Tom and Jerry

Some of the criticism I find perfectly understandable. Some of it I find utterly preposterous and born from media illiteracy. But to take the more valid complaints, while there are certainly some pretty appallingly racist shorts in the Tom and Jerry catalog I tend to find this disproportionately overemphasized in modern criticism, making it seem like racist jokes and stereotypes made up far more of a percentage of Tom and Jerry’s humour than they actually did. I don’t actually find Tom and Jerry to be on average worse on stuff like this than Disney or Warner Brothers’ output, it just looks worse for Tom and Jerry because MGM never outright banned any of their most egregious outings like the competition did (I would count WB’s “Censored 11” as far and away worse for the time than just about anything Tom and Jerry ever did, and that Disney’s Peter Pan was allowed to skirt by unchallenged is a resounding source of ire for me).

 

On the whole, Tom and Jerry comes across to me as the most consistently creative, inventive and reliably excellent series in the entire Golden Age. I don’t think Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera always get quite the credit they deserve for sticking around the industry as long as they did (especially when their rivals were starting to visibly flounder), or for being the gifted comedic talents this series demonstrably shows them to have been. Other studios had a much harder time grasping the cartoon morality (let alone comic timing) Tom and Jerry perfected. And I was very surprised to see that Chuck Jones’ run on Tom and Jerry seems to be held in such low esteem by both Chuck Jones fans *and* Tom and Jerry fans: For someone who claimed to not understand the characters, I always thought he sure handled them well.

 

But more than that, Tom and Jerry is workmanlike, and I mean that in the best possible way. It constantly tries to adapt to a changing environment, and its humour is truly universal: Somewhat famously (and tellingly), Japan considers Tom and Jerry one of the greatest “anime” of all time, and it’s the only Western series to consistently make people’s Best Of lists.

I spent all weekend writing, recording and editing the video I wanted to share this week, but seeing as how I left my laptop on for 12 hours straight to upload it to YouTube and it only ever got 29% of the way there (and then I lost the Internet, deleting all of my progress), I’m not especially in the best of moods right now.

 

In the meantime, here’s a rough draft of something I’ve been playing around with lately.

 

My sister and I have been rewatching a lot of older cartoons recently and I’ve been thinking a lot about the history of animation. I used to watch theatrical shorts all the time on Cartoon Network and I have a real affinity for that genre, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion now that Tom & Jerry is probably my favourite out of all the Golden Age series. Naturally, it’s the most controversial one.

 

Some of the criticism I find perfectly understandable. Some of it I find utterly preposterous and born from media illiteracy. But to take the more valid complaints, while there are certainly some pretty appallingly racist shorts in the Tom & Jerry catalog I tend to find this disproportionately overemphasized in modern criticism, making it seem like racist jokes and stereotypes made up far more of a percentage of Tom & Jerry’s humour than they actually did. I don’t actually find Tom & Jerry to be on average worse on stuff like this than Disney or Warner Brothers’ output, it just looks worse for Tom & Jerry because MGM never outright banned any of their most egregious outings like the competition did (I would count WB’s “Censored 11” as far and away worse for the time than just about anything Tom & Jerry ever did, and that Disney’s Peter Pan was allowed to skirt by unchallenged is a resounding source of ire for me).

 

On the whole, Tom & Jerry comes across to me as the most consistently creative, inventive and reliably excellent series in the entire Golden Age. I don’t think Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera always get quite the credit they deserve for sticking around the industry as long as they did (especially when their rivals were starting to visibly flounder), or for being the gifted comedic talents this series demonstrably shows them to have been. Other studios had a much harder time grasping the cartoon morality (let alone comic timing) Tom & Jerry perfected. And I was very surprised to see that Chuck Jones’ run on Tom & Jerry seems to be held in such low esteem by both Chuck Jones *and* Tom & Jerry fans: For someone who claimed to not understand the characters, I always thought he sure handled them well.

 

Of all of the Golden Age output, Tom & Jerry seems to always deliver the shorts I would never think twice about putting on as straightforward entertainment. So I’ve been working on a list that I hope puts Tom & Jerry back in a slightly better light among progressive litcrit-types.