Hey all...
I'm wondering what you all think of this. I found it on wis.dm:
"Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, has suggested that our infatuation with cartoons and comics, especially at a young age, is closely linked to the way in which our brains conceive of ourselves. He writes that since (in absense of a mirror) our only conception of our face is a vague arrangement of eyes, nose, mouth and other basic parts, we tend to intuitively identify with similarly-arranged patterns, such as the "faces" in an electrical outlet, the moon, or Micky Mouse. In a movie we see others, but in a cartoon we see ourselves."
Do you think this has any validity?
Yup.
I think its completely valid.
Humans instinctively anthropomorphisize things outside of themselves. There's a lot of deep psychological roots to this, I think revolving around the ways our brains process stimuli from the world around us.
We attach meaning to things because we want to know how they relate to us--the core relation questions being do they bring us pain or pleasure.
Since every perception of anything outside of ourselves is in the form of a question, and the human brain is also biologically wired to arrive at an answer for each question--even if it has to make something up.
That being the case, anthropomorphic associations are a natural spin-off of our perceptions dealing with things that appear "like" ourselves, even if only in a abstract sense.
We look at something, like an electrical outlet and we see a face--because our brains look at it for SOME KIND of association first, and if it finds one, it goes to lengths to extrapolate an anthropomorphic association from the abstract.
What Scott has surmised fits inside that quite nicely.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Understanding Comics is a fantastic book. :)
Anyway, I think his explanation and definition of the cartoon is quite accurate. It's a little bit weird...but very true.
--Z
Valid, sure. If that peculiarity of the human psyche weren't actually present, I don't think there ever could've been a "Brave Little Toaster."