Tom and Jerry: 80 years of cat vs. mouse | Hacker News Reader

Tom and Jerry: 80 years of cat vs. mouse

bbc.co.uk

49 pointsamcrouch22 comments

> "I think most people can identify with little Jerry because there's always an oppressor in our lives," he says.

As a child I sided with Jerry, but as I grew older I’ve come to a different conclusion: Jerry is a jerk

In nearly every episode he is the instigator and Tom simply wants to be left alone. He’ll be sleeping or trying seduce Toodles, and Jerry will come and steal his food, wake him up, or mess up his chances. There is only a handful of episodes where Tom directly starts the confrontation.

The life lesson is that in a David v Goliath situation, it’s not always the big guy in the wrong.

> Jerry is a jerk

Haha, indeed. They have a few episodes (maybe two or three) in which Tom wins in the end. I loved those.

I clearly remember one sequence from Tom & Jerry I watched while waiting for a plane in London (I guess because of the violence it must be one of the originals?):

* The neighbor’s bulldog is chained up.

* Tom figures out how long the chain extends and draws a line on the ground there.

* Tom taunts the bulldog and the bulldog runs to the end of his chain.

* Tom uses the dog’s blurred biting and scratching motions to carve a bat out of a 2x4.

* Tom beats him over the head with the bat.

* Then Jerry secretly erases the line and redraws it closer to the dog.

* Tom taunts the dog again and this time the dog jumps right into his lap.

* Tom literally leaps out of his skin, which the dog holds like a coat and hands back to him.

If anyone knows the name of this episode I would be much obliged since it may be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on television.

Around the 1.30min mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uNDQOCgOT8

My favorite Tom and Jerry is episode from 1964 produced by Chuck Jones where Tom is a famous baritone singing “Figaro!”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Above_and_the_Mouse_Be...

A YouTube clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdVUdB1PjmQ

To call a cartoon racist based on a minor character that barely appears in some episodes is ridiculous. Just about every show back then that had non white people was racist. The whole society was racist, just as it is now. Frankly, it's ludicrous to focus on such a small, mostly irrelevant part of the show in light of the context.

It depends on which side of the line you stand. If a stereotype caused harm to a person or a group, they have a right to be aggrieved about it. You asking to “simply forget” and invalidating their situation by calling it “ridiculous” may not be the best possible option to take.

I never asked that. Quite the opposite. I think the show is great and shouldn't be banned as it is in many places. It's the people who call it racist that are banning it as if somehow that will make the world less racist? Or it'll make history less racist? Or why do they want to ban it? In that case we need to start banning all the shows of that era because they are literally all racist. Why single this cartoon out when there are much worse examples? So where is this line to be drawn? Because this seems arbitrary. Let's ban some things that are racist but not others.

> banned as it is in many places

Is it? Where?

Cartoons are typically put in front of kids without any context. If you’re going to show them without cutting the stuff that was okay in the 1940s but won’t fly in the 2020s, then you had damn well better surround it with context, and mark it as something kids shouldn’t be watching by themselves. What’s a six year old kid now gonna know about the forties? Nothing, that’s what. They’re gonna see gags from a time when we were actively engaged in constructing negative stereotypes of the Axis powers and when second-hand caricatures of minstrel shows was the only way anyone knew how to draw black people and just assume that’s what those people are like.

I love the medium, I trained to work in it. I have watched a lot of old cartoons. There is some stunning work by masters of the form at the peak of their powers that is also incredibly racist by today’s standards; it’s worth preserving this work, but Cartoons Are For Kids, and if something needs context you have to scream about this to keep distracted parents from just putting it on for their kids.

Ah, the old save the kids argument. You think kids are that stupid? You really underestimate them. I was watching these cartoons when I was young and I didn't become a racist piece of shit. This was in a country that is almost completely white, where most people are actually racist. But hell, if Tom and Jerry are what's making America racist, let's ban that shit. Maybe we can ban the confederate flag while we're at it too. Oh wait, not that's racism disguised as "heritage." Don't ban that. They're still flying the swastika in Berlin right?

