InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Eat the meat"

peur_evol (peur_evol) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-04-04 15:58:00

Entry tags:

era: silver age, publisher: dell comics, theme: funny animals

NUMBHEAD

You get so used to these old kid's comics being so moral and borderline preachy that it kind of surprises me when I find one like this, where the message seems to be one of intolerance and undisguised bigotry.

Hate mongers rejoice! This one's for you!

Uh-oh! Problem child! But just what is this child's problem?

Wha-hunh?!? Of course we can't just let the child like ~~coloreds~~ ~~gays~~ ~~foreigners~~ cats, now can we?

Just look at his tail there. Ol' Numbhead got excited at the picture of the bad pussy.

Like Jesus said, "All You Need Is Love". Or was that the guy who was more popular than Jesus that said that?

Numbhead is a little too young to realize that "WAR IS HECK"!

Here it comes...

Mighty Mouse always resorts to violence. But let's just see how Numbhead resolves conflict...

So just who learned a lesson here? Numbhead? Mighty Mouse? The cats?
It was US.
Remember, we could learn a lot from a dummy.

from MIGHTY MOUSE #168, September 1966

Also posted at my blog in case you're interested.

(Post a new comment)

	kenn_el 2009-04-04 05:03 pm UTC (link)
	There's nothing particularly 'hateful' about respecting one's position in the food chain.With all due respect, I think you may be reading too much into the story. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	RE: Hateful peur_evol 2009-04-04 05:38 pm UTC (link)
	"I think you may be reading too much into the story" Maybe. Food chain aside, I thought it was an interesting morality-reversal; the hero promotes violence instead of peaceful conflict resolution. Funny animals or not, it ain't something you'd see in P.C. comics today. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Hateful

dr_hermes
2009-04-05 06:36 pm UTC (link)

It's a peaceful resolution that would end in the peacemaker being killed and eaten.

Part of the problem with this story's plotting is the absurdity of presenting humanized animals who still have some (but not all) traits of real animals. If these cat's were shown as being redeemable by human standards and not obligate carnivores, then Mighty Mouse would be a hardnose who needs to have his eyes opened. But the cats aren't as humanized as the mice here.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashtoreth 2009-04-06 02:46 pm UTC (link)
	You can never overthink comics. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashez2ashes 2009-04-04 05:04 pm UTC (link)
	I dunno... I think if there was an alien race that was above us on the foodchain and liked ot eat humans all of the time, I'd be pretty anti those guys. (Reply to this)

	sistermagpie 2009-04-04 05:04 pm UTC (link)
	Mighty Mouse is right. I hate cats now. And also non-white people. Thanks, Mighty Mouse. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-04-05 06:52 pm UTC (link)
	Mighty Mouse hates you. He had no use for humans, with their traps and rat poison. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	raattgift 2009-04-06 06:46 pm UTC (link)
	That's OK. Mighty Mouse has long made me wish I had a vat of liquid nitrogen and a Waring blender. He may have no use for rat poison, but Rat Poison knows how to use an HPLC station. Oh, yes, it'd be for SCIENCE! And not just because the cartoon bugged this ailurophile. (Reply to this) (Parent)

box_in_the_box
2009-04-04 06:07 pm UTC (link)

On the one hand, this one is hardly unique to Mighty Mouse. Cats are almost always cast as the villains in the "cat vs. mouse" cartoon conflict, even when, as in the case of Tom and Jerry, the mice are often at least as assholish as the cats.

On the other hand, even when cats go up against dogs, who have as many advantages over cats as cats have over mice, the cats still aren't portrayed as heroic by contrast, which means that this has less to do with childhood cartoons just naturally favoring the underdog (heh), and more to do with a bit of a bias against cats in particular (and I say this as someone who doesn't even LIKE cats).

It's interesting that certain traits get ascribed to certain animals - in the German language, in which all nouns possess genders (even inanimate objects), dogs are always male and cats are always female, regardless of the actual gender of the specific animal in question. What is it about cats that is culturally coded as "female," then, and could it be related to the reasons why cats are so often cast as bad guys, even when it contradicts the internal logic of the stories themselves?

Somebody else will have to answer that, because I've just typed way too many words on this already.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

freeman333
2009-04-04 08:28 pm UTC (link)

I have to say, I agree. Even as a kid I noticed my own tendency to regard dogs as male and cats as female (which is odd, coming, as I do, from a culture without gendered nouns).

On the other hand, despite having size and weight advantages over cats as you describe, dogs generally don't actually eat cats. So it would be easy in an anthropomorphic sense to imagine dogs as being at least slightly more benevolent towards those weaker than them than cats are.

Of course, there's also this as a possible explanation.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	box_in_the_box 2009-04-04 08:36 pm UTC (link)
	So it would be easy in an anthropomorphic sense to imagine dogs as being at least slightly more benevolent towards those weaker than them than cats are. Except that, in most of those cartoons, dogs rarely are so benevolent. And Neil Gaiman FTW. :) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

freeman333
2009-04-04 08:51 pm UTC (link)

True. Sometimes they are cast as the protectors of the mice, though (Tom and Jerry, and the dog in Cinderella, come to mind), which would probably be less acceptable if it was assumed that they were planning to do to the cats what the cats were planning to do to the mice.

Someday, I want to own a cat that looks like Dream in his cat-form. I imagine waking up in the middle of the night, with that coal-black form sitting over me, glaring down with those smoldering crimson eyes...best pet ever. For, you know, producing fear-borne aneurysms.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

ashtoreth
2009-04-04 09:32 pm UTC (link)

Well, dogs are "man's best friend". They're automatically good guys. Even if they're vicious monsters (full disclosure: a dog killed my rabbit).

