Popular Cartoon Research Articles

Visual Representations of Older People’s Sexuality in Popular Cartoons

This study explores the portrayal of older adults’ sexuality in popular cartoons, a medium often overlooked in discussions about aging and sexual representation. The research examines how visual and textual signs in cartoons produce humor by reinforcing stereotypes and normalizing judgments about later-life sexual behavior. Using a visual social semiotic approach, the study analyzes a selection of cartoons, focusing on how these depictions reflect societal attitudes towards aging and sexuality. The findings reveal that older individuals are often portrayed in a stigmatized manner, with their sexual desires and activities depicted as either comical or abnormal. This contributes to the marginalization of older adults in sexual discourse and perpetuates ageist stereotypes. The study concludes that while these representations may appear harmless, they play a significant role in shaping public perceptions and can negatively impact the self-image and sexual well-being of older individuals. Future research should further investigate how older adults perceive these portrayals and their implications for societal attitudes towards aging and sexuality.

Education in cinematography and VR- technologies: the impact of animation on the film perception

ABSTRACT Modern education, in particular cinematographics, is not possible without the use of modern information technologies. Virtual reality technologies significantly expand the possibilities of cinematographic education. Digital tools make it possible to create any special animated effects that appeal to more viewers. Therefore, by addressing this problem, the study identifies the relationship between education in cinematography and VR- technologies and their impact on film perception. The authors were the first to compare the perceptions of the stories of popular cartoons by viewers of different age groups (younger students and adults – parents and instructors). Children and adults were shown fragments of cartoons. Then an interview was conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire and a psychodiagnostic study based on A.N. Bernstein's technique of story-driven pictures and Kunin's physiognomy test. The study revealed differences in perception of animated films, which were animated using virtual reality applications. The findings theoretically explain the factors of psychological impact of animated movies and understanding of their meaning, which can be used in the animation industry, to create story-driven animated films of educational value.

Television and Cinema as an Agent of Development and Social Change

Television and cinema have had an immense influence on society and culture universally. They have not only provided a global platform for the exchange of information but have also provided space for interaction between cultures. In a world of globalization, beyond their primary aim of entertainment, television and cinema have become important means of communication among different communities while also gaining commercial value along the way. Where on one hand they have been used for communal and/or political propaganda, terrorism, religious preaching, coercion, cultural assimilation and as a means of making a profit, they have also represented social activism, promotion of various cultures and traditional practices and art. Television and cinema, as a visual medium, provide diverse possibilities to society. From its conception as a black-and-white medium, it has evolved into a popular form of applications such as Netflix and Amazon Prime videos which has resulted in a much wider reach. For instance, the giant franchise of the Bond films promotes a particular political agenda with the backdrop of the Cold War and September 11 and the most popular cartoon show Tom and Jerry describes the relationship of predator-prey or oppressor-oppressed transcends the primary purpose of entertainment. The Charlie Chaplin films that offer a critique of the new progressing society and the various fairy tales that outline the gender and societal roles of individuals further expand the purpose and approach of the visual medium. Television and cinema take on a didactic role that not only aims at education but also contributes to the creation and/or destruction of conventions. This paper focuses on the evolution of television and cinema on a global platform while discussing its role in development and social change.

Irkçılık ve Ayrımcılık Bağlamında Blackface Makyajı ve Mickey Fare Karakteri

Degrading stereotypes of black people, created with the contribution of Blackface make-up in the 19th-century Minstrel shows, also showed themselves in popular cartoons published until the 1990s. Our study investigated the historical origins of the slavery and discrimination processes against black people in the USA and the claims that the design of Mickey Mouse was based on these processes. The subject was carried out with secondary data analysis and the use of existing sources. Animated cartoon films and the design of the characters in them that are about our discussion are analyzed with an iconological methodology. The findings obtained through these comparative studies were evaluated together and innovative results were obtained. Our research; aims to contribute to the understanding of today's USA collective unconscious on this subject, through the slavery and discrimination applied to blacks in the USA in the historical process, and the understanding of various racist sensitivities. With this aspect, the study aims to contribute to other art genres and other related branches of social sciences, as well as address the subject-specific of the art of animation.

