Cartoons — Love or Hate?
A short history and summary…
Cartoons have long since been a part of human communication. From cave paintings to a political satire in The New York times to The Simpsons watching TV, we are surrounded by many illustrations and cartoons. Cartoons attempt to entertain us and try to inform us. They take our reality and morph it to make us see humorously or offer us other ways to see the intended idea through additional perspectives. New worlds, new characters, and new ideas. We all have a favorite comic strip or a character on our favorite television show. We don’t spend much time thinking about where cartoons came from and what lies in their history.
A cartoon is “a sketch or drawing, usually humorous, as in a newspaper or periodical, symbolizing, satirizing, or caricaturing some action, subject, or a person of popular interest.” (Dictionary.com). This means that a cartoon represents something in our world but more lightly or funnily. Sometimes even dark or insulting to some. It makes it easier for us to grasp it or perhaps, make something of a serious nature, more fun or interesting. The word “cartoon” comes from the 1670s French word carton meaning “a drawing on strong paper (used as a model for another work).” Carton comes from the Italian word cartone, which means “strong, heavy paper, pasteboard.” These preliminary sketches were used before a fresco, tapestry, or stained-glass illustration was made. Once the sketch was drawn on paper, a cartoon, the artist would trace the cartoon onto the final design.
Until the 1840s, the term “cartoon” was used for anything but preliminary sketches for fine artwork. It was coined in 1843 by a British magazine called PUNCH. During that time, the Houses of Parliament were redecorating after a fire. Artists submitted cartoons, or preliminary sketches, in hopes of having their paintings displayed in the houses. The punch used these cartoons to attack the parliament in a satirical way. With heavy sarcasm, PUNCH declared that the government had “determined that, as they cannot afford to give hungry nakedness the substance which it covets, at least it shall have the shadow. The poor ask for bread, and the philanthropy of the State accords — an exhibition”. A series of cartoons were then used to attack the government’s exuberant spending. In this way, PUNCH magazine created the first satirical illustrations, which led to a whole new way people could communicate and share ideas.
The idea of using illustrations to portray what is going on in our politics soon spread. The term was coined in the 1840s, but the first cartoon that appeared in the Americas was an illustration from Benjamin Franklin in The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. It was a drawing of a snake cut into many pieces representing the broken-up colonies, and it had the famous words “Join or Die” under them; to promote togetherness during hard times. Thomas Nast is considered the “Father of the American Cartoon.” He was responsible for creating an ass to represent the Democrats around 1870 and the elephant to represent Republicans around 1874. He is very known for bringing down government corruption after the American Civil War. His cartoons were humorous and easy to consume to understand what was going on in their local and country-wide politics. They were meant to be unflattering and entertaining, yet mocking, views of the two parties but are now used as a symbol to represent the parties officially.
Political cartoons are not the only instance of humorous illustrations. Illustrations have always existed in how people communicate, but things get interesting when cartoons become animated. The most significant cartoon drawing that Thomas Nast is known for is creating the classic image of a chubby Santa. Yes, it was not the Coca-Cola companies who made the notion that we all know well and all kids love, but a political cartoonist whose satire was meant to bring light to problems in the political system.
Winsor McCay is considered the “father of the animated cartoon.” In 1914 McCay created a cartoon titled Gertie the Dinosaur. This was the first cartoon to feature a character developed especially for animation. He was the first to show the full potential of the medium of animated cartoons. A well-known animation director, Chuck Jones, once said, “the two most important people in animation are Winsor McCay and Walt Disney, and I’m not sure which should go first” (Canemaker, 2006). McCay was by no means the first animator, but he was the first to create a character that people could fall in love with and keep watching. He developed many of the technical innovations that illustrators still use today.
After the success of his first two cartoons, McCay brought in an assistant, John A Fitzsimmons, to help him create a much longer and much larger production that was more detailed — that idea was for Gertie the Dinosaur. McCay created critical techniques in animation by making transition points of animations (called keyframes). He was the first to do this to help layout the overall action of the cartoon. That was not enough for him, though. He then created “inbetweening” or “tweening,” which is now used by animators and artists to fill in the background and make the cartoon more focused. He was also the first to include himself in the comics, combining live-action and animation. Later, we would see this in famous films such as Marry Poppins.
Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie, produced in 1928, was the first cartoon with synchronized sound and was the first full-length cartoon to feature Mickey Mouse. Disney then created well-known masterpieces such as Snow White and Fantasia. The 50s United Productions of America, which ex-Disney animators formed, created a less theatrical cartoon. They created a bolder, abstract rendition with limited movements in the background. These techniques made animation much cheaper and saved the animator’s expensive time and resources. Soon other cartoonists were creating animation with the UPA standards, aired on television. The longest-running cartoon shows are The Flintstones, which aired in the 1960s, and The Simpsons, in 1989. Now cartoons on television are on every station, even cartoons that are intentionally made for adults only.
Cartoons continue to have a lot of success in entertainment. They now include full-length movies with modern computer animation like CGI or computer-generated imagery. Computer-generated imagery does not cut down on the illustrator’s work. It is still just as long of a process. It is just a new and different way to create those cartoons. Toy Story, the first entirely computer-generated entire feature film, took four years to develop, which is how long it took the creators of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to draw out each scene by hand, hundreds of times. The new technologies like stop motion and pixelation allow us to be a lot more creative and push reality, stretching to previously unavailable boundaries. We can now go above our limits, like impossible physics, impossible creatures, hilarious situations, and test our concepts of realism. We can now make 3D cartoons and fake live-action.
Cartoons have a long history with us. It lets us exaggerate our reality and make it more entertaining. It also allows us to serve up a perspective that is easy to consume and easy to accept. With so many people before us putting a lot of work and creativity into their work, we can use what they have developed and work on it to create even more. There are so many new and unique cartoons like Japanese Anime and comic books that open up new worlds for us. To take us to unique new places and meet great new characters. However, the original political satires have not been lost and have not been eliminated, nor do they appear to be going away anytime soon. Our newspapers are still filled with exaggerated politicians in extreme situations. We still love Garfield and Marmaduke and that latest picture of our president with an oversized head and bad jokes.
The question is, do you love cartoons or someone that ignores them?
