For years I had this vague memory of a cartoon where a mouse was constantly throwing bricks at his girlfriend cat and she would respond with “my angel” as she was nearly knocked unconscious. It was obviously before there was any kind of PC control on cartoons. But nobody my age ever remembered it and when I was in college I wondered if I had remembered it right. I did except that it’s “little angel” rather than “my angel.” Didn’t think about it again for many years, and then recently the thoughts came to me and I googled “cartoon mouse throws brick at cat” and sure enough there was a cartoon called “Krazy Cat.”
I’m actually curious how something like this got through the family values censors of the time. I mean, politics aside, it’s really it’s really whacked and bizarre.
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September 28, 2014 at 8:30 am
suzy blah blah
-the cold words of someone who thinks nobody’s allowed to laugh for the wrong reasons.
September 28, 2014 at 9:22 am
Eric Kirk
You know, I’m not for censorship here. I think parents can make their own choices. But if the cartoon was around today and my kids were still 2 and 5 years old, I might be concerned about a cartoon which suggests that domestic violence is romantic.
September 28, 2014 at 2:33 pm
Fred Mangels
I vaguely remember that cartoon. I don’t recall why, but I didn’t like it. Probably more the animation seeming cheap than anything about good or bad messages being sent.
September 28, 2014 at 6:15 pm
Eric Kirk
Almost all the television animation was cheap those days. Cost a lot of money. And sometimes the simple animation was almost an art onto itself, though I don’t think there was anything special about this one. Apparently it was inspired by an old comic strip which was pretty good.
It was played along with Beetle Bailey and Snuffy Smith, both of which were also comic strips – in five minute segments making up a half hour cartoon show. I don’t remember the animated Beetle Bailey, but I do remember Snuffy Smith and all the drinking themes, as in this one.
September 28, 2014 at 8:12 pm
erniebranscomb
How about the Three Stooges? That kind of violent humor always made uncomfortable. I wonder how many kids went about poking their fingers in each others eyes thinking that it would be funny?
September 28, 2014 at 8:31 pm
Eric Kirk
I never got the three stooges. I didn’t even like it when the Skipper hit Gilligan with his hat all the time. Nor when the old woman on Laugh-In hit everyone with her purse. I just kept thinking, “She’s a mean unhappy person!”
September 28, 2014 at 8:48 pm
Not A Native
One problem of demonizing all violence is that it isn’t identical with tyranny or subjugation(which are clearly unjust). Not to mention all manner of legally sanctioned force(including violence). And then there’s the very human orientation toward S&M(it hurts so good!)…..
I remember seeing Krazy Kat cartoons as a child and understanding Krazy as the kid who had a crush on you and wouldn’t take NO, no matter how rudely given, for an answer. A pest that was oblivious to every rejection. Today, we might call it stalking.
Wiki has lots more, including that Krazy’s gender is indeterminate, which complicates contemporary judgements. And Ignatz always ended up in jail(justice served)…..
“Krazy Kat one of the first comics to be widely praised by intellectuals and treated as “serious” art.[2] Art critic Gilbert Seldes wrote a lengthy panegyric to the strip in 1924, calling it “the most amusing and fantastic and satisfactory work of art produced in America today.”[5] Poet E. E. Cummings, another Herriman admirer, wrote the introduction to the first collection of the strip in book form. Though Krazy Kat was only a modest success during its initial run, in more recent years, many modern cartoonists have cited the strip as a major influence.”
And Eric, in your studies, did you analyse the 1915 SCOTUS unanimous decision that upheld censorship of movies/cartoons/comics/books, ushering in decency codes? The progressive era extended only so far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Film_Corporation_v._Industrial_Commission_of_Ohio
September 28, 2014 at 9:55 pm
Anonymous
Considering recent events, it’s much more fascinating to google “motion pictures demeaning to Arabs”.
The book, “Reel Bad Arabs” documents 1,000, including Bugs Bunny.
September 28, 2014 at 10:26 pm
Anonymous
Violence against women is a constant in patriarchy culture and its expression in art will always be justified and even glorified by intellectuals. Throwing a brick at a woman’s head is not S&M.