The Simpsons: A Postmodern Reading for the Position of an American Family

With analysing The Simpsons, the following paper aims at clarifying the ideology of postmodernity and how this literary work exposes and confronts them. The paper analyses the text according to the postmodern techniques and strategie; intertextuality, hyper-reality, and fragmentation. The Simpsons, a popular cartoon comedy in the USA and worldwide, is intended to show the values of damaged American families. The Simpsons’ postmodern techniques have established it as one of the most significant shows. Throughout The Simpsons, readers get to see a variety of characters. This work shows essentially every element of North American society. Finally, almost anybody who has viewed The Simpson the least once in his\her life will find that it presents predictions which have received the corresponding traction. The Simpsons has become a routine dependency on subconsciously predicting actual events.

Levels of orientation bias differ across digital content categories: Implications for visual perception.

With the continued growth of digital device use, a greater portion of the visual world experienced daily by many people has shifted towards digital environments. The "oblique effect" denotes a bias for horizontal and vertical (canonical) contours over oblique contours, which is derived from a disproportionate exposure to canonical content. Carpentered environments have been shown to possess proportionally more canonical than oblique contours, leading to perceptual bias in those who live in "built" environments. Likewise, there is potential for orientation sensitivity to be shaped by frequent exposure to digital content. The potential influence of digital content on the oblique effect was investigated by measuring the degree of orientation anisotropy from a range of digital scenes using Fourier analysis. Content from popular cartoons, video games, and social communication websites was compared to real-life nature, suburban, and urban scenes. Findings suggest that digital content varies widely in orientation anisotropy, but pixelated video games and social communication websites were found to exhibit a degree of orientation anisotropy substantially exceeding that observed in all measured categories of real-world environments. Therefore, the potential may exist for digital content to induce an even greater shift in orientation bias than has been observed in previous research. This potential, and implications of such a shift, is discussed.

Graph Jigsaw Learning for Cartoon Face Recognition.

Cartoon face recognition is challenging as they typically have smooth color regions and emphasized edges, the key to recognizing cartoon faces is to precisely perceive their sparse and critical shape patterns. However, it is quite difficult to learn a shape-oriented representation for cartoon face recognition with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). To mitigate this issue, we propose the GraphJigsaw that constructs jigsaw puzzles at various stages in the classification network and solves the puzzles with the graph convolutional network (GCN) in a progressive manner. Solving the puzzles requires the model to spot the shape patterns of the cartoon faces as the texture information is quite limited. The key idea of GraphJigsaw is constructing a jigsaw puzzle by randomly shuffling the intermediate convolutional feature maps in the spatial dimension and exploiting the GCN to reason and recover the correct layout of the jigsaw fragments in a self-supervised manner. The proposed GraphJigsaw avoids training the classification model with the deconstructed images that would introduce noisy patterns and are harmful for the final classification. Specially, GraphJigsaw can be incorporated at various stages in a top-down manner within the classification model, which facilitates propagating the learned shape patterns gradually. GraphJigsaw does not rely on any extra manual annotation during the training process and incorporates no extra computation burden at inference time. Both quantitative and qualitative experimental results have verified the feasibility of our proposed GraphJigsaw, which consistently outperforms other face recognition or jigsaw-based methods on two popular cartoon face datasets with considerable improvements.

Internalizing Gendered Identities: Children’s Conversations about Cartoon Characters

In today’s digital world, children spend most of their time watching and enjoying cartoons on smart devices. We, therefore, argue that cartoons leave an impact on the identity of children. This research explores how children accumulate gender stereotypes using Bandura’s social learning theory (1977) and identification with media characters’ theory by Cohen (2001). The study investigates how children of 3rd to 5th grade construct identity under the influence of popular cartoon characters. Based on the child-centered methodology, including controlled conversation patterns with children from ten private schools of Islamabad, this study gives children a voice in exploring their gendered identities. Findings suggest that boys are inclined to save and rescue, show power, desire knighthood, and admire the stout and muscular body of male cartoon characters while girls are fascinated by submissiveness and politeness, beauty, and the ideal physique of female characters. The findings, further, suggest that boys follow the stereotypes; however, in certain instances, girls try to break the traditional stereotypes and express their desire to be independent and powerful. Hence, children in the form of these traits internalize gender stereotypes. This study is significant as it sheds light on how this popular medium inculcates gendered stereotypes in children’s minds shapes their personas and how much they value them.

