Cartoons shifted from fantasy vindication to rehearsals of cruelty against the individual.

Evidence

Cartoons were once exponents of fantasy as opposed to rationalism. They ensured that justice was done to the creatures and objects they electrified, by giving the maimed specimens a second life. All they do today is to confirm the victory of technological reason over truth. A few years ago they had a consistent plot which only broke up in the final moments in a crazy chase, and thus resembled the old slapstick comedy. Now, however, time relations have shifted. In the very first sequence a motive is stated so that in the course of the action destruction can get to work on it: with the audience in pursuit, the protagonist becomes the worthless object of general violence. The quantity of organized amusement changes into the quality of organized cruelty. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 108

Categorization

• XREF: Direct precursor to the Burns critique of the culture industry; also connects to Adorno’s later work on authoritarian personality and to anxieties about violent media desensitization. — connects to: Cartoons train audiences to accept punishment as the condition of life. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 108
• SEED: An essay angle: how children’s entertainment from slapstick to Donald Duck has trained audiences to accept punishment and friction as the condition of life.
• DEFINE: Defines the trajectory of the cartoon as a genre within mass culture, shifting from fantasy to cruelty.