Why is Tom and Jerry Genius?

hello I'm the Nostalgia Critic guy remember it so you don't have to there's this idea going around that slapstick is a lesser form of humor well to them I say I'll slapstick focuses on the most important rule of comedy that all comedy in one way or another is based on misery whether it be mocking something others hold dear or crushing another in a perfectly time manner humor is that defense mechanism that acknowledges that pain is just another part of life and nowhere DC pain exploited more hilariously than in Tom and Jerry this chem mouse duo has had both kids and adults laughing for years through no real dialogue no real stories just excuses to crush burn and maim each other as much as physically possible now what these shorts came out cartoons hurting each other wasn't anything new lots of cartoon shorts including Disney and especially Warner Brothers seem to have this dig down pretty well but if there was already two major companies doing it so well how come Tom and Jerry rose to be the pinnacle slapstick duo's well maybe one of the main reasons was there was rarely any talking I mean there was an occasional line from one or two other characters the Talmud jury themselves usually kept quiet perhaps allowing less time to devote to motivation and instead more time to devote to the physical humor Warner Brothers is great but half their comedy was the words they would say to one another in between the violence and that worked wonderful for them but here they take a few moments to set up the scenario and then it's nothing but hardcore pain the rest of the way giving many audiences exactly what they wanted on top of that despite the fact that they couldn't speak they actually did form very solid personalities jerry is playful innocent and often looking to just have fun or even just survive even if he can have a little too much fun surviving Tom being a cat of course sees him either as a meal or as an interference whatever the setup he's always the one who starts the fight which makes it very easy to laugh when he gets his comeuppance but that's not the only reason to feel like he deserves it he's cocky he's egotistical he's prone to anger he's stubborn he's all the things that make a great foil but never to the point where he's unlikable he still has that goofy playfulness that Jerry has too which is why in the few instances where they do come together it's not entirely unbelievable but let's get down to the reason why people really love Tom and Jerry their lust for blood william hanna and joseph barbera knew how to animate great slapstick it makes sense in animation seeing how so much of the humor relies on timing and here you can literally control each frame to the tiniest detail giving you complete power over your delivery and that's exactly what they do they know exactly how fast how hard and how painful every of torture should be but it's one thing to say they're good at it exactly how are they good at it why does the slapstick work so much better here than a dozen other cartoons well because again they understood that anything that can emphasize the amount of pain a character is in usually the funnier the joke will be compare town and jury to say this scene from an episode of Tiny Toons now Tiny Toons most of the time henkaa slapstick - but sometimes they got a director or a team of animators that didn't do it as well as an amour bereted of course the idea of cartoons is to exaggerate the possible turning it into the impossible but in order for it to be funny you have to know what to exaggerate like watch this bit this scene doesn't work as well because the character is too stretchy and too flexible it doesn't look like they're getting hurt that bad because it doesn't look solid enough now watch when Tom gets hurt this works so much better because even though he's being distorted he still feels solid in the area that they do manipulate complements the weight of the item that's causing the damage it's like when you have a jar of play-doh yeah it's stretchy and not too hard but when you smash your fits down on it it leaves an imprint so you can tell it's still solid and the same can be said here the objects usually leave an imprint on top now if I was to smash my fist down on the play-doh and it was to stretch all over the place that would be too distracting and thus we couldn't connect with what we were seeing as well the animators of Tom and Jerry knew that the more you feel how solid they are the more you feel the pain the same could be said for the sounds that make in the early days when they were still trying to find their niche Tom and Jerry especially Tom looked much more like real-life animals and even sounded more like real-life families now that's not as funny because it's not as relatable the only thing you think about when you hear that sound is a real-life cat getting hurt what sick would enjoy that but when you add a human yell to it suddenly it's more funny and yes every single one of them is done by William Hann so why is this Hill funnier than actual cat yo well on top of the surrealist factor the idea of hearing a man's voice come out of an animal's mouth as people we understand a human being being heard more than we do an animal animals don't communicate with us the same way we communicate with each other so naturally we'll be able to find the humor easier with something that acts more human despite the fact that they look like an animal that's another reason you almost never see them on all fours the more they made it look like animals acting like people and not animals acting like animals the more likely they were to get allow they knew just want to have them use their voices to and they were never overplayed like some pieces of cat burger that I know they were just used at the appropriate time when the scene needed something particularly silly to up the humor Hey look this one especially gets me just for the surreal missile oh why the deeper voice why that major echo why even those exact words I don't know it's just so strange you have to laugh at it but again if they use the voices too much it would have gotten old and it seemed like that wouldn't be nearly as funny so they had to use them sparingly the expressions are also something hanna-barbera got down perfectly the more content and comfortable a character can be in their environment the more funny it'll be when it comes crackling