Tom And Jerry Projecting Violence in Slapstick Comedy: A qualitative content analysis

Tom and Jerry has already celebrated its Platinum Jubilee as it was produced firstly in 1940 and bit by bit Tom and Jerry has been dominating the watch-lists of the cartoon lovers from all over the world by retaining itself as one of the most popular cartoons of all time. But it is not only the never-ending rivalry between the cat and the mouse with the slapstick comedy that helps the cartoon to be as one of the talked of the topics in the entertainment and media industry, it has created some controversies regarding its contents; and violence is one those that has made the scholars and critics talk about it and its possible impacts on the audience. Apart from lamenting for the impacts of violence on the juveniles’ mind, this study rather focuses on how Tom and Jerry projects violence alongside with the slapstick comic elements in the name of entertainment since it is significant to discern what violence is and then categorize them into different type as different categories of violence may have impact on the audience in different ways. By defining the term violence, this study shows how Tom and Jerry displays the actions which can be the ribs and stretchers of the umbrella known as violence. Whereas most of the scholars concentrate on the outcome of showing violence among the different programs in media, this study categorizes the actions performed by the characters in the cartoon into different categories through a qualitative content analysis method and defines those actions according to the definitions of violence.

Chapter 17

By 1941, Cary Grant had his pick of films. Almost everything was offered to him and everyone wanted to work with him. Wary of being typecast, he resisted making more screwball comedies. Instead, he made the gentle “weepie” Penny Serenade (1941) with George Stevens directing and Irene Dunne co-starring. His performance, including a tearful moment when he must plead with a judge to maintain custody of an adopted child, brought his first nomination for an Academy Award. He made an even more dramatic departure from his established image playing the wayward, possibly murderous Johnny Aysgarth in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941). The making of this film was rocky, not least because of on-the-set friction between Grant and co-star Joan Fontaine, but Grant’s relationship with Hitchcock was strong both personally and professionally. His relationship with director Frank Capra, with whom he made Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), was not as strong. Grant hated his own manic performance in this slapstick comedy. Although the film was a big success at the time and still has many admirers, he always cited it as the least favorite of his films.

The Ache of Modernism

The “ache of modernism” registered convulsive social transformations of the process of modernity as they crested in the fin de siècle. Early in the twentieth century, artists began embracing the future as provocation to a new artistic reckoning. In the process they rejected inherited protocols of presentation and representation. At the same time, they responded affirmatively to the challenges of new media, particularly cinema. But recursions from the distant past, like the commedia dell’arte, proved equally influential. These combined sources of replenishment from past and future inspired modernists in all the arts to assume an acrobatic attitude, affirming art as athletic prerogative commensurate with such popular enterprises as vaudeville and slapstick comedy in cinema.

Origins and functions of comic in feuilleton as literature phenomenon

The genesis of a feuilleton phenomenon in the periodic press, always attracting the readers’ attention, has not been thoroughly researched. The work aims to identify the feuilleton origins and clarify the nature of its expressive means and comic functions. The research materials include the records of the feuilleton discussions in the Soviet press (1922–1926), a collection of works “Feuilleton” (1927), later works on the feuilleton and historical poetics. The following factors are considered to have contributed to the rise of the feuilleton: increased potential of the printing press at the turn of the 19th century, emergence of commercial periodicals, publishers’ interest in increasing the subscribers’ number, growing opposition to the regulatory trends of classicism and acute interest of romanticists in folklore and freedom to use its expressive means in the artistic sphere. The feuilleton is conceptualized as a young form, independent of genre canons, developing the low farce and slapstick comedy expressive means and its comic potential. According to ancestral memory, the comic means as basic artistic expression suggests both mockery and pleasure function for the feuilleton audience and predetermines the double existence of the feuilleton text and difference in naming at different times and in different publications. Texts published in periodicals are traditionally viewed as feuilletons, though the same texts published elsewhere can be considered short fiction forms. The paper defines the feuilleton as belonging to periodicals but distinguished among official and serious papers by its wording and free form of a mostly comic statement, pleasing for readers.

The White Snake in Hong Kong Horror Cinema: from Horrific Tales to Crowd Pleasers

Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic origins of Hong Kong horror cinema. This chapter surveys the changing representation of gender and horror in a series of films based on the White Snake legend from the 1920s to the 1970s. Centred on a very horrific concept (a monstrous snake disguised as a beauty and married to a human male), these films nonetheless enrich or even challenge our understanding of the genre of horror cinema in their service to a wide range of other genres: operatic performance, romantic melodrama, fantasy adventure, slapstick comedy, and social and political commentary. In addition to challenging the very concept of horror, this cluster of White Snake films poses further challenges to the idea of “Hong Kong cinema,” as it ranges from a Tokyo production, a Shanghai production, a Hong Kong-Japan coproduction, to a production based in Hong Kong with South Asian distributors, and a Hong Kong-Taiwan coproduction with a Shaw Brothers director.

Slapstick Comedy

The term "slapstick comedy" refers to film comedies in which the humor relies upon physical gags and stunts. The slapstick—a wooden paddle to which a second piece of wood was attached by means of a hinge—was a tool of the Italian commedia dell’arte. When swung against an actor’s body, it made a loud thwacking noise that helped to emphasize an act of stage violence.

Buster Keaton’s Climate Change

Much of Buster Keaton’s slapstick comedy revolves around his elaborate outdoor sets and the crafty weather design that destroys them. In contrast to D. W. Griffith, who insisted on filming in naturally occurring weather, and the Hollywood norm of fabricating weather in the controlled space of the studio, Keaton opted to simulate weather on location. His elaborately choreographed gags with their storm surges and collapsing buildings required precise control of manufactured rain and wind, along with detailed knowledge of the weather conditions and climatological norms on site. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) is one of many examples of Keaton’s weather design in which characters find themselves victims of elements that are clearly produced by the off-screen director. Keaton’s weather design finds parallels in World War I strategies of creating microclimates of death (using poison gas) as theorized by Peter Sloterdijk.