I spent my formative years being programmed, brainwashed, and subverted by comics and animation… I consumed everything from Betty Boop to Archie, then Beavis and Butthead, Ren & Stimpy and more… Later in life, I spent quite a great deal of time and effort trying to deprogram my brain, and now have hopefully reached a point of balance between the two extremes… As both an anti-consumer and a cartoonist myself, it is my endeavor to take the commercial elements left behind by past and present generations, and create anti-propaganda… Yet I see a need to take a brief journey through our shared cultural experience, and highlight the bad within the supposed good, as well as the good among the sick and twisted…
As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to watch the truly censored stuff like ‘Fritz The Cat’, but it was legal in our household to watch the old animated shorts that my parents’ era had grown up with… I still clearly remember noticing for the first time, a Betty Boop cartoon from the early 1930’s where The Old Man Of The Mountain has cornered her up a tree and makes the devil sign with both hands while singing… It only happens for a few seconds, and I’m not suggesting that this destroyed my innocence… I merely wish to point it out, for it was weird to see that as a child… By today’s standards it’s so innocuous that it would seem funny to feel threatened by it…
They say Walt Disney was a racist and a union-buster, who basically ran Hollywood sweatshops for animators… He applied his own brand name to their work, and for this alone he deserves very little respect in my estimation… There’s also a story of a high society birthday party in his honor, where a few of his animators made an in-house film of Mickey Mouse and Minnie having sex, which was shown to the party guests… After it was finished, Walt stood up and complimented whoever made it, asking that they raise their hands so he could honor them properly… They stepped forward and were promptly fired, sent packing by the humorless propagandist…
Animation in the 1930’s got so sexually charged by the Hollywood machine, that middle-America panicked, and thus the decency codes were established… As cartoons then became less spicy, the public slowly lost interest in sex symbols such as Betty Boop… It wasn’t until WWII that erotic undertones in cartoons grew popular again, as millions of horny soldiers were permitted to fantasize about their favorite two-dimensional pin-up girls… I have to interject here that I personally know a few men who have admitted to me that they are sexually attracted to cartoon girls such as Wonder Woman and Princess Jasmine… The notion was mindblowingly ironic to me when I heard it, because while I DO have my own fantasies, I prefer somewhat more attainable ones than the utterly impossible…
Cartoons as propaganda were a smashing success… Even Japan used animation for WWII, depicting teddy bears dropping from war planes in parachutes… Maybe this was the true origin of anime, I don’t know… Bugs Bunny got in on the racist war propaganda as well, in some of the most disturbing scenes of its era… Once again, our own postmodern zeitgeist FAR surpasses every bit of animated shock and awe of former decades, and it does so intentionally… Even the Christian church had its comic book bible that I read from cover to cover… Sadly, it sort of skipped the profound wisdom of King Solomon, and also the one profound chapter on unconditional love by the Apostle Paul… It went straight to the gory battles and mysterious fig leaves covering innocent genitalia, but I guess that was what my adolescent mind craved anyway…
The 1970’s blew the lid off of cartoons, with X-Rated films like ‘Fritz The Cat’ and ‘Heavy Metal’… Luckily I didn’t see these until I was over 18, but now with the internet, all the rules evaporate... These days, animations such as these are likely considered very tame… And I am not out to promote or defend all of this, simply to shed light on the tendency of our culture to perpetually push the limits of decency and sanity within cute little doodles… I actually do that myself, but in a different way… I have my own set of decency standards, based more around whether it elevates my awareness or brings me down… I typically ask myself when I do a cartoon, “Is this constructive, or is it destructive?” If it somehow brings people together, I develop the idea… But if it’s divisive, I often scrap it and move on…
None of this is secret information… But childhood innocence is a continual phenomenon, since babies are being born every day… Therefore, the corruption of their minds by programming is a continual occurrence, and one that is typically overlooked by the stay-at-home mom… I have often heard the statement about how letting the kids watch a DVD is cheaper than getting a babysitter… For anyone who holds this philosophy strongly, I suggest you watch, ‘Cartoons Kick Ass: A History of Subversive Animation’… It is far more revelatory than I can be here… I found a 4-Part YouTurd link, so you can watch it now, if you wish!
So why do some animators flash a vagina in a few frames of children’s animation? Why have other races and cultures been shown as stupid and inhumane? Why are viewers so susceptible to the cuddly Smurfette power of suggestion? These are discussions we need to have, and each answer could be a series of articles… In other words, I don’t have a great fix-all remedy… But what I CAN say is that my own self-editing is a way to navigate through that moral maze, and it works for me… If anything makes me feel yucky, either as a consumer OR as a producer, I won’t go there… Crap just breeds more crap, and there really is no end down that dead-end road of trying to outdo the latest, grossest thing… True, I still love ironic novelties, such as a comic I drew of Wolverine stabbing himself with his own claws because the X-Men threw him a surprise party… But Logan has that healing ability, you see? So it somehow was okay for me, because he never got hurt! Not a great argument, I admit, but it’s such a fine line to tread…
All of this is to say that we should be neither lusting after the sick and twisted, nor afraid of it… Too much depravity makes one hollow, unable to connect with what is truly meaningful in life… But too much hallmark-card cuteness is possibly far worse, because it’s impossible to grow inside a cookie cutter stringency of debutante protocol… A surefire way to strike a healthy balance is to TURN IT OFF… Challenge yourself, stop consuming for a week, then try a month, or a year… Not only will you find yourself imagining new thoughts and concepts, when you finally DO return to the world of comics and cartoons you will rediscover your childhood innocence once again…
To get a copy of my book of comics, ‘Millennium Wage’ (2011) please visit: http://www.lulu.com/shop/craig-cmor-morrison/millennium-wage/paperback/product-16968816.html
