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Comment by noman-land | Hacker News Reader

Apparently I've never watched this entire thing before because I did not know that Steamboat Willie is an animal abusing asshole.

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basically every cartoon animal is. tom? check. jerry? yeah, him too. wile e. coyote? to the extreme, if ineptly. this is the cartoon version of three stooges humor

Sure. But that’s realistic to what animals are actually like. It’s only in modern suburbia that we culturally forget that. Watch cats hunt. Or mice when there’s not enough food (they tear each other to pieces). Or really any animal in their natural habitat. “Hen pecked” isn’t just a turn of phrase.

I suspect animal on animal violence is common in old cartoons because more people spent time with animals. The idea that we should stop animals from hurting each other is a very recent notion.

>I suspect animal on animal violence is common in old cartoons because more people spent time with animals. The idea that we should stop animals from hurting each other is a very recent notion.

I don't think cartoons of the time were intended to present realistic depictions of animal behavior, so much as use them as tropes and archetypes. Rather I suspect physical and slapstick comedy was popular at the time, and that broad style of comedy was easier to portray in a visual medium.

> wile e. coyote? to the extreme

How is Wile an “animal abusing asshole”, and “to the extreme”? It’s a primarily carnivorous animal trying to hunt another to eat. It’s not like he’s catching and torturing the Road Runner.

True, and despite his best efforts the only animal he ever harms is himself. At least I don’t recall any other animals being harmed.

most people would be comfortable with the assertion that armin meiwes is a 'human-abusing asshole', even though he didn't torture brandes before killing and eating him. perhaps you are among the exceptions

Most people would be comfortable with the assertion that it is absurd to compare a fictional episodic cartoon animal comedy to real life human cannibalism in modern society. It seems you are among the exceptions.

the context of this discussion is that someone described a character in a fictional cartoon animal comedy as an 'animal abusing asshole', so judging interactions between fictional cartoon animal comedy characters using the standards applied to real-life interactions between humans is the entire premise of the discussion. i agree that it leads to absurd conclusions; that's what my comments are designed to demonstrate

it's nice that you internalized my thesis so thoroughly, but it's unfortunate that you seem to believe i was arguing against it

(unless you think the key difference is that steamboat willie wasn't episodic)

> you seem to believe i was arguing against it

I did. I apologise for the misunderstanding but it was the “perhaps you are among the exceptions” that did it. And I bet that’s what made someone downvote you too (your comment was already grey by the time I saw it). If that part had been left out, the lingering ambiguity would have given more room for the correct interpretation.

Donald Duck isn’t, and his Uncle Scrooge would rather abuse his workforce than animals.

Ever see the episode where Donald makes his nephews smoke cigars until they're sick?

So that’s where my uncles got the idea from..

I think that was a common way of trying to teach kids not to smoke.

It is probably a really bad way though, since the first 5 or whatever cigarettes are the hardest to smoke until you have overruled your natural repulsion of inhaling hot smoke.

In my n=3 experience, that didn't work on any of my friends who got caught and were forced to smoke the entire pack. It also didn't work on my siblings and I when our mother got tired of us pestering her for saltwater taffy so she made us eat an entire bag. If it made us sick, I don't remember that part and either way, it did nothing to dissuade us from further pestering for more until we aged out of having such extreme sweetooths.

At least in media, it is.

And, of course, King of the Hill skewered the idea by having Bobby get addicted to cigarettes when Hank used this punishment.

(Although his workforce is 100% composed of animals)

Disney's workforce is 100% composed of animals, too.

Homo Corporatus, a very lowly animal indeed.

Silent or low dialogue cartoons that rely on slapstick humor may lean into animal abuse. Cartoon animals like Peppa Pig don't have that problem.

Playing the cat as a musical instrument actually dates back to 1600s. (and "catgut" strings are not made from cat, for the record)

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

The Shimasen traditionally is made with cat skin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamisen. In the Clannad VN, one character names his cat "Shimasen".

*based animal abusing asshole.

What does it mean?

I presume they mean this. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/based

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