September 29, 2014 at 9:13 am
bolithio
As a parent I have found many, many of the shows and films I remember come across as supper disturbing now. The never ending story was one that recently surprised my how negative it was…While many people think there has been violence creep into childrens media, Id say this is not so true. The creep has been occurring in the adolescent/teen media for sure, but younger kids shows have largely gotten softer (e.g. toy story, cars…)
Pinocchio was another one that surprised me. Hey how-about a family night? Lets all sit down and watch a classic friary tale? Only if you want to explain this:
September 29, 2014 at 10:35 am
suzy blah blah
I might be concerned about a cartoon which suggests that domestic violence is romantic.
-an unfounded fear and superficial understanding of the human mind’s growth. Human’s are born with a way of functioning that is expressed by forms in the mind. Maybe you don’t agree with that but many scholars and studied people including CG Jung do. And the expression of these forms is censored and controlled by the parents. This is natural. Now, especially when the child is parented by one-sided politically correct notions it happens that these natural forms become perverted by these well meant dictations. It’s human and inevitable. The art of Hermann is something that works as a compensation for the one-sided neurotic influence. It’s compensating effect works to prevent the suppressed instinctual feelings from coming out later with more energy, steam not having been let off in a healthy manner. Intellectual lessons of right and wrong (lol gimme a break) are sometimes ineffective against this very real bottled up energy that has grown exponentially and gone negative from being ignored. Let your kid throw a brick at your head, it’s a good thing, just make sure its a brick shaped pillow and not the real thing, ie, a fantasy, just like Krazy Kat is. I think it’s funny. Especially the original strips. I don’t have time to go into snuffy smith right now. Transgression? LOL! Oh suzy.
-hey Ernie –nnk nkk nkk nkk nkk.
Throwing a brick at a woman’s head is not S&M.
-um, it’s not a woman’s head, it’s a cartoon cat’s head, in a fantasy -duh. And in btw it’s a transgendered cat, sometimes female sometimes male, in the fantasy. But maybe you’re right, and it’s them dern cartoons what caused all the problems and them intellectuals are jist krazy.
Bolithio, unlike the Krazy Kat cartoons that EK remembers, those Pinochio animators were talented, that’s a great clip, i love it when the cat grabs the smoke ring and treats it like a doughnut. Good stuff for inspiring kids’ imaginations. And funny recognizable parodies of real everyday characters
one meets in life. Were you thinking something’s wrong with it? That’s nonsense, and a dangerously fascist leaning kind of thought.
September 29, 2014 at 11:10 am
Eric Kirk
Just an aside, but I view Jung, Freud, and all of the models as obsolete in the face of modern neuro-science.
Does watching violent cartoons do a child harm? Probably by itself not. I know that the cartoon disturbed me as a child – the brick-throwing is the only thing I remember about the cartoon, but for some reason all the punching in Batman did not. Probably had to do with how much I sympathized with the victim of the violence.
I cried in Pinochio, and the kids being turned into donkeys as they were crying for their mothers disturbed me. But I think the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang creeped me out the most.
September 29, 2014 at 12:15 pm
suzy blah blah
-well the main reason you brought up this obscure memory of an obscure cartoon anyway is because you identify with Krazy Kat, the confused stalker, who must think he/she’s a mouse, or maybe that Ignatz is a cat. It’s actually pretty funny when thinking about human behavior. In any case Krazy Kat is the one who becomes the victim of his/her own unawareness and stupidity. A good moral. And the kicker is, he/she doesn’t learn. Which is a popular interweb-meme style definition of insanity.
September 29, 2014 at 12:21 pm
suzy blah blah
–insanity –eg, Krazy Kat. Maybe along with promoting domestic violence you could see it as violence against the mentally unstable. too. Give a little more punch (hope that’s not too violent for you) to your protest.
September 29, 2014 at 7:57 pm
Not A Native
Dunno Eric, back in the the day the fear was that an ‘overprotected’ child would develop a ‘complex’ and become an inept social misfit. Seems that your folks didn’t get the word.
From Wiki, Comic Code of 1954
Looks like they prohibited just about everything that contemporary culture enshrines, though it had to be amended in 1971 to include drug use…Oh well…
Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.
In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
No comic magazine shall use the words “horror” or “terror” in its title.
All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.
Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.
Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.
Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.
Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.
September 30, 2014 at 8:48 am
Not A Native
Why no notice here of this important new law? Would it benefit Krazy Kat?
Can/should social relations, beyond physical violence, be established by law. in a ‘free’ non-sectarian society?
Sexual coercion is clearly considered not admirable. But is it less tolerable than other common coercions?
