While I was at my writing retreat this last June, I happened upon two cartoon series that I hadn't seen before. (This isn't that surprising, since I don't watch a lot of TV programming, preferring, as many millennials do, to stream the content I want on demand.) One was The Amazing World of Gumball and the other was Teen Titans GO! It's hard to say which strikes me as the preferred one--they have differing styles, different approaches, and different animation philosophies. Nevertheless, their scattershot, random, fast-paced humor is completely on my wavelength.
Recently, I picked up four DVDs worth of Teen Titans GO! I am trying to be parsimonious with them, but it's hard not to binge watch everything. While I've seen some of the episodes before, watching them again is almost as enjoyable as the first one. I've found myself adopting some of their style of humor into my teaching, and I'm pretty sure some of my future cartooning will be influenced by the TTG style, too.
This is interesting to me for two reasons: One, having a humorous coping mechanism can help when I'm feeling depressed, which has been hitting me harder lately than is usual. Two, it shows the ways how quickly we seek to absorb identity in a post-capitalist world.
Okay, so the second reason seems to come out of left-field (Marxist joke), but bear with me. One of the tendencies of today--a tendency that, I think, has always been there, but is more pronounced with the increase publication of our private lives--is to rely on what we consume to define who we are. Historically, identity has come through sundry avenues: Location, fealty to a ruler, based upon the trade you performed, family name. The idea that we're now who we are through our wallets is simply another permutation of existential apprehension*.
The critique here is less that I found a funny cartoon that I like and wish to emulate and more the deference (also, difference; also, differance) of willingness to explore one's identity. I don't find anything wrong with loving a silly cartoon, quasi-worshiping the Bard, or feeling pride in a sport whose origins lay in a fantasy novel. What I worry about is that I use these things about me as a replacement for me--that I'm more concerned about these aspects of what I like over who I am.
The difficult part is to extricate the one from the other. How can I say I am this, that, or the other? I use indicators of what I like to try to convey what I am and that always seems exterior. We have philosophical concepts to try to explore these things, but by their nature they are abstract. If I'm an honest man, I have to demonstrate that honesty through external markers--trying to pay for a drink that was accidentally not charged whilst getting a free taco at Rubio's, for example. I don't think one can claim that she's honest and not do honest things, but I'm not certain that doing honest things makes her honest.
I have started to incorporate this new thing that I like--Teen Titans GO!--into who I am, but I don't know if it is what I am. In many ways, I don't know what I am. I feel like an inferior Cyrano de Bergerac, listing different, witty responses: I can answer spiritually (a child of God), scientifically (starstuff), humorously (5'7" and filled with irritation), reductively (a man), or philosophically (what is personhood?). Yet they all feel incomplete. How do you get past the markers to see what someone is inside? Or are we markers all the way down?
I don't know if I have an answer here. I guess the takeaway is that I like Teen Titans GO! and I think you should watch it if you find the same things funny that I do.
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* I mean that in both ways.
Recently, I picked up four DVDs worth of Teen Titans GO! I am trying to be parsimonious with them, but it's hard not to binge watch everything. While I've seen some of the episodes before, watching them again is almost as enjoyable as the first one. I've found myself adopting some of their style of humor into my teaching, and I'm pretty sure some of my future cartooning will be influenced by the TTG style, too.
 |
| I love this. I could watch it for days. FOR DAYS! |
Okay, so the second reason seems to come out of left-field (Marxist joke), but bear with me. One of the tendencies of today--a tendency that, I think, has always been there, but is more pronounced with the increase publication of our private lives--is to rely on what we consume to define who we are. Historically, identity has come through sundry avenues: Location, fealty to a ruler, based upon the trade you performed, family name. The idea that we're now who we are through our wallets is simply another permutation of existential apprehension*.
The critique here is less that I found a funny cartoon that I like and wish to emulate and more the deference (also, difference; also, differance) of willingness to explore one's identity. I don't find anything wrong with loving a silly cartoon, quasi-worshiping the Bard, or feeling pride in a sport whose origins lay in a fantasy novel. What I worry about is that I use these things about me as a replacement for me--that I'm more concerned about these aspects of what I like over who I am.
The difficult part is to extricate the one from the other. How can I say I am this, that, or the other? I use indicators of what I like to try to convey what I am and that always seems exterior. We have philosophical concepts to try to explore these things, but by their nature they are abstract. If I'm an honest man, I have to demonstrate that honesty through external markers--trying to pay for a drink that was accidentally not charged whilst getting a free taco at Rubio's, for example. I don't think one can claim that she's honest and not do honest things, but I'm not certain that doing honest things makes her honest.
I have started to incorporate this new thing that I like--Teen Titans GO!--into who I am, but I don't know if it is what I am. In many ways, I don't know what I am. I feel like an inferior Cyrano de Bergerac, listing different, witty responses: I can answer spiritually (a child of God), scientifically (starstuff), humorously (5'7" and filled with irritation), reductively (a man), or philosophically (what is personhood?). Yet they all feel incomplete. How do you get past the markers to see what someone is inside? Or are we markers all the way down?
I don't know if I have an answer here. I guess the takeaway is that I like Teen Titans GO! and I think you should watch it if you find the same things funny that I do.
---
* I mean that in both ways.
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