Cartoonish fury

What a time to be alive: when rage is all the rage and muted stoicism gets the silent treatment. Every day brings a new indignation, yet what can we do but either shout into the abyss or laugh at the futility of it all?

I prefer the latter, though I'm still pissed.

I'll be upset about the way the world is for the rest of my life, no question. But to lose the comedy is to embrace the tragedy, and fuck that noise. I can only speak for myself, but you have to relentlessly joke about reality to stay sane.

And to round out the point, I've (perfectly logically!) chosen angry cartoon characters as my working thesis.

Firstly – and this should be obvious if you're still reading this – cartoons are funny. But animated characters who are just as furious about everything around them as you are? Hand over the Emmy already.

Secondly, the key to making this work is that no one in the story is the wiser. The most charming maniacs are the ones who are just aware enough that they're mired in a metaphor to be upset about it. Things SHOULD be better than this, yet not only are they not, they're perpetually getting worse and it feels like the joke is always on you.

That's how humor works, I guess. Charlie Brown was the first hand-drawn dude I recall who made me wonder if he knew that he's trapped in a cartoon universe. He's always depressed and simply too self-aware for a kid. That's hilarious in its own way, but also innocent and charming and no fucking good at all for the current moment.

I always liked Tom, though I hated Jerry. Same for Sylvester versus Tweety. Those cats were likable because they were so exceptionally frustrated to be forever stuck fighting some twerp who wins every time but shouldn't have even once. That's a righteous anger if you ask me. Hilarious too!

Honestly I also hated the Roadrunner growing up, but didn't care about Wile E. Coyote either. Fuck him. He always seemed more surprised than upset that everything went to hell, and that's only funny if you're playing a hapless good guy and every single gag isn't based around the same bit. Falling off a cliff has its charm, but being angry at the cliff all the way down is much more comical.

Because it's useless to get mad at fate! There is plenty in life you can control but considerably more that you can't, so to wallow in indignation all week after reading a headline like "Government Weighs Its Options to Fuck You Yet Again" is just useless misery. To mock that misery with a string of wacky cels is to alleviate at least a small part of it though.

Look, all of this is silly and that's my point. Of course there are things that should upset you and courses of history you should try to prevent. But watching characters lose their minds about just that can be funny when presented through a certain filter, in this case animation. Cartoon satire of human rage may actually be one of the few pure things we have left.

So now when I read the news or try absorbing any new terrible information, I do my best to channel my inner Duke of Yosemite. Sometimes swearing incoherently is all you can do when taking everything in.

This has been my TED Talk. Thank you for your attention.