matrix, wanted to make their new one: they like things that are underground or subversive -- and they like comic books. Also, it is true that in Speed Racer there is a lot of technology, and technology is a good thing in that show. For characters like Mickey Mouse, however, technology is usually something they have problems with. That could be why Speed Racer was a hit with kids, in the 1960s, compared to Mickey Mouse.
Even if the animation was simple, Alex points out that it can be stylish because it comes from comic books. There is a newer series from the U.S. called Samurai Jack that imitates that Japanese style, but is very artistic, too.
Brian, Carol, and Edison showed us different cartoon versions of the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (that is, The Rabbit and the Turtle), to explain the differences between Disney's "classic" way and Warner Brothers' versions that make fun of Disney's way. Disney's 1934 The Tortoise and the Hare is a correct version of the classic story, where the tortoise wins the race, in the end, because he never stops and never gives up. The lesson is to be honest and never quit. In this version, the hare spends too much time trying to impress the girls and forgets the race until it is too late. In the first Warner brothers version, however, Tortoise Beats Hare (1941), Bugs Bunny is the rabbit, and the story is different. In this version, the turtle wins because he cheats! (So this is not a great version for teaching children the moral lesson of "be honest, work hard, and never quit.") In another Warner version, Rabbit Transit (1947), the turtle sort of cheats again. This time he has a rocket-powered shell. Warner and Bugs want to make fun of the official version of things.
In fact, that style has become really normal for cartoons since. The Simpsons do that, just like Warner Brothers and Bugs Bunny did, and more recent movies like Shrek do it, too. Brian, Edison, and Carol showed us that there is even a 2008 movie version of this story, Tortoise vs. Hare that makes the same kind of jokes with the story.
Like movies, animated films and novels can be analyzed academically, and this can be a common, fun way for university students to practice their critical reading and thinking skills – not too seriously (but maybe yes, seriously,)without having to read a lot. How many movies have you seen, and how many cartoon movies? Do you know things about their history? How are cartoons movies different from live-action movies? What do all of those Disney movies (Pocohontas, Mulan, etc) have in common? What are cartoons really saying? Do they have secret meanings? Can they criticize society more than other movies and escape punishment? How do they tell their stories? Do the different styles of different times and places tell us something about history and cultures?
We investigated some cartoons from different times and places, just to see what we could figure out by ourselves. Here is what we decided.
For example, there is the 1966 Japanese anime TV series Speed Racer and the 2008 Wachowsky Brothers movie version, Speed Racer. Alex and Feng showed us clips from both. The original Japanese show was made from a comic book. The animation style was quite simple compared to the style of a company like, for example, Disney. In a way, it was "underground" comics for the U.S. audience. Maybe that is why the Wachowskys, who made The Matrix, wanted to make their new one: they like things that are underground or subversive -- and they like comic books. Also, it is true that in Speed Racer there is a lot of technology, and technology is a good thing in that show. For characters like Mickey Mouse, however, technology is usually something they have problems with. That could be why Speed Racer was a hit with kids, in the 1960s, compared to Mickey Mouse.
Even if the animation was simple, Alex points out that it can be stylish because it comes from comic books. There is a newer series from the U.S. called Samurai Jack that imitates that Japanese style, but is very artistic, too.
Brian, Carol, and Edison showed us different cartoon versions of the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (that is, The Rabbit and the Turtle), to explain the differences between Disney's "classic" way and Warner Brothers' versions that make fun of Disney's way. Disney's 1934 The Tortoise and the Hare is a correct version of the classic story, where the tortoise wins the race, in the end, because he never stops and never gives up. The lesson is to be honest and never quit. In this version, the hare spends too much time trying to impress the girls and forgets the race until it is too late. In the first Warner brothers version, however, Tortoise Beats Hare (1941), Bugs Bunny is the rabbit, and the story is different. In this version, the turtle wins because he cheats! (So this is not a great version for teaching children the moral lesson of "be honest, work hard, and never quit.") In another Warner version, Rabbit Transit (1947), the turtle sort of cheats again. This time he has a rocket-powered shell. Warner and Bugs want to make fun of the official version of things.
