May 24, 2009

Muslim Rage Cartoon



s an Animator and cartoonist I like a good cartoon myself. It does have its bad points though when you have mastered the trade, that is to say, if you ever master the trade, you always stand in awe of the great cartoonist, Chuck Jones, Art Babbit, Grim Natwick, to name but a few. I suspect that most of you have never even heard of them although the have certainly seen there work. You then judge other cartoons after their work and sift through them with a fine tooth comb. Are the drawings good how good is the characterization what is the quality of the Background painting, an art unto itself, how is it edited, has it a beginning and an end ( good story line?) The cartoon I am going, to show you has none of these qualities, even if it was propaganda like the brilliant Private Snafu which was a series of training cartoons commissioned by the U.S. Army at the time this cartoon was produced, this cartoon is particularly abysmal. The walking sequences are particularly bad, some of the drawing is atrocious and it mainly slapstick for the sake of slapstick. This technical criticism diminishes your enjoyment, you see the form and not the content. The thing that stands out in this cartoon though is its content. By todays standards it is not very politically correct stereotyping the poor Muslim Arabs, but are they really stereotyping , it seems to me that nothing has really changed in the 70 years since this was made?
Anyway enjoy.