Anyone remember Saturday morning cartoons? Another foundation of my childhood that was too soon replaced by infomercials, morning shows and live action series about over sexed teenagers. It's almost not worth waking up on Saturday mornings anymore.
I can remember sneaking down the stairs as a kid, as early as seven o'clock in the morning, just to plant myself in front of the basement television for six straight hours of animated mayhem. When the new season's schedule would appear in TV Guide, I would plan my cartoon watching like Eisenhower invading Normandy.
In retrospect, it is little wonder why cartoons have provided the background material for much of my life. Growing up in the 80's, I was there from Jim Henson's Muppet Babies all the way to Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles. High school introduced me to “Japanamation” (as anime was then called) with its mature themes, darkly violent plots and animated naked girls. I even caught a good part of the brief Saturday morning renaissance that occurred during my early twenties, although in those days it was usually because I hadn't gone to sleep on Fridays.
So, throwing my usual contempt for nostalgia out the door, why not take a moment to explore the history of the word “cartoon,” and channel surf through the history and cultural importance behind it.
A “cartoon” in the 1600's and 1700's was preliminary sketch named for the heavy paper on which it was drawn, be it “carton” in French or “cartone” in Italian. The Italian word was the original, and is a modification of the word “carta” or paper. Later, when such paper was used to make boxes, it entered English again as a “carton,” as in “milk carton.”
Cartoons were used first as a model for painters or tapestry weavers to follow and as a guide for fresco painting. In this form of art, paint must be applied to a layer of wet plaster before it dries. To facilitate speedy work, small holes would be punched along the lines of the cartoon sketch and charcoal dust blown on the paper, thus leaving a ghostly impression for the fresco artist to follow.
The modern meaning of cartoon was announced on June 24, 1843 when the British magazine Punch published the following:
Punch has the benevolence to announce, that in an early number of his ensuing Volume he will astonish the Parliamentary Committee by the publication of several exquisite designs, to be called Punch's Cartoons!
Newspapers and magazines such as Punch had long featured satirical drawings to comment upon the issues of the day. By choosing the word “cartoon” specifically to mock an exhibition of fine art pieces being considered for installment in Parliament, the editors of the magazine were merely applying an old word to a preexisting art form, albeit with sarcastic intent.
Prior to the invention of modern motion pictures, cartoons such as those found in Punch were exclusively humorous or satirical drawings. This form of cartoon still exists in the form of “editorial cartoons” or “gag cartoons.”
The former usually involve allegorical figures commenting upon contemporary events and are still a popular feature of newspaper opinion pages. The later are familiar from publications such as the New Yorker and are often dryly humorous, captioned and involve cats for some reason. The word “Cartoonist” is attested as early as 1880 in the OED, and an excellent example of the growing promiscuity of the formerly very academic “-ist” suffix, more of which can be read in my previous Word of the Moment for Titlist.
The former usually involve allegorical figures commenting upon contemporary events and are still a popular feature of newspaper opinion pages. The later are familiar from publications such as the New Yorker and are often dryly humorous, captioned and involve cats for some reason. The word “Cartoonist” is attested as early as 1880 in the OED, and an excellent example of the growing promiscuity of the formerly very academic “-ist” suffix, more of which can be read in my previous Word of the Moment for Titlist.
The notion that a series of drawings could be viewed together quickly enough that they would appear to be a single, moving image is surprisingly ancient. The Chinese inventor Ting Huan made pictures come alive as early as the year 180. No, that's not a typo- that's the year one hundred and eighty!
Later, European and Victorian inventors, presumably sick of watching operas where everyone ties of tuberculosis, would create a mad scientist's workshop full of devices for showing short animated sequences with fancy sounding names like the “zoetrope,” the “thaumatrope,” the “phenakistoscope” and the “praxinoscope.” As influential as these devices were, the invention of motion picture film doomed them all and saved us from having to have a masters degree in Greek just to watch the Smurfs.
It gives me great hope in humanity that once cartoons came to life on the big screen, animation (like agriculture and writing) exploded across the globe almost simultaneously. Perhaps there is something about the simplicity of the art form. After all, who hasn't made a simple flip book in your notebook while bored in class? Or perhaps, the limitlessness of depicting whatever could be drawn appeals to the boundless imagination of childhood that is our commonest human denominator. In any case, the early twentieth century quickly beget cartoonists in Europe, Asia, the Americas.
Despite the decline and fall of my beloved Saturday morning cartoons, their impression will linger in both the language and culture of generations to come. For starters, “toon” was coined in the 1980's as both a shortening of “cartoon” and perhaps coincidentally a homophone with the second element of “Looney Tunes,” which has given us a new pantheon of mythological figures: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote.
Furthermore, I am hardly the only member of my generation to maintain their childhood love of cartoons. Indeed, animation has grown us with us. We were the generation who blew off class in college watching the Simpsons and Futurama while eating a lot of sweet and salty junk food. We brought Family Guy back from the abyss. In many ways, we have only shifted to nocturnal viewing habits, late night cable stations offering new cartoons for mature audiences.
Wait. Does that make us... mature... now?
The preceding program has been an unpaid, unsolicited essay by Schendo's Bad Grammar. The views expressed do not reflect the opinions of Google, Blogger or pretty much anyone else. The information therein was provided by the Online Etymological dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary online and the Punch Cartoon Library website. Fresco painting techniques demonstrated by Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo (and Splinter).
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