File this post under ‘isn’t the internet cool’, particularly wikipedia.
I watched a lot of cartoons growing up. The fact that after 20 years I can still remember scene by scene most Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons makes me wonder what effect these had in shaping my personality (many of these classic cartoons are posted on YouTube and other video sites). Watching some of these again for the first time in many years brought back many memories and prompted me to do a little research on the cartoons that I loved and still love (though for different reasons now, but that’s another post).
Something I learned very young was that there was a clear difference in style from cartoon to cartoon. I began to recognize that if the opening credits for a cartoon included names like Chuck Jones, Fritz Felang, or Tex Avery then the cartoon would be enjoyable. Within a few seconds I could decipher, based on color, music, font, print quality, and other cues whether a cartoon would be worth watching. I didn’t connect these differences to cartoons created over a span of several decades, by different artists, with different cultural influences. To me the how and why cartoons were created was a mystery, and I thought it strange that the cartoons didn’t always look the same.
One cartoon series where these differences in style is very apparent is the Tom and Jerry toons. The best cartoons were produced by, I believe, in the 40′s and/or 50′s by the Hanna Barberra team with Tex Avery thrown into the mix somewhere. These are drawn very similar to disney animation of the same era (in my opinion), but unlike disney are very violent in a cartoon funny way. The level of comic violence is truly amazing, but very very funny. The comic timing, music, and voices (primarily screams) are more funny to me now than they were as a kid. As an aside, I think it’s obvious that Tom and Jerry are the primary influences for the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons on the Simpsons.
But the Tom and Jerry characters had multiple incarnations over the years. There was an era produced by Chuck Jones, the guy responsible for many of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons. His T&J had a distinctive style that looked a lot more like Bugs Bunny than T&J. His mouse character also had these bushy eyebrows, and Tom looked at lot less mischevious. Overall the cartoons were less violent, and hence less funny.
In the 70′s there was a Tom and Jerry show that was awful. All the characters that were usually mortal enemies were suddenly friends going on adventures together. Jerry had this huge bow tie that looked like something the Don Knotts character on Three’s Company would wear. The annoying theme song from that show still pops into my head every now and then. Severely 70′s and severely unfunny.
If you watched these cartoons after school, like I often did, then usually the shows would be presented in half-hour blocks based around a set of popular characters, so usually something like the bugs bunny half hour, or woody woodpecker half hour, etc… Three cartoons would be shown in a half hour, interspersed with ads for cereal and toys. A half hour block of Tom and Jerry, for example, would show toons from all eras of the characters. If you were lucky they would show a few older T&J’s and then throw in a 70′s T&J at the end. My point is that if you watched long enough you would end up seeing many examples of the entire catalogue of Tom and Jerry.
Which brings me to the actual reason for writing this post…
