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