Would/should this also be applied not only to colleges but the general public too? Should the age of sexual majority be raised?
“…the most talked-about new approach, adopted by many schools in the past year, is to require mutual “affirmative consent,” and not just passive acquiescence, before any sexual contact. California has raised the stakes becoming the first state in the country to pass a law obliging every college to have a consent policy or lose state financial aid.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/us/california-law-on-sex-consent-pleases-many-but-leaves-some-doubters.html
September 30, 2014 at 11:08 am
suzy blah blah
-Nan, for me to read the history of that kind of ignorant oppressiveness being put into being, knowing as i do what ultimately the tragic results on the population resulting from thoughts so conservative being promoted are, is just one more eye opening look at the destructive influence that censorship of language, in general, has on the world. But i have to admit that i got a good laugh reading the stiff fuddy-duddyness in the old code. Except for the tragedy of people actually taking it serious, the dumbfounding unawareness exhibited there is as hilarious in it’s ignorant 50s style ‘sanitary cleansing power goodness’ as the soap ads that i posted on another thread. And it is also as tragic in its out of touch with reality ‘cleansing power’ as is the parallel to nuclear bombs that i suggested there. It’s the old Truman and Eisenhower era fashioned bullshit. America the super clean super good ‘city on the hill’. What’s worse, your kid seeing some cleavage in a comic book, or dropping an atom bomb on a city or two?
About ten or so years ago i was traveling on, i think it was I90, coming back to CA from my grandparents in northern Minnesota. We stopped to help some people who were broken down on the side of the road. We gave them a jump to get their car started and they invited us to their home for a meal –potatoes, beans, and some cheap wine. They were elderly Cree indians, i think one was half Chippewa. A woman and three men. Although they were alcoholics, it was a privilege to be in their presence. We sat in their dirty dark shack and talked. They sang to us a little bit. Fragments of old indian songs. Very spirited, but there was a sadness in the deeply wounded pride that they couldn’t hide. In my mind i can see their eyes today. I didn’t ask them if they were concerned that the comic book version of Hiawatha might be showing too much cleavage. Or if they thought the lack of good American morals contained in uncensored comic books incited rape, torture, and murder of men, women and children.
October 1, 2014 at 10:22 am
Anonymous
Krazy Kat started life as an early newspaper comic…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat
graphically innovative… It may even be the precursor of the ubiquitous violent chase cartoons that followed.
October 1, 2014 at 2:33 pm
suzy blah blah
-Nan, your college campus question begs to be informed by the theater of Krazy Kat. Should Ignatz be jailed when the ‘violent’ brick throwing is in essence consensual? Krazy sees it as a sign of love. The comic’s theme points to the inadequacy of democracy, the law, and unconscious narrow-minded whiners like Eric.
October 1, 2014 at 7:27 pm
Not A Native
I agree suzy, it has many interpretations which include socially commentary for its time. But I don’t think violence or misogyny are legitimately among them.
October 2, 2014 at 5:48 am
suzy blah blah
But I don’t think violence or misogyny are legitimately among them.
-of course they aren’t. For Eric to write this politically and intellectually small minded disapproval of the Krazy Kat brick throwing theme in defense of “family values” and against “domestic violence” is, at best, hypocrisy formed from ignorance. I feel sorry for his kids having to be beat down by such a provincial mentality. Hopefully the lack of sophistication in rearing can be remedied when they’re older and are able see through dad’s uninformed guidance.
October 2, 2014 at 6:58 am
suzy blah blah
-another thing, Nan, speaking of ignorant misconceptions of artistic expressions in regards to present day regulations being imposed on college campuses, check out these links:
Will Mitchell, who has been coordinating the sessions, said he was told by Carla Bengston, head of the art department, that the unclothed models might provoke “wrong thoughts” in people
http://www.heatherhalpern.com/uo-letter.html
https://eugenearttalk.com/2014/09/uo-figure-drawing-flap-the-cover-up-now-involves-big-bird/
October 2, 2014 at 11:18 am
Not A Native
Suzy, I’m really surprised and disheartened by that Univ of Oregon dean’s decision. Just shows that the reputation(good or bad) of an organization isn’t a reliable way of characterizing it. FWIW, the US Secret Service is going through an even greater belieing of its reputation.