A STUDY OF THE SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE OF SYRIAN REFUGEE CHILDREN IN TURKEY

Turkey currently hosts 3.7 million Syrian refugees, and it becomes likely that the Syrians in Turkey will become permanent. The Turkish government recognizes both the importance of teaching Turkish children to respect ethnic and cultural differences and increasing social acceptance of the Syrians in Turkish society. As such, the Turkish government has begun broadcasting Syrian-related information via the state channel TRT Çocuk. This study analyzed the Put Yourself in His Shoes episode of a popular cartoon featured on TRT Çocuk called Rafadan Tayfa. Scollon's Mediated Discourse Analysis method and Social Learning Theory were applied as to examine the messages in the cartoon. It is revealed in this study that the cartoon here includes messages that encourage Turkish children to better understand the challenging experience the refugees have faced, and suggests to viewers that the Syrians are not burden to Turkey, but they contribute to their host societies with their talents.

Gender-sensitive Portrayal in Cartoon Shows for Preschoolers: A Critical Analysis of Masha and the Bear

Most of the studies on children’s programming conducted in America or India, indicating an unbalanced and stereotypical gender representation, remain limited to those on older children. The present study explores if cartoon shows for preschoolers resort to the counter-hegemonic portrayal of male/female characters, and if thereby have any scope for representation of gender fluidity within it. Consequently, it also attempts to discern the ways in which interpersonal relationships between the protagonists, and between the protagonist(s) and the secondary character(s) portray any ‘dominant/submissive’ dichotomies. Drawing on Bandura’s ‘Social Learning Theory’ and de Beauvoir’s notion of the social construction of women as the ‘other’, this study presents the results of textual analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis of a popular Russian cartoon show ‘Masha and the Bear’ (M&TB) telecast on Nick Jr. The study findings indicate more gender-sensitive representation in the show for preschoolers than those for the older children. Bearing the tropes of Soviet Russian egalitarian and cultural traits, the characters of M&TB portray non-binary gender roles compared to their American or Indian counterparts.

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.

A racionalidade do desenho animando mais assistido no cinema, processos educacionais e a pseudoformação

Cinema is a cultural product that mediates both educational and socialization processes as well as school processes, so it is important to investigate the relationship between cinema, education and professional training. It can be said that there is a tendency to incorporate the movie by the assigned approach or as a pedagogical resource to make the class more dynamic without further reflection. It is precisely for this protagonism that we decided to study the rationality of the production of the most popular cartoon in Brazil between 2009 and 2015. The theoretical basis of analysis is the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, mainly Adorno and Horkheimer. The cartoon presents a logic of American production permeated by the emphasis on detail, propagation of stereotypes, cliches, identity between all and part, heroification of the average hero, expropriation of Kantian schematism, repetition of forms that worked involving adventure, hints of humor and romance and serial format. Supernatural outputs, unity between word, image and music, abrupt cuts and speed in the succession of scenes that does not contribute to experience, stimulation of the circle of retroactive needs and a logic of body rather than eroticism and a binary organized reality, these are some of the mediating elements that favor pseudoformation.