down that's why so often you'll see Tom give this mocking grin when he thinks he's won the more happy he is the harder the blow will be that knocks him out of his bliss even a simple questioning expression can work as long as the character looks genuinely confused adding to the idea that the more the character thinks he's connected to what's really going on the funnier it will be when reality comes smashing him in the face and the longer they keep it the more it will build up how painful the payoff is going to be in fact with that said half the time you don't even need to see the expression all the way through we never see Tom hit the ground in this scene but the idea that he would keep this face all the way to the bottom just makes the moment all the more hilarious they practically headed down to mathematical perfection so it Tom and Jerry were so good at what they did how come they're not as popular now as they were back then I mean granted there's still big names but you don't see them around as much as you do Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny I think part of that is that a lot of people just didn't know what to do with them after the animated movie shorts died some tried live legendary animator Chuck Jones gave his spin on the classic duo but they were a bit too friendly and oftentimes the animation just wasn't on par with the original but with that said it's not awful take this scene where a Magic Mouse fairy comes down and gives Jerry a magic potion in order to help him defeat Tom any series that has a scene like that has some understanding of what may tomandjerry work but aside from that we had a lot of adaptations that seem to aim toward much younger kids than it did both kids and adults and even today that still seems to be the lane trying to put these two characters that obviously belong in simplistic shorts into dialogue heavy stories that rarely have anything to do with what made them so popular to begin with so whether or not an outlet will open up for Tom and Jerry to really shine again is unknown but what is known is that when Tom and Jerry got it right they got it right with a perfect combination of animation timing sound effects and a clearer understanding of why physical humor will never die as a comedic art this is why they'll not as popular as they used to be their names will not be forgotten anytime soon they didn't break any barriers or change the way animation is done they just did what they did so well and that was simply being funny and as long as we keep orphan girls with Indiana Jones fathers and ice cream cart rapist out of the picture I can assure you that Tom and Jerry will still be relevant names for years to come I'm the Nostalgia Critic guy remember it so you don't have to Oh HIDA walker here and holy i mean holy I'm of course talking about the IndieGoGo thing that we did to raise 50 thousand to get our shows going or other shows that this pop-culture and nostalgia show this game shows on like games who wanted to go and even with still several days left we hit our goal I mean like we hit 50 thousand we were a Jew at 55 as I'm making this video and holy everyone always says like oh yeah yeah you'll make it come on your big name stuff like that but you really don't know there's a lot of things that people assure you are gonna happen and they don't so for something like this to really come through for you guys to come through we're gonna do our damage to come through ourselves because this is really really awesome and we really couldn't be more thankful to you guys so bottom of our hearts thank you so much we're in the stretch goals now we're into that territory and I'm just so here real fast to tell you what the stretch goals are as well as what the money that we have now is going to is pretty much the stuff we said before we're going to use it to get the set put together for the for the Nostalgia pop-culture show you know to get the contestants going and prizes going and we're updating all our equipment we're updating new cameras uh the cameras we work with that the nice but we won't go on to like the SDI stuff which is going to look a lot more professional it's going to be easy to work with an editing live a new editing equipment that's coming you know new lighting all this stuff is coming to make these productions and these shows look even better than they are now so all that is coming the stretch goals if we hit a 65 pretty much we're going to be going into the the comic book show next we want to a comic show that's not just a review show but sort of everything comics we want to sort of like this comic variety show that just served welcomes and celebrates and rips apart does everything comics pretty much because this culture is just so grand right now with the movies going and just comics are just huge so we really want to do something that really has fun with that celebrate then talks about that just all sorts of fun stuff and if we hit a 75 K we're gonna go right into the video game show we're gonna go into having those episodes ready and set to go we're gonna try and do new stuff with that that you don't usually see video game game shops are you know what I mean but yeah cuz you if people should be rewarded for their lazy asses sitting down and playing those video games like me when I play so um yeah pretty much this whole thing is just blow my mind man it is so cool we've gone from I mean at least me personally not knowing if we reach that goal to going to stretch goals and that that's you guys that made that possible so it's it's the coolest thing it's so awesome that you guys care that much the people that donated the certain amounts and have the perks coming that they'll definitely be coming and man just I don't even have the words I know it's cliche but I really don't have the words it is so awesome guys a lot of cool stuff that's coming and now it'll get to you even faster we're excited I hope you're excited we're gonna do our best to come through and get good stuff for you guys so I'll see you later as of now I'm gonna watch some Korra

Channel: Channel Awesome

Views: 1,743,580

Keywords: channel awesome, nostalgia critic, doug walker, movie, movies, film, tom and jerry, tom and jerry cartoon, tom and jerry genius, animated cartoon, animation, cartoons, nostalgia critic editorial, editorial

Id: XczKQAAVbaA

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2016