Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 61
What Cartoons Can Teach Us
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To use the Actaon myth as a homology for learning is to
specify the instance of the letter, I'etre and lettre, as a matter of
having borrowed from language, having gained in language the time
to speak and teach before we are turned into mute beasts. This is the
time we gain by expressing the conditions of our muteness in language,
conditions which Joyce established in Finnegan's Wake as, "The
watched watching the watched watching." Only at the end of the
sentence, Joyce tells us, are we mute-only then are we silenced by the
burden of having something to say.
That is to say, we are thereby duped into being by language.
If we're not duped, we are in error and this fact makes a space for the
word, the name, which we can, in turn, defend to the death, rightly or
wrongly. Some will recognize this space for the word/name as
criterion for verifiability in classical logical systems-others as the
function of original sin and the fortunate fall, and still others will
recognize this "space for the word/name” as cartoons.
In cartoons, there are many falls and I believe we might say
they are happy ones, because, in cartoon land, falling is a sign of being
duped. It is common enough, after all, to see some character change
right in front of our very eyes into a large sucker or a donkey just before
taking a great fall. Bugs Bunny has been turned into an all-day sucker
by a Gremlin. And Elmer Fudd has been turned into an all-day sucker
any number of times by Bugs Bimny.
What is more, when we witness the transformation of
someone into an all-day sucker, we usually find written on that person
the name for the object it has become. An all-day sucker, for example,
has "sucker" written on its wrapper; a donkey has tied around its neck
a sign with "donkey" painted on it. Language is here materialized as
the separable part of a thing; it becomes something (a space) hung
from the word—and that which is hung from a word is precisely the
space for another word. For this reason, right before a cartoon
character falls, it must determine that it has been duped. It must see
itself as being able to be seen by someone in a position to see. In these
terms, change is the maneuvering of the place from which we imagine
that we are being seen. This maneuvering must always constitute a
f ill since our metaphysical skids slip out from under us; our position in
a signifying chain shifts and we can no longer stand where we did
because that place is no longer there for us. 'This is not to say that the
place does not exist—only that a "no trespassing" sign (our