In fact, that style has become really normal for cartoons since. The Simpsons do that, just like Warner Brothers and Bugs Bunny did, and more recent movies like Shrek do it, too. Brian, Edison, and Carol showed us that there is even a 2008 movie version of this story, Tortoise vs. Hare that makes the same kind of jokes with the story.
Fatmah and Mor added some more clips comparing the Disney style with the Warner Brothers style. They showed is the classic 1933 Disney version of The Three Little Pigs, which won an Oscar for best animated short that year. This cartoon is so classic that it is easy to understand, even though it is so old. The characters speak in rhyme, and they sing their song, "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?" which is a song almost everyone has heard somewhere, even though most of us have never actually seen this cartoon. Then they showed us a Warner Brothers cartoon from 1944 called Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears. This cartoon shows very clearly how Warner Brothers makes fun of the classic elements of these kinds of stories, as Bugs, playing the role of Goldilocks, makes fun of the bears, while the bears are trying to remember the story accurately so that they can get something (that is, rabbit) to eat.
Melaine and Shelly showed us clips from Disney's The Lion King (1994) and the Japanese anime TV series Kimba the White Lion (1966). There is a controversy about Disney's movie, that Disney may have stolen the idea from the earlier TV show. This link to the Wikipedia article about Kimba explains the controversy. It even shows that an early version of Disney's lion cub was white, just like Kimba. (It also tells about an episode of The Simpsons that mentions the controversy). But Melaine and Shelly explained the plot of Kimba, which is different from The Lion King. In Kimba, humans are destroying nature with evil technology, and killing and capturing endangered species. Kimba's misson is to try to make peace between animals and humans. Disney's movie doesn't have humans in it at all -- but then, Disney probably wouldn't make a movie that says people are evil . . . .
Melaine and Shelly showed us clips from Disney's The Lion King (1994) and the Japanese anime TV series Kimba the White Lion (1966). There is a controversy about Disney's movie, that Disney may have stolen the idea from the earlier TV show. This link to the Wikipedia article about Kimba explains the controversy. It even shows that an early version of Disney's lion cub was white, just like Kimba. (It also tells about an episode of The Simpsons that mentions the controversy). But Melaine and Shelly explained the plot of Kimba, which is different from The Lion King. In Kimba, humans are destroying nature with evil technology, and killing and capturing endangered species. Kimba's misson is to try to make peace between animals and humans. Disney's movie doesn't have humans in it at all -- but then, Disney probably wouldn't make a movie that says people are evil . . . .
Joy and Wenting showed us examples of cartoons from Tom and Jerry and Itchy and Scratchy (the characters from The Simpsons). The stories of these two groups of characters are basically the same: there is a cat and a mouse, but the mouse is smarter than the cat. Tom and Jerry are really very old: according to Joy and Wenting they started in 1940. But Itchy and Scratchy are meant to be a parody of the older cartoon. The main differences between the two are that in Tom and Jerry the cat is grey and the mouse is brown, while in Itchy and Scratchy the cat is black and the mouse is blue. So, in the new version, the animals look less realistic, but as we all know, in the new version the violence is a lot more realistic. When we look at the older cartoons, though, we can see that Tom and Jerry are really very violent themselves. Joy and Wenting showed us a cartoon of theirs called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse.
After Joy and Wenting told us about these cartoons, they also told us about Happy Tree Friends, which is even newer and, therefore, even more violent!
Ellie, Tony, and Q-La showed us clips from the Beatles's 1968 animated movie Yellow Submarine. This was called "the first psychedelic movie," but you have to be old enough to remember the 1960s to know what psychedelic means. The style of animation in the movie is very strange, and not like anything you might see today, really. It is very different from the usual Hollywood style, and it is not intended to be realistic at all. As Ellie said, it is called "surreal" animation. The plot of the movie is about bringing peace to Pepperland, and driving away the evil "Blue Meanies." In fact, it's message of peace was considered, at the time, to be very political: the movie implicitly opposed the U.S. in the war in Vietnam.