The Destiny of a “Baby” Industry: Turkish Animation

The word “destiny” is rooted in the word “destination”, the place where someone is going. In order to draw a map for our journey we have to know where we are standing and we have to have a groundwork. Animation in Turkey dates back to the first animation experimentations of Turkish cartoonists and the first public screening of Disney’s “The Skeleton Dance” in 1932. The pioneering animations are either unfinished, lost or obscure. Just like the doomed faith of the first -unfinished- animated feature film project “Once Upon a Time” that has been carried out for almost 9 years or the questionable and -sued- authenticity of the first highly popular domestic cartoon character on Turkish TV, animation in Turkey have so many low points. Nevertheless there is a growing number of domestic feature films with record breaking number of audiences. Animation education is only 30 years old with little number of departments devoted to it, -yet- the numbers are growing. “Design Centers” are established by the encouragement of Turkish Ministry of Industry and Technology to support animation studios, professional associations are forming, intellectual property rights are the talk of the day, the academy and industry interaction is getting stronger, little festivals flourish... These are indeed turning points for the -baby- animation industry in Turkey. We need to study this map in order to get to our destination: a mature industry with established work ethics, high artistic standards and rich economic outcome and make a good destiny out of it.

Cartoon Characters in Children’s Series: Gender Disparities in Body Weight and Food Consumption

(1) Background: Media play a significant role in forming audience perceptions about physical external appearance and food consumption patterns. It has been reported that children’s cartoons project slimness, and concomitantly consumption of poor nutritional quality food. However, data on the role of gender in this respect are lacking; thus, this was the aim of the present study. (2) Methods: 100 episodes of the 10 most popular cartoon series were analyzed. Characters’ body weight status was classified into underweight, normal weight and overweight, and foods consumed as core (e.g., fruit, vegetables) and non-core (e.g., sweets, snacks). Messages about characters’ attractiveness were recorded and classified according to their body weight status and gender. (3) Results: Out of 37 protagonists, 12 were female figures (32%), while out of the 10 thin protagonists, 7 were females (70%) and only 3 males (30%). Thin heroines were the recipients of the majority of the messages connotative to physical attractiveness (36 out of 58 messages). However, consumption of core and non-core foods did not differ within genders (core: z = −1.526, p = 0.127, non-core: z = −0.417, p = 0.667). (4) Conclusions: Females seem to be underrepresented in cartoon series but receive the majority of the comments related to physical appearance, with most of them addressing the attractiveness of a thin figure.

The Vicissitudes of Forgetting: Military Intervention and the Memory of the Troubles in Britain

The Northern Ireland Troubles was Britain's longest and largest post-war conflict, involving the deployment of some 300,000 military personnel over a 35-year period. Curiously, however, while the formal ending of the conflict in 1998 has generated profuse memorialisation in Northern Ireland, remembrance of the conflict in Britain has been conspicuously muted. This article uses newspaper reportage, popular cartoons, official reports and the records of a public campaign to explore the origins and evolution of negative attitudes towards the Troubles in Britain, focusing especially on reactions to military intervention during its early years. Where mainstream histories of post-war Britain emphasise popular ‘indifference’ to the Troubles in Britain, the article suggests attitudes to Northern Ireland reflected popular aversion, transmuted into apathy over the longer term as a result of an active and state-managed process of forgetting. These processes, it is suggested, continue to affect how Northern Ireland is perceived in the present.

Stanislavski and Indian media: an exploration of “So Sorry” politoons

ABSTRACT This paper undertakes a study of the Indian “So Sorry” political cartoon (politoon) series, drawing on the work of Russian acting theorist Konstantin Stanislavski. The paper aims to illuminate the cartoons through the prism of Stanislavski’s work. The contribution of this paper will be the application of some of Stanislavski’s key principles to the cartoon series. Thus the paper will provide an example of how Stanislavski’s work can be a useful theoretical framework in the field of media studies. For this study, I have chosen cartoons from the “So Sorry” politoons series, the highly popular political cartoons video series on Indian television. The sample of “So Sorry” politoons for this study is the video “Kamal ki Tsunami” (The Tsunami of Lotus Flower), which was screened on 4 June 2019. I interpret this video to further explore Stanislavski’s notions in the creation of cartoons and to understand the cartoonist´s imagination.