Darling, I grew up in the American South with old cartoons on TV and managed to not be a racist asshole too.

I’m not saying watching Mammy Two-Shoes shuck and jive her way through a couple of setups for Tom and Jerry to engage in a few minutes of slapstick comedy is going to turn you racist. I’m saying that times have changed and that stuff falls flat now, and that no matter how hard people campaign for animation as a medium appropriate for adults, there are still a lot of people who think that any animation is appropriate to plop unsupervised kids in front of, and is it such a terrible idea to mark some old cartoons as Not To Be Watched Without Context?

Is “making it hard to acquire eighty year old cartoons that get really racist is a terrible idea” really a hill you wanna die on?

And, yes, I am all for banning the Confederate flag. Assholes would find new symbols to rally around, but depriving them of the ability to call it “tradition” sure won’t help their cause.

If it doesn't negatively affect kids, as you say, then why not let them watch it? Also assuming children know nothing about their history and culture to provide their own context seems a bit presumptive, especially for the older kids that would be watching. I don't buy this idea that kids are completely ignorant of their culture and history. Not to mention that the mammy character is so small and minor, it's almost irrelevant to the show.

When I was a kid, Looney Tunes felt like home and Tom and Jerry felt like a slightly flat off-brand. I say this not to judge their fans or even the cartoons themselves, but I’m curious if “Tom and Jerry” people come from different regions of the country or world, different cultures, or different socio-economic backgrounds (I grew up poor and quasi-Catholic, splitting my time between Florida and the rust belt).

On the other hand, the article makes it seem like Tom and Jerry came about as a desperate bid to have something as lucrative as Looney Tunes or Disney, so maybe my impression is right on?

I visited Moscow years ago (2011, IIRC). Visited an 'American' diner - not really for tourists, but more of a place for locals. Kinda like a cross between Arnold's from Happy Days and a Denny's, but darker (I mean... low lit). I think the waitresses were on roller skates(?), and it was 24/7.

There were multiple monitors showing silent Tom and Jerry cartoons. No one was particularly watching, they were just ... on. I was told that T&J was sort of a 'thing' in Russia, but I wasn't there long enough (and didn't speak enough Russian) to ask much about it. What struck me, which I hadn't really realized as a kid, is that... it's basically silent anyway - there's no talking/voice, it's just antics, with music. Maybe there were some episodes later where they talked, but none I can remember. Very different from the Looney Tunes where the voices were half the fun. Still love me a good... I say I still love me a good Foghorn Leghorn voice.

The non-talking was a big advantage for us non-native English speaking kids; it meant we could enjoy them fully in their native versions.

In fact, my favourite Looney Tunes cartoon was always Roadrunner vs Coyote, for the same reason.

спасибо :)

Oh, I'm not actually Russian, just from another non-English speaking nation :)

> A new version of the show, animated by flash instead of being hand-drawn, has been broadcast since 2014.

I always wondered what animation technology was used in these new episodes. Apparently Adobe's Flash Animation was used for many cartoon series:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_telev...

Tom and Jerry is one of my favorite cartoons and I still watch them once in a while.

> When their department was closed down in 1957, Hanna and Barbera set up their own production company.

> But only a few years later, MGM decided to revive Tom and Jerry without its original creators. In 1961 they outsourced to a studio in Prague to save on costs. Chicago-born animator Gene Deitch was tasked with heading the remake, but struggled with a tight budget and staff with no knowledge of the original.

> His studio also secretly made episodes of other cartoons, including Popeye. Czech names were Americanised on the credits to stop viewers associating the shows with Communism.

So much in here. I hope we also remember these instances when we talk about copyright, trademark or stealing IP.

The stuff Deitch did in Prague was all above-board with respect to IP ownership. The secret was just that it was made in Czechoslovakia instead of the US.

I suspect Tom and Jerry are the inspiration behind their modern equivalents, Itchy and Scratchy.

I like both.

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