It started with my friend, Scott.  We were middle-schoolers at the time, watching G.I. Joe or another after school good-gun-toting-mercenaries-save-the-world-from-evil-gun-toting-mercenaries type cartoon.  His comment changed everything in an instant.  With the profound insight only a 7th grader can aspire to, Scott asked me without preface, "How can they talk without moving their chins?"

What?!?  I was too shocked to even process his question because I couldn’t believe my ears.  My pre-hormonal buddy was actually questioning, critiquing in fact, a facet of this animated wonder we had blindly and faithfully followed for so long.  ("Because knowing is half the battle.")  And what was this business about chins…

As the pain of this mental slap he had just unleashed on me smarted a little less, I watched the cartoon with new eyes.  He was right. The characters lips moved, Duke’s, Lady J’s, Zartan’s, Snake Eyes’ (ok, not Snake Eyes, he never talked) etc., and words came out, but their chins remained stationary.  It was as if they were all ventriloquists talking through clinched teeth and quivering lips that were somehow detached from this incredible useful thing we call–a "jaw".  It was just weird.  And the more I thought about it the less I could make myself "not" think about it.  It was just there.  The rose-colored glasses had been ripped off, thrown to the ground, and stomped on repeatedly.

Now you might be thinking, "yeah, but you you have to have a certain tolerance level in your suspension of disbelief to begin with in order to watch a cartoon at all."  You are already starting with a pretty fantastic premise…so what difference does it make to stretch the truth a little more.  Obviously, Tom can’t repeatedly bludgeon Jerry with a mallet only to have Jerry bounce back like a happy little accordion scurrying on to fight another day.  Real life doesn’t work that way (remember Orville).  And Wile E. Coyote can’t run twenty yards beyond a cliff’s edge holding an anvil AND STILL have time to construct a sign that says HELP! before plummeting to his dust-clouded doom.  But somehow Scott’s comment was different.

As soon as his question held validity for me, the real world of physics and anatomy hostilely invaded the fantastical world of animation, where people get shot but never die, where arch enemies use parachutes and escape pods that promise yet another episode.  I couldn’t look at cartoons in the same way that I had before.  From that day forward I would question cartoons objectively (no matter how much I could enjoy or lose myself in them.)

Case in point, one of my daughters favorite cartoon characters:  Dora the Explorer.

As much as I appreciate her bi-lingual, adventurer appeal; as much as I may snicker at Boots or pooh-pooh Swiper’s shoplifting; as much as I may value the problem solving and navigationally savvy techniques of this little Mexican girl, I just can’t get around (literally) how BIG her head is…

It’s GARGANTUAN!!!  El Grande, Dora!  Can you imagine if our heads were this big in real life?  If you leaned over to tie your shoes you would find your head pinned to the floor faster than you can say ‘vamanos‘.  Equilibrium would be a serious issue as well.  Look at her wingspan.  There’s not much chance she could even scratch the top of her forehead or part her hair with a hairbrush…unless her arms are made of elastic.

It’s sad really that her mobility is so hindered by her HUGE cranium.

And secretly (don’t tell my daughters this please!) her head is shaped so much like an American football I find myself wanting to punt it.  I keep waiting for Boots to give in to the urge, rear back his big bulky moon boot, and send Dora’s heed, flipping gracefully end over end, straight through the uprights.  Score!!!  The Redskins Win the Super Bowl on Boots’ 50 yard field goal!  I can see his small monkey arms raised victoriously in the air, tail writhing, grinning from ear to ear.  Excellente!

OK, so I have some obvious issues I need to work out with Dora(Dora,Dora…the Explorer!)

But the other day, I was pleasantly surprised with a Chinese cartoon I watched with the girls.  The main character was a small Chinese boy with a loving father and mother.  As we began to watch a snapshot into this family’s life, I immediately went into critique mode because of this little boy’s AMAZINGLY large head.  The big bubble sphere on top of this kid’s shoulders put Dora’s comparatively small noggin’ to shame.  It was grossly exaggerated of course, but it was about half the size of his body.  The boys’ father, on the other hand, had a concavely narrow and small head (which presents its own curiosity questions regarding genetics and paternity…)  Anyway, this is how my mind cynically reacts to these
things at first.  I usually get over it, remind myself it’s a cartoon, and enjoy the unfolding storyline.  But this particular episode played on my bias to a tee and had me laughing out loud.

The whole episode centered on how HUGE this kid’s head was and detailed a series of tragic events that resulted from him having a BIG HEAD.  It was great.  I couldn’t catch all of the Chinese, but basically I got the gist of it.  The storyline went like this:

1. First the kid puts his head through the slats in a fence and finds he can’t get his head out.  A stranger helps him get free.
2. The kid’s father brings the boy home a small plastic stool for a gift.  The child runs around the house and puts the four legs of the stool over his head.  While bouncing from his head to his feet (while the stool is resting on his head)–note, this would be hard to do in real life– he firmly wedges the stool in place and can’t get it off.
3. His parents take him to a doctor to have the stool removed from his head.  The doctor sends him to another place.
4. His parents take him to a magician (ha) to have the stool removed, but the magician seems unable to help.
5. Leaving the magician, the family finds a body builder and asks him to remove the stool stuck on their son’s head.  He tries to pull it off, but this just angers the son.  He breaks away from the man (stool still stuck in place) and runs from the scene.
6. Unfortunately, the fearful boy runs down the street towards a building that is on fire.  Firefighters try to warn the boy away from the fire.  He doesn’t listen and runs near the burning building.  (This is not a joke.  This was a real cartoon on TV here.)  A spark starts a flame on the stool on the boy’s head. 
7. With a flaming stool on his head he runs into an opened warehouse full of stools. 
8. A man in the warehouse uses a hose to put out the fire on the boy’s head/stool. 
9. The man (as fate would have it) assembles the same type of stools as that on the boy’s head.  He unscrews the four legs of the stool, thus freeing the unfortunately BIG-headed boy.
10. The man decides it would be a good idea to put a safety spoke on the bottom of the stool to prevent this type of problem from happening in the future.
11. The boy takes his safer stool home, much happier and more comfortable.

This cartoon was awesome.  I say if characters in cartoons are going to have grossly-exaggerated attributes, they should play them up–poke fun at them, give a knowing wink to the audience.  Let’s face it; kids are getting more and more sophisticated anyway.  I’m ready for more field goals from Boots.  Bring on the flaming stools!

Oh, and by the way, this is what I would look like in Dora-cartoon format:

What?  You didn’t notice any difference?