Tyler's Lead Post Response


The creators of Tom and Jerry were geniuses to say the least. Producing their show in the 1940’s, the creators did not have the opportunity to work with advanced technology that most cartoons utilize today. Therefore, they had to be very clever to make a show that was simple to construct but at the same time very entertaining to an audience. Tom and Jerry had great success in achieving these two goals. The show features very little dialogue and had the rivalry between two animals in which people became very attached to. I believe the producer’s choice of choosing a cat and mouse to be the main characters was also very clever. With Tom being the cat and Jerry being the mouse, many people began watching each episode thinking that Tom could one day triumph over Jerry. I mean that’s how nature in the real world works right? No one has ever seen a mouse carrying dead cats around. It’s always the other way around. The expectation that cats are more dominant than mice is where Tom and Jerry used incongruity theory to become one of the greatest cartoons of all time. They took this mindset that has been embedded into the brains of humans their whole lives and basically threw it in the garbage. In Tom and Jerry, Jerry is the one to always ridicule and torture Tom. While Jerry does receive backlash from Tom at times, he is always the one to come out on top in the end and is what ultimately keeps the audience’s eyes glued to the screen. A mouse bullying a cat very is very entertaining because it should never happen in real life. I love that Tyler chose to write about Tom and Jerry because of how popular it is even for being decades old, and his analysis about incongruity theory was spot on as well. 

Comments

  1. Shane HerronNovember 9, 2018 at 9:29 AM

    It's true that it's a clever variation on the old adage, dog bites man, not funny, man bites dog, funny. I guess that humans though are the dominant species in that equation, so it's not totally the same thing. but the role reversal is funny, and it seems to be funnier when it supports the underdog. Perhaps this goes against superiority theory?

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