I love social and political commentary in funny and “goofy” cartoons. Growing up, the Animaniacs cartoons were always a source of excellent social commentary and adult humor. They were always done in subtle ways which most little kids do not even get. In today’s cartoons, this commentary has become much more in your face with cartoons like Family Guy and South Park. And in some Nickelodeon cartoons I have seen recently, their does not seem to be the same level of social and political commentary.
This week I have chosen to look at two Goofy cartoon from 1941 and 1953. I do not want to comment on the animation itself because that would be a whole other blog topic, but their are multiple differences between the different era’s of Goofy. However, what is the same is the subtle social commentary in the cartoon. What is the same is the theme that humans have not changed very much since the beginning of time. In the first cartoon, “the art of self defense” the animators show two men fighting as cave men all the way through to men fighting in modern day. What is interesting is that the fighting does not change at all throughout history. It is just two men simply hitting each other back and forth in a very dumb manner. In the second cartoon, “how to dance” the animators show groups of people dancing in a very primitive way in a large group. They show Goofy doing all this training to learn how to dance properly, and when he finally goes to a club to dance, everyone storms the floor and the scene looks exactly the same as it did in primitive times.
I wondered why the animators would do this and I started thinking of the time in which these cartoons were made. In 1941, I think the point is that people still fight and go to war with each other and kill each other. Just because the weapons are more advanced, does not mean that the killing is any less primitive. In the “how to dance” cartoon, I think this is an example of the changing times and that rock n’ roll began to take over the music scene and traditional dancing started to go out the window. The dancing they showed also looks very similar to the club scene today which is people just jumping up and down and rubbing against each other. The classiness of dancing is gone, and that is the point made in Goofy’s “how to dance”.
I commented on Britney Alberry and Katherine Danoy’s posts
