An Uninformed History of Cartoons

For simplicity's sake, let's just say it all began with Wilson McCay and his most famous of creations: Gertie The Dinosaur. As always the truth is far more complex, but, as you would have no doubt gathered by now, research is beyond me. At the very least, his was the first 'interactive' cartoon. After that Felix came along and played with the medium a bit; picking up horizon lines, holding exclamation marks etcetera. And roughly around this time Disney unleashed his lovable mouse for all the world to enjoy. In the beginning, he was quite a naughty little creature who was always up to mischief. But soon Walt discovered it was immoral to reveal his greatest achievement in such an unflattering light, so the next time he let the public feast their eyes on his little Mickey he was a very different organism indeed. Gone were the days of yore in which that lovable mouse would poke unsuspecting victims and whistle innocently when they sought revenge, to be replaced with a rather bland moralistic beast that would most likely try to prevent accidents instead of causing them. The final straw was removed with the ill-advised redesign that saw Mickey acquire more conventional eyes and clothing. But by then his popularity was assured, and no amount of flimsy characterisation could stop his reign.

In stark contrast to the strict moralistic principles upheld by Walt's team, Warner Brothers, Fleischer and MGM went in a totally different direction with their violent, sometimes racist, but ultimately more interesting cartoons. Due to budget constraints, a lot of their output consisted of 'chase' cartoons, as they were the cheapest to make. But all of them succeeded in creating some of the greatest American cartoons around. Warner Brothers had a plethora of famous creations: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, that singing frog - to name but a few. Fleischer had the terrific Popeye adaptation and Betty Boop, not to mention countless other classics. And MGM had Tex Avery; the greatest person ever to work on cartoons.

After this prolific Golden Age, cartoons became stale and nearly died out. Hanna-Barbera succeeded in reviving the medium through television – albeit at the sake of quality – with a wealth of identical cartoons from The Flintstones to the one with the cats. As time went on, these cartoons got even worse and eventually collapsed with the folding of the company. At this point animation became defiantly crap; controlled as they were by persons who had never put pencil to paper. And that lasts to this day.

The only blip on the cartoon radar came in the early '90s thanks to Canadian artist John Kricfalusi. In an attempt to bring cartoonists back into the creative fore of animation, he created what must surely rank as the best cartoon since the '60s: The Ren & Stimpy Show. Their rule was that if you couldn't draw, you couldn't work on the show and this spawned brilliance in the medium that had been lost for the best part of thirty years. Inevitably it all went pear shaped and when Nickelodeon took over the creative side of things, hope was all but lost.

Another boost came in the shape of the enormously successful show The Simpsons. At the start of its run, it was almost like an animation and they played with the medium a bit; but as it hit its stride, the writing seemed to be the only important aspect of the show and the animation became secondary. The fact that it was a cartoon at all was because it gave them licence to write jokes that wouldn't work in any other medium. Nowadays even the scripts are awful, so there's really no reason to watch it at all. Over the years the animation seems to have shifted over to the computer – or so it looks – and everything about it has become painful to watch. Then Family Guy came along, which was very much in the same vein (but with worse animation), and it sat uncomfortably between the extremes of South Park (which contained the worst animation to date; cheap and nasty in every way) and the comparatively milder Simpsons.

Of course internet animation didn't help either thanks to Flash (ironically pioneered by John Kricfalusi) and similar web-based programs, and here we are now with no good cartoons left. What's that you say? Japanese animation? Well I purposely avoided mentioning them because I was only ambitious enough to cover American cartoons. And besides, anime is God awfull as well. Sure, the animation itself is actually important over there, but it's all brought down by cookie-cutter design and weak formulaic scripts. The exceptions being Miyazaki (the Eastern Walt Disney, as he's known. Yes, that's right: I like my anime to be as Western as possible!) and Osamu Tezuka (heavily influenced by Walt Disney as well; that's where the big eyes came from).

I guess I'd better hit the drawing board.