From the Wabbit to the Wehrmacht

Cel-fueled Fascism

It now seems indisputable in the light of numerous and well-documented studies of North American television viewing habits that culpability for the chronic problem of worsening epidemic violence in our public schools including murderous episodes such as the Columbine rampage, now can effectively be traced to a too-long ignored instigator: Bugs Bunny.

Thanks to the decades-long mission of a squad of zealous monitors formed by the Florida Parent Teacher Association, which studied TV programs aired in Florida and other American states since the 1990s, we now have a comprehensive index of the most violent shows on the air. And the worst offenders have turned out to be Bugs, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Tom & Jerry even Rocky and Bullwinkle.

These meticulous findings--counting the number of violent acts per half hour--rated the Warner Brothers characters and others, including Batman, and an ecology-activist called Captain Planet among the worst offenders.

3Rs: Readin', Ritin' and Revolvers

In 1992, TV Guide commissioned a similar study of a typical 18-hour TV broadcast day to determine levels of violence. The US networks and the more popular cable channels were monitored for "purposeful, overt, deliberate behavior involving physical force or weapons against other individuals." There were 1,846 acts of violence that broke down this way:

* Cartoons (471); promos for TV shows (265); movies (221).
Toy commercials (188) actually had nearly three times the violent content of prime time dramas (69).

* Further studies done in both the United States and Canada have shown a positive relationship between early exposure to TV violence and physical aggressiveness as adults.

* The results of a study released in March, 2002 that tracked 700 male and female youths over a seventeen-year period showed a definite relationship between TV viewing habits and acts of aggression and crime in the later life. (1)

It is thanks to such diligent research we can now more accurately assess how mindless “toon” savagery has “desensitized” formative young minds and paved the way for proliferating weapons and gang violence in schools. And to think we were fretting about rap music lyrics, mayhem-themed video games, forensic crime-scene dramas, FOX News war coverage and gun shows for numbing our youth to violence and mayhem when the real culprits have been under our noses for 50 years or more.

Disney shadowed

Although a corresponding link to increased drug abuse to cartoons remains elusive, this is obviously a field for future study and perhaps grounds for additional taxpayer-supported research grants. And while the Disney Studios characters have been a bit less manic than their WB rivals, they were equally prone to violent outbursts, especially Donald Duck. I myself could be persuaded to undertake such a multi-million dollar seven-year study of Donald D and Goofy. In my view, Donald’s unintelligible speech and tantrums are undoubtedly the result of some sort of hallucinogenic delirium the source of which might be uncovered by a frame by frame digital analysis all DD features going back into the mid-1930’s. It’s common knowledge today that a nicotine-dependent Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse’s falsetto dialogue. But what we do not know is to what narcotic or pharmaceutical agents might have Walt resorted in pursuit of this bizarre vocal effect?

Armed with this with these extremely well documented analyses of decades-long chronic brutality on the animated screen we may now be able to establish that other social ills can be blamed on cartoons: battered wives, cruelty to animals, cheating in sports and in the classroom, income tax evasion, stock fraud, insider trading, tampered electronic voting machines and stolen elections.

Demonic Duck

It is entirely possible that we may also assign to these socially destructive cartoons a contributory role in the outbreak of World War Two and the Holocaust. Several of these hyper-aggressive characters date back to the Great Depression when they were seen across Europe by many thousands of impressionable children who subsequently became ardent members of the Hitler Youth and later the SS and Gestapo.


I myself clearly recall being highly agitated at our neighborhood cinema in Kiskunfelegyhaza, Hungary every time I saw Ignatz the Mouse throw a brick at Krazy Kat and then at home afterward hurling matsoh balls at my twin sister, Chava. Perhaps it’s nothing short of a miracle that today I am not a raving lunatic myself having been repeatedly exposed at a tender age to such animated depredations.



Professor Kurt Stanislaw Jacobi, a native of Northcentral Wallachia, holds a Ph.D. psychoharmonic engineering from Comenius University, Bratislava where he graduated summa cum laude in 1948. During the late 50's, Dr. Jacobi was a visiting scholar on the faculty of CCNY where he first postulated his now famous integrated theory of inversional constructs (ITIC) which ultimately made possible the Apollo moon landings, the Camp David Peace Accords and the inclusion of the annotated biography of Anna May Wong in the required reading curricula of Singapores' public schools.

(1) Visit the American Psychological Association for a
well documented study on this subject.