Cartoons
My sister-in-law is visiting with her two kids, so there are a total of four in the house, which means of course we are watching cartoons.
Like most old stoners, there are some cartoons I actually like. I enjoy the stylized violence and felinophobia of Kid vs. Kat, the gross out humor of Quest and the colorful fantasy worlds presented in Tiny Planets. My favorite is Phineas and Ferb. I think it has a Simpson’s like level of creativity, the songs are great and, very much like my favorite cartoon from my youth (Rocky and Bullwinkle), a lot of the jokes are way above kid level.
One thing I’ve never really got, though, is the anthropomorphization thing. I mean, if the characters walk and talk like human beings, go to school, wear clothes and drive cars, why do they always have to be animals? One that particularly bothers me in that respect is Arthur. All of the characters have those rounded ears on top of their heads, but other than that it’s really impossible to know what animal they are, so why do they bother making them animals at all? Tiny Planets, of course, carries that to an extreme, and anything carried to an extreme is O.K. I don’t know what kind of being they’re supposed to be, but they’re way cool.
Anyway, there are cartoons out there with cows, pigs, dogs, ducks, mixed farm animals, mixed forest animals, mixed jungle animals, dolphins, dinosaurs, bears, ants, cats and mice. Lots and lots of mice. My daughter loves Angelina Ballerina.
Why so many mice? I suppose it all started with Mickey Mouse and from there on out can just be attributed to the fact that the producers of cartoons have no more originality than the producers of any other situation comedies, so they keep going with the formula that works.
I suppose the other reason is that mice are small, like kids. Everybody likes to see the underdog win, but nobody likes to see that more than an actual underdog, and that’s what kids are. Living in a world of adults, they are small and powerless. So, when the mouse defeats the cat or the roadrunner defeats the coyote, it is reassuring and inspiring.
Not exactly realistic, though.
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