Cats deal with humans on their own terms. They don't follow orders (and don't need to to be useful as vermin catchers). They'll snuggle up to anyone who pets them because they're whores. They also are traditional companions--not to stalwart men--but women, lonely women looking for substitutes for men, and satanic witches! Also, though dogs are often brutal in their desire to chase and kill, cats are noted for their sadism regarding mice (I have a book on rabbits which states that wild cats will kill them for sport rather than food).

These images were capitalized on in Maus and An American Tail. Mice were the helpless and meek Jews, Cats were Nazis, Americans were dogs.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

dr_hermes
2009-04-05 06:42 pm UTC (link)

And of course, we are projecting our own way of thinking onto animals. Dogs and cats do what is in their nature to do; when it lines up with our convenience, they're "good" and when it doesn't, they're "bad."

Dogs are pack animals, we've essentially bred them to remain eternally juvenile beasts dependent on us as their alphas. Cats are more solitary and self-reliant, they have an arrangement with humans that suits them, but they are not domesticated to the same degree that dogs are.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

ashtoreth
2009-04-06 02:51 pm UTC (link)

Of course, some of us appreciate those qualities. 'Cat people' versus 'dog people'. I remember reading a book about a guy who's going to a psychiatrist, who insists that the man's relationship with his cat implies the way he feels toward women. The man objected, saying his cat was a tom who went out to fight over ladycats every night, so how could his cat be considered feminine?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	janegray 2009-04-05 08:10 am UTC (link)
	On the other hand, despite having size and weight advantages over cats as you describe, dogs generally don't actually eat cats. Maybe not eat, but if a big dog catches a cat, chances are the dog will kill the cat. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ceru 2009-04-05 10:12 am UTC (link)
	When my parents got their first-ever dog (female), we suddenly found ourselves referring to the male cat I'd had for years as "she," and the female dog as "he." It was freaky, and it took us weeks to stop doing it. Testament to the power of gendered ideas of everyday things. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-04-05 09:28 pm UTC (link)
	Why is a huge Dodge pick-up truck or a Navy carrier a "she?" (Reply to this) (Parent)

	xdoop 2009-04-05 01:50 pm UTC (link)
	more to do with a bit of a bias against cats in particular Cats have been villainized and persecuted since the Middle Ages. :( (Reply to this) (Parent)

	espanolbot 2009-04-04 07:41 pm UTC (link)
	Not really that suprising from a character obnoxious enough to sing his own themesong. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-04-05 06:32 pm UTC (link)
	I'll tell Popeye you said that. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	parsimonia 2009-04-04 10:30 pm UTC (link)
	Kind of off-topic...but does anyone remember something on TV from the 80s that featured Might Mouse flying around to the song "Locomotion"? I have a very vague memory of it, and this reminded me about it. (Reply to this)

	magnetic_regina 2009-04-05 01:37 am UTC (link)
	Since I'm a cat-lover I'll just pretend the morale is something to do with homosexuality and proper young men not loving pussy. (Reply to this)

	icon_uk 2009-04-05 05:19 am UTC (link)
	Though this story goes back much earlier, to at least 1955 so what you have there is a reprint. If I'd thought there MM comics going back that far, I'd have suggested this was an analogy for American non-intervention in WWII, with Numbhead a Nazi apologist.. it might work as an Anti-Communist piece I suppose. (Reply to this)

Commies!

lpetrazickis.livejournal.com
2009-04-05 09:27 am UTC (link)

I am pretty sure that cats is code for communists in this, and that Mighty Mouse is being a tad McCarthyist. The red stars coming out of the punch to the army of cats are suggestive, as is the military hardware jingoism and the focus on the local sympathizer rather than actual cats.

Anti-immigrant hysteria of the modern sort is not likely in 1966, and the allegory doesn't line up with black-white race relations.

(Reply to this)

	xdoop 2009-04-05 01:47 pm UTC (link)
	The sequel! (Reply to this)

psychop_rex
2009-04-05 04:52 pm UTC (link)

I wouldn't exactly have said this was an example of 'racism is good' - it's more of an example of 'know who your enemies are, and how to face them'. After all, as Mighty Mouse puts it, 'Don't you know what cats DO to mice?' From a mouse point of view, it is perfectly reasonable to hate and fear cats - cats are the ones that eat you!
And even considering that, I think the message here is actually quite a peaceable one. After all, in many respects Lumphead is actually right - he's just overenthusiastic. He loves everybody and doesn't want to hurt anyone, which is a noble creed, but which Mighty Mouse finds exasperating, because cats are the natural enemy of mousekind, and so he therefore sees it as natural for a mouse to hate cats, not love them. But Lumphead doesn't love cats BECAUSE they are mousekind's natural enemy - he's simply misinformed; nobody has ever bothered to tell him WHY mice hate cats. And even once he realizes this, he doesn't change his position - he goes 'well, mice hate cats because cats eat mice - so I'll just teach cats to love mice instead, and eat other things!' This doesn't work, of course, but it does cause the cats to run away, and, as Mitzi puts it, he 'has the right idea', and shouldn't stop trying. It's basically an argument between hard-headed realism (Mighty Mouse) and idealism (Lumphead) - and idealism wins! So in the end, it's the hero who learns a lesson. I wouldn't say the message is one of intolerance at all.

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