Trumpeldor in Israeli popular culture: from a legendary national hero to a multifaceted icon

ABSTRACT The article examines popular texts that developed in response to the canonical repertoire on Tel Hai and Trumpeldor since the 1970s. In spite of the erosion of the heroic myth, Trumpeldor’s iconic status has continued to inspire the creation of new texts in Israeli popular culture, including songs, jokes, cartoons, satirical programs, and advertisements. Drawing on symbols and motifs associated with the canonical commemoration of Tel Hai, these texts articulate humor and skepticism as well as nostalgia toward the pioneering past and use it as a venue to critically address contemporary trends in Israel life and the politics of the present.

Pandemiczny obraz świata dziecka zatraconego w telewizyjnej rzeczywistości

A Pandemic View of the World of a Child Lost in Television Reality The following article is aimed to increase reader knowledge about the most popular cartoons among children at the age of 5–9 and the values that occur in them. It describes how the pandemic affected on children real time which they were spending in front of the television. The first part of the article is a description of value and cartoon terms. The next section is a summary of research conducted with children in the form of an interview relating to the cartoons. Follow-up of the paper contains information about time spending in front of the television among children before and during the pandemic. In the further part, titles of the most popular cartoons among children was presented. Successive part showed analysis of the several fairy tales in terms of their plot and worth appeared in them. The last part of the article contains conclusions of the paper.

Representation of Gender Roles and Media: The Case of TRT Children’s Magazine

Çocuklara yönelik olan süreli yayınlar, ülkemizde ticari bir yaklaşımla Batılı popüler çizgi karakterlere ve çeşitli promosyonlara dayanan dergiler, gazetelerin çocuk dergileri, çocuk edebiyatı dergileri ya da kamu kurumlarının kendi hizmet alanlarına yönelik yayınlanan çocuk dergileri şeklinde çeşitlilik göstermektedir. Çalışmanın konusu olan TRT Çocuk Dergisi, bir kamu kurumu olan TRT’nin kanallarından TRT Çocuk tarafından yayınlanmaktadır. Dergide, çocuk okurun boş zamanını verimli bir biçimde geçirmesi ve eğlenceli bir yolla çeşitli bilgiler edinmesine yönelik içerikler bulunmaktadır. Bununla birlikte, çocuğun medya araçlarından aldığı mesajların, onun toplumsallaşma sürecine de etki ettiği bilinmektedir. Bu bağlamda, çalışmanın cevap aradığı temel soru, TRT Çocuk Dergisi’nde toplumsal cinsiyet rollerinin nasıl kurulduğu ve yansıtıldığıdır. Çocuk hedef kitlenin toplumsallaşma sürecinde medyanın da etkisiyle, yaşadığı toplumun kültür ve değerlerini öğrenerek, benimsemesi ve davranışlarına yansıtması söz konusu olacaktır. Bu nedenle, ülkemizin çocuk kitleye yönelik yayın yapan kamu yayıncısı TRT’ye bağlı bir çocuk dergisinde bu kalıp ve modellerin ne şekilde kurulduğu ve çocukların bu bağlamda ne şekilde içeriklere maruz kaldığı önem taşımaktadır. Çalışmada nitel içerik analizi yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Çalışmada incelenen sayılardan yola çıkılarak, dergide rol model olarak temsil edilen kişilerin, çok büyük bir oranla erkek karakterlerden oluştuğu, içeriklerde yer verilen temsillerde de geleneksel kadın ve erkek rollerinin devam ettirildiği belirlenmiştir.

Teaching Race and Ethnicity in the Age of Trump: Using Popular Culture in a Polarized Classroom

Teaching race and ethnicity in various sociology courses, we found students in our classes can be very reluctant to approach the subject of race, discrimination, and racism. Moreover, during class discussion, they often have a hard time defining and analyzing these concepts. In this study, we examine how popular culture can be a useful tool to teach difficult subjects, such as race and ethnicity. Instead of a traditional lecture, we had students watch the popular Cartoon Network series Teen Titans. Using the characters’ interactions from this series as examples, students constructed definitions of racism and discrimination. The result of this study demonstrates that students may be more comfortable recognizing and discussing fictional characters’ racist or discriminatory behavior as a way of entering the conversation. After discussing fictional examples, students effectively link events from the cartoon to the subsequent lecture about race and racism.