3: Mice and Cats and Dogs

"uh oh."

I have a horrifying amount of stuff to do today, and it'll be worse tomorrow, so let's see if I can get some messy thoughts out while I have a touch of time and my Faure cd (found it :3). I don't have a topic readily in mind, so I'm just going to cruise through my notebook and talk about whatever I've written (or drawn) in class. I'll add pictures or links later. Maybe.

Let's work backwards. In the most recent class (and yes, I know that will not apply after tomorrow's class), we watched a cartoon of Dixie & Pixie and Mr. Jinks. It was strange and amusing to watch the two small mice leading the mammoth sized dog (by comparison) by a rope that I question whether or not they could have even lifted. Someone mentioned in class an interesting thing: in these cartoons, you rarely see cats and dogs working together against mice, or even cats and dogs working against a dog. As we've seen in both Tom and Jerry and Dixie and Pixie, the dog is often on the side of the mouse, the smallest (but, perhaps, most persuasive) on a dog's list of "Things I Could Most Certainly Eat if I Wanted to."

But there's something peculiar about these relationships and characterizations. In Pixie and Dixie, the twin hound stands upright, and in a sense, does come to the mice as an equal, willing to help them because has his own beef with the cat. But the first African Lion Hound (Rhodesian Ridgeback, today) is bought and owned; his relationship with the mice is more one of manipulation, one of use. Even in the Tom and Jerry episode we watched awhile, the dog was a big large fellow, but sleeping for most of their antics. He did not scheme on his own; he did not really do anything more than react as either side needed him to, like a lit fuse. There is something in these cartoons that mice and, yes, even their enemies, cats, have--but that the dogs are made to lack.

I wrote down an interesting exchange from the Dixie & Pixie episode (which I'm glad I did, because I can't find it on youtube). This is when Mr. Jinks approaches the first hound, fists pumping:

Mr. Jinks: Stand up and fight like a man!
Dog: Can't I just lie down and die like a dog?

And a bit off to the side, I know Micky Mouse belongs to a more anthromorphized universe--but it's Pluto at his beck and call, and not a cat, no? They are used in these cartoons, like a quirky tool or contraption. A means of transmitting an effect. And, in this way, a bit paper-ish, I suppose.

So we're back to this idea of cat people and dog people; cats are seen as more independent, and dogs as dependent. We tend to like independent things, because that is what we fancy ourselves to be. But surrounding yourself by what seems, what is advertised as independent and individual does not necessarily make you so--on the contrary, it seems as if such a frenetic sort of collecting would render you dependent on these things, these images, these symbols-of-things-that-are-not.


As for Mr. Murrcat, I am becoming increasingly more suspicious of editor and biographer interjections. They make it feel as if the story has a frame, which is another thing I do not like in my stories. They seek to explain themselves (or excuse others), as if it is not enough that their voice exists in all the spaces between their story. I am largely fine with the way that Murr and Kreisler interrupt each other--they, at least, are from the same universe. But I feel nothing but irritation when the editor or biographer feels he must push his nose between my pages and print some greater part of himself into the book as well. I had a professor who banned the use of "I" in essays, as he considered them superfluous; if you are writing an essay, it is assumed that what you say is what you believe, or, at least, what you mean to say. Don't speak crap, and you won't have to justify it with "I think" or "I feel" concessions, was the general idea behind the rule.

But then, I must amend an earlier statement--are not Murr, Kreisler, and their respective editor and biographer all from the same universe, all from the same book? I suppose. Technically. But they pull so far out of it that it can hardly count, I feel. And cannot a certain time be a certain place? Are they not worlds apart in this manner? But, then, I suppose you will say that to the reader of the entire book, it is all past; it is, still, all the same universe. Well, I say poo-poo on you. I do not need the editor/biographers little notes to further accentuate the difference, the distance, by purporting to be real. Do not want, my good sir.