I’m a big supporter of academic inquiry and tend to trust the authority of academics more than any other group. But every open group has misguided and misplaced people that don’t ‘get it’. Hopefully, the dean will rethink his policy and so some introspection about his profession. The email that included ‘bad thoughts’ wasn’t in the link. I only hope it was taken somewhat out of context because its outrageous for a public university to cite that as justification.
Nudity/clothing will always be a touchy subject on the leading edge of cultural expression. And it should be, because gender attraction is strongly rooted in appearance. The artistic beauty of a body is always linked with our instincts.I’m sure bedbugs and dust mites(ugly as we see them) feel the same physical attractions(though its likely based more on smell) to each other. No society can flourish if it doesn’t legitimize gender attraction and also regulate it.
So it seems to me that attempts to sterilize or inoculate every exposure or depiction of a body is simply contrary to a very important aspect of our humanity. Prudishness as an ideal just isn’t sustainable as a cultural value because its not in alignment with what we are as animals.
And coming full circle, that’s where we seem to find Eric. Having excessively squeamish and prudish tendencies for a self proclaimed progressive. Whether inborn or acquired, its still remediable.
October 2, 2014 at 1:19 pm
suzy blah blah
Whether inborn or acquired
-LOL! you crack me up sometimes. But Eric’s prudish argument against it’s content aside, what to me is apparent, and also awe inspiring, is how big an impact (still getting responses 100 years later even here) what was essentially a one-liner, with variations, had on the culture.
And of course too, it’s ironic how the naive EK used it’s content to argue against for a ‘progressive’ cause, and then only after posting it found out that the brick he was whining about originally came from the classic comic-writer George Herriman, since along with being a progressive he also poses as some kind of comics connoisseur from time to time, when, laughably, he keeps proving himself again and again to be nothing more than a rube on all fronts. Someone should write a comic about him.
October 2, 2014 at 10:11 pm
Not A Native
I can see the comic now….. The main character is E(e)K. A sorta Seinfeld wit with a personality that’s a merging of Walter Mitty’s delusions of grandeur and Monk’s OCD.
Eek, a lawyer defender of the status quo who’s scared of sitting on the toilet in a public men’s room. Certain he can simply debate and resolve age old questions like does free will exist?, but sees no debate needed about energy because nuclear power is unquestionably necessary to prevent millions of deaths.
October 3, 2014 at 10:44 am
suzy blah blah
-if you can see it it’s real 😉 but actually i do think there may an opening in cartoonland for Krazy Kirk to fill. I googled animated lawyers and it looks like the field needs to be updated. All i could find is, “Carrot Thief” – 1951, in which Porky Pig plays a stuttering prosecuting attorney, with Bugs on the witness stand. The judge is Daffy.
October 5, 2014 at 8:16 am
Not A Native
Introducing a new subject,
I just received the California General Election Guide in the mail and there’s no mention of Prop. 1, the controversial water bond proposal. But its on my sample ballot. So, what’s up with that??
October 6, 2014 at 11:01 pm
Anonymous
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
October 8, 2014 at 1:00 pm
suzy blah blah
-that’s a very significant maxim Anonymous. And it shows how important it is that enlightened people begin to focus organized progressiveness towards turning the tide of tv violent immorality. Only then will true and right change reject the incivility of change that isn’t real change like The Simpsons etc.
Or in the precise words of one wiser than suzy:
“The next value I speak of must be forever cast in stone. I speak of decency, the moral courage to say what is right and condemn what’s wrong, and we need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons. An America that rejects the incivility, the tide of incivility and the tide of intolerance”
October 9, 2014 at 6:10 am
Just Watchin
I agree suzy. The Walton family sets an excellent example for the country. LONG LIVE WALMART !!
October 9, 2014 at 8:57 am
suzy blah blah
-JW, that makes about as much sense as saying that The Simpsons caused O.J. Simpson’s domestic violence. Just because the name is the same doesn’t mean that you can switch identities. Okay, you can. But i think you then stand the danger of losing JonBoy in the mix.
October 9, 2014 at 11:50 am
Unk John
Well, Just Watchin’, I’m Just Hopin’ that your Just Equatin’ the TV Walton family with the real-life Walton family was Just Kiddin’.
October 9, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Anonymous
Throwing bricks at women is funny! Yuk yuk!
October 9, 2014 at 1:00 pm
Just Watchin
Now wait Just a minute……you mean to tell me that there was a TV show about another family named Walton ??
October 9, 2014 at 7:57 pm
suzy blah blah
Yuk yuk!
-cluck cluck cluck.