Loony Cartoons

When I was barely 7, my school was a 10 minute walk from home….I would sprint to reach the gate and then pant there for a couple of seconds. And then muster up enough energy to go running up the stairs and inside the house. The first thing that would invite me home was not the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen…..or a Cocker Spaniel bounding towards me. What pulled me homewards like a pin to a magnet was in fact, a loony tune……

“Flintstones! Meet the Flintstones.
They’re the modern stone-age fammaleeeee
From the….Town of bedrock
They’re a page right out of Historreeeee

and as the song went on, I’d have a goofy grin plastered on my face and watch the TV without batting an eyelid. Every time Fred got shut out of the house and banged the front door, I’d laugh. I never got tired of watching Dino jump on Fred incessantly. I guess that was the magic of cartoons!

So I grew up watching The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Dexter’s Lab, The Little Lulu Show, The Adams Family, The Popeye show and of course, the unforgettable Scooby Doo.
And most of these cartoons really influenced my life back then. (‘Back then’, in this context, is the mid 1990s. Not some medieval age as I seem to be implying with this nostalgic report.)

I recently happened to read in a book that cartoons do influence children to a large extent. And mostly, in ways that are against ‘appropriate social behaviour’. Call me ignorant, but I certainly beg to differ from that point. Cartoons influenced me in the most bizarre ways possible –

1. I used to think all families must consist of a father, a mother, a sister, a brother and a dog….or a dinosaur, in Fred’s case. I always wondered where my ‘brother’ and ‘dog’ were!

2. I actually believed that the world of Jetsons existed. And that this world was above the sky. And I always suspected that Santa Claus was actually one of the Jetsons disguised as a mortal being. I figured if I’m a really good girl, Santa will take me to meet the Jetsons!

3. I joined Dexter wholeheartedly in believing that Dee Dee was a pest. In fact, I even began looking tall lanky girls with suspicion!

4. I began to use words like ‘Yikes’ and ‘Jeepers’ when I found something scary. The Scooby jargon sort of became a part of my vocabulary.

5. I tried very very hard to curl my hair like Lulu….that only resulted in a long lecture about how ‘I must like myself for who I am’.

These were some small changes that cartoons succeeded in making in my perspective of life. Now, as I look back on these things, I laugh at my incredulous antics. But back then, I was so engrossed in the world of cartoons that it never occurred to me there might not be a Mystery Machine or a nutty Uncle named Fester. I was happy to believe that they all existed. They were more colourful and were extremely sweet to let me share their lives. And somehow, in this blissful state of ignorance, I passed my early school years.

As I grew older, the word ‘technology’ erased my fantasy. I began to learn how these pictures appeared on the screens and they were entirely fictional. I realized that Zombies don’t take over amusement parks, and even if they do, a talking dog can’t rescue 5 teenagers from there. I guess that gullible nature of mine began to dissolve and I stopped staring at little birds on a tree outside my room. (umm…. I used to stare endlessly, waiting for one of the sparrows to say ‘I tot I taw a puttytat!’).

So I was shaken out of that dream world of cartoons. It was replaced by a new world altogether. Harry Potter! But lets not get into that now. There was always this empty space somewhere inside of me that cartoons previously occupied.

In today’s world, where cartoons play no role in my life whatsoever, I see my cousin watching Pokemon, Dragonball Z and all those animated series…..I wonder if he goes into a state of reverie as I used to. I wonder when he plays his pokemon game in the computer, if he feels he’s part of those super-coloured small creatures. Perhaps he is wiser in the world of internet and playstations. But perhaps, that imagination never really dies down in any child…or adult.

This is what I realized when I was flipping channels the other day…I came across an old episode of Tom and Jerry…. I was hooked on to it…and I was watching it with the exact same goofy grin plastered on my face. As Jerry did the cleverest things to escape from Tom, I laughed out loud…without thinking about the fact that cats don’t really survive after a cannonball hits them. See? The magic of cartoons worked again! I was able to ignore all the ‘facts of life’ and engross myself in a completely asinine, loony cartoon.

So in a way, cartoons will always play a rather precious role in my childhood. They got me into believing that Spinach is really strong enough to destroy my ‘enemies’! Well, I know that its true, but I’d like to keep that bit of reality in my fantasmatic world!