What a Cartoon!

Who remembers the What a Cartoon Show? The one that later called itself Cartoon Cartoons. Sadly, if you were fans of those shows, you may be disappointed to note that this post has about as much to do with either show as Sean Paul has to do with quality music.

It’s been quite a while since I indulged myself and of course you, dear readers, in a spiteful, hate-filled and bile-laced rant. I could almost hear you wondering if I’d gone all soft and mushy in my old age. So without further ado, the topic of today’s rant is cartoons — in animation and in flesh.

The more astute among you will have concluded or at least, have an inkling as to the fact that I am a journalist. As such, it is an almost daily occurrence in my life to encounter strange things and stranger people. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re a bloody joke. The following series of events falls under the latter.

One of the elements of being a better organised reporting team — or so I’m told — is conducting and attending Monday Meetings. A lack of time and energy prevents me from detailing the agony of these meetings in my own words, so I shall leave it to a wiser source to explain (and explain he does, here). For want of a better purpose, the only real use of these meetings is an excuse for your editor to hand you a public de-pantsing.

Sometimes people come up with story ideas. Sometimes they are excellent. Sometimes they are horrible. Sometimes they are so dire that one can only laugh. And finally, sometimes they are just a ruse to disguise one’s paucity of ideas. Usually these ruses fall flat and earn a round of laughter. Last Monday, happened to be the day an irresponsibly lame idea about cartoons promoting violence was mooted and approved. Yeah!! Because that is such a newsy story and no one has ever even heard of something like that before.

The idea was somehow accepted and the genius who suggested it basked in his serendipity (that’s a great name; let’s refer to him as ‘serendipity’). When the time came to make good on the story, Serendipity duly typed it out and I opened the file to have a read. A newspaper is supposed to be a responsible source of information and so naturally, the facts need to be in order (more on facts later).

What I read next was the most high-handed, generalised and outsider-point-of-view tripe that I ever did read. Lines and lines of complete stupidity jumped off the screen and at me, leaving me wondering if I did indeed work for a national English daily or some regional newsletter that is distributed to 17 houses by an old man on a bicycle in some far-flung little town like Gangamasala, where people still believe that television is the Devil (maybe).

“All cartoons indulge in violence”, “Male and female characters in cartoons are always involved in a relationship and can never just be friends. This is an unhealthy thing to show kids.” and “Female characters like Barbie and Minnie Mouse are scantilly clad and portrayed as perfect women, which gives kids an inferiority complex”. It’s quite alright if you want to go back to the head of the paragraph and re-read it, in case your eyeballs shot out of your head midway through. I’ll wait.

So I asks Serendipity, “What gives?” and he tells me, in a feeble effort to substantiate his dumb-ass “observations” that seem totally accurate and substantial in his mind. “Popeye is after Olive Oyl, Mickey Mouse is after Minnie Mouse; so all cartoons are in relationships,” he tells me with all the conviction of Steve Jobs teaching a kid to use a calculator. What worried me was that his three points sounded like a more accurate generalisation of Bollywood than cartoons. And what worried me more was whether these were the sort of views we, as a responsible newspaper wanted to put out.

That’s when Serendipity delivered the line of the century and one that is probably going to stay with me for the rest of my life. It will be inscribed at the top of the slate in my mind that bears the title “Dumb ass things people say”. And so he clears his throat and says, “Never let facts get in the way of your story.”

What a cartoon!