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Loony Tunes

War, famine, pestilence . . . . It's almost enough to make you turn to drugs. Or, worse still, The Cartoon Network. Dominic Halliday takes a look at the randomness of cartoons.

Let me ask you this: What do you get if you cross a cat with a dog? Any ideas yet…that's right, you get a cartoon. Let me briefly explain myself here before everyone thinks I've gone nuts. Anybody who has watched Cartoon Network recently might have noticed `CatDog', a cartoon in which someone had the bright idea of joining a cat and a dog with the use of a tube. So basically the creature in question has the head of a cat at one end and the head of a dog at the other, joined by a tube, but missing the bits at the wrong end of each animal (you have to ask what happened to the other half of this creation). Now that we know who, or rather what the main character is, let's have a look at the story lines that the creators have devised to put their little animal through. Oh, I see, there isn't one. It merely seems to be random little snippets of plot that were stuck together because that was the order they were chosen out of the hat.

However, before you start to think that I've become a little obsessive over `CatDog', lets have a look at some of the other cartoons that we're fed by the Cartoon Network. To make things easy, I'll put them into three categories: a) those that really fuck with your head, b) those that make you moderately confused and c) the old classics that you wish they'd show more of instead. I've already mentioned `CatDog', which is most certainly a class A cartoon, but you can also add to this is Nickelodeon's `Cow and Chicken'.

Unlike `CatDog' the animals in `Cow and Chicken' are not actually stuck together (although I'd like to see how they would pull that one off), but merely a "brother and sister team, facing all the usual challengers of adolescence". Now, aside from the obvious problem that cows and chickens don't have quite the same problems with adolescence as we do (I've never seen a group of chickens trying to steal a bottle of Diamond White cider from an offy), this would otherwise seem quite a straightforward plot to understand. So, obviously to make things a little more complicated, they added a third character- a red devil that chases the cow and chicken team around. Okay, maybe I've already cracked open that Diamond White, so please, follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to my point.

A class B cartoon would have to be `Dexter's Laboratory', which, apparently, is broadcast in 12 languages to 96 countries. I'm going to have to be careful here, as I don't want to harm international relations. The synopsis describes it as "Inventing hi-jinks with the tiny red-headed genius and his mindless sister, Dee Dee, as they enter into more arguments and scrapes in his huge bedroom laboratory". It's not actually as bizarre as they could have made it, although I do have a question. Why, if the rest of the family is American, is Dexter from Russia (yes, I'm well aware that he's probably adopted)? It does seem somewhat implausible, don't you agree.

It's not just Cartoon Network that has been messing with my head. I've noticed, especially recently, that the Simpson has become quite random, which concerns me slightly, as I do like the Simpsons. Perhaps its because Mr Groening is dedicating more time to Futurama, or the writers are running low on fresh ideas after god knows how many episodes, or perhaps they feel that this is a good way to continue; one can only guess. I properly noticed this after an episode last week, when, at the end of the show, Marge commented on how bizarre and random that particular episode had been. Regrettably, this seems to be a common theme.

Now I know that I might get some stick for the simple fact that `cartoon's aren't real'. This is true, but I feel that cartoons should be a source of entertainment, plain and simple. I don't personally see what is entertaining about a cat and dog stuck together, but there are obviously people who do, otherwise the programme wouldn't still be on telly. Perhaps people thought the same thing when we were watching `Roadrunner' or `Thundercats'. Or perhaps I've grown up. That's all folks.

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