CARTOONS VS POSTMODERN FICTION & CRITICISM

             CARTOONS VS POSTMODERN FICTION & CRITICISM
             ------------------------------------------
 
                                         POSTMODERN FICTION &
CARTOONS                                 CRITICISM
--------------------                     ------------------------------
Leaves one feeling warm                  Chyeah, right
and nostalgic, with a profound
sense of satisfaction and well-
being.
 
Celebrates play.                         Likes to think it celebrates
                                         play, but actually is more
                                         analagous to "explaining the
                                         joke away" than anything else.
 
Today's cartoons suck moose.             I'll take Coleridge and
                                         Trilling over the Yale school
                                         any day.
 
Foucault is dead.  AIDS.                 Mel Blanc is dead.  Age.
 
Barthes was a big eater.                 The Tasmanian Devil.
 
 
 
POSTMODERN FICTION &
CRITICISM                                CARTOONS
------------------------------           --------------------
"Metafiction," as practiced by           I really like when you
Borges et al, is fiction that            see the hand of the cartoonist
calls attention to itself, never         holding the drawing pencil,
lets the reader forget that it           or when the characters step
is artifice.                             outside the film.
 
Derrida will often use a word and        It's also cool when you see
immediately cross it out to achieve      the pencil swoop down and
a desired effect, a technique he         erase the character.  I especially
calls "sous rasure", meaning             like when this happens to Daffy
'under erasure'                          Duck, and he becomes nothing
                                         but his mouth(!!)
 
None of the works that have been         The cartoons I like best, old
"deconstructed" have ceased to be        Tom and Jerry's, Bugs Bunny,
vital works.  For example, Derrida       Daffy Duck et al, are still
deconstructed Freud.  Yet Freud's        around, and you can usually
writings are still out there, still      find them during Cartoon
sending messages, still contributing     Express from 6-7 on USA, or on TNT.
to our understanding of the mind,        And Nickelodeon, of course.
and will y Rubble
 
 
Much deconstruction is spent             "Be vewwwwy quiet."
searching for the ever-elusive
"trace"
 
Much deconstruction is spent             "If he catches you you're through."
searching for the ever-elusive
"trace"
 
Barthes is my favorite post-             "That Road Runner is really a
structuralist.                           crazy clown."
 
There is no universal signifier.         My pencil is bigger than yours.
Phallocentricism is old news.
 
There are only mis-readings.             Shit.  The Flintstones are on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
One last time then:
 
This is your brain:
sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex
sex sex sex sex sex sex Warm it up, Kriss x sex sex sex sex sex sex sex
sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex I'm about to ex sex sex sex sex
sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex
wacally wabit x sex sex sex sex sex sex What's for lunch ex sex sex sex
 
 
This is your brain on the post-modern novel:
 
          yawn                    fascinating, truly insipid
          Is it too late to drop this class?            huh?
 
          zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz