Martin Goodman.

The bookstore is a rather bleak proposition these days. Anyone wishing to peruse the alleged "social sciences" section looking for new and interesting takes on cultural studies finds instead a tiresome battle raging between politicians, media figures and sundry poltroons of the Left and Right. This seems to be America's literary equivalent of sectarian violence. One aspect of this contentious forum is represented by fiery arguments over whether evolution, creationism or intelligent design represents the true state of nature.

As I was sitting at my desk this evening, my attention wandered over to a handsome beer stein I had received on one of my birthdays. The stein boasts colorful raised figures of Bugs Bunny in five different stages of his development over time. I recalled seeing similar depictions of the evolution of Mickey Mouse, and the amusing thought came to me that the field of animation has actually settled the evolution controversy rather neatly.

You see, no matter what your beliefs may entail, there is room in animation for all three viewpoints. Animated characters can be created, can evolve through a process similar to that of natural selection, and it can be shown that their evolution follows a template indicative of intelligent design. There are almost no major animated characters that did not change in appearance over time, be they creations of the silver or the television screen. Many of the stories are as interesting as anything found in the Bible or On the Origin of Species. This month we take a look at examples of how evolution played a part in animation history. Don't you wish the arguments were this easy in the real world?

(Note to readers: Evolution typically takes millions of years over thousands of generations. Such is not the case in cartoons, which evolve over mere decades or in some cases a few dozen films. Despite what the historical record of the Warner cartoons says, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig merely portrayed cavemen and were not in the process of evolving over 1,000,000 years ago. Marvin Martian assures me that this is true.)

1. The Law of Greatest Attraction
Creating a cartoon character from scratch has been done many times in the history of animation. Some became very famous, some thrived for a while before disappearing, and yet others became extinct after a very short time (Some say that these were washed away in a great acetate flood, but fossil records of them remain and can still be seen today). The longest-lived characters have demonstrated the survival of the fittest by adapting and evolving over time. Evolution in cartoons takes three different paths, and intelligent design has a hand in all of them. The first path of cartoon evolution is that of greatest attraction.

No one loves an ugly cartoon character, although there have been some loveable ones along the way. The eye is drawn to pleasing shapes and their analogues in human physiology. This is why animals, as far as audiences are concerned, can be depicted more realistically than human figures can be. The more an animated human approaches simulacrum status, however, the more unforgiving of flaws audiences tend to be.

One of the more famous characters involved with the Law of Greatest Attraction was Jiminy Cricket, which Walt Disney assigned to Ward Kimball to design for Pinocchio.

If an animal is humanized enough, the same phenomenon tends to take place. A very early example was Walt Disney's first version of Oswald the Rabbit as drawn by Ub Iwerks. There was immediate protest from Charles Mintz that Oswald looked fat, sloppy, and far too old to be a successful cartoon star. Iwerks went back to the drawing table and produced a peppy young rabbit capable of pleasing the distributor and the audience as well.

After Ub Iwerks left to form his own studio with the backing of Pat Powers, he created a very homely frog named Flip. This wide-mouthed, pinheaded character carried with him the more repulsive aspects of the amphibian, and was thus too ugly to succeed for long. Iwerks and all of his artists knew it, and before long Flip became more rounded, less web-footed, fully clothed, and sported a short little muzzle instead of his original beak-like schnozz. In short, he looked like a small human boy, especially after a jaunty cap was added to his design. Poor Flip, however, was soon a dead branch on the evolutionary tree; Hoppity Hooper was actually a different species.

One of the more famous characters involved with the Law of Greatest Attraction was the dapper dude we know as Jiminy Cricket. After Walt Disney became dissatisfied with the progress of Pinocchio, he went back to the source material and found that Carlo Collodi had given Pinocchio a conscience in the form of a cricket. This thankless job cost the insect his life, but Walt had happier things in mind and assigned young Ward Kimball to design "Jiminy" Cricket for the film. Kimball started out with an actual cricket, but it was not nearly cute enough for Walt. Kimball recalls a gradual eradication of every aspect resembling an insect until all that remained was a little man in top hat and spats. As Kimball put it, Jiminy was only a cricket because everyone in the film said he was. Still, Jiminy did evolve according to the Law of Greatest Attraction.