The Use and Abuse of Visual Culture in Adult Cartoons
The Use and Abuse of Visual Culture in Adult Cartoons
The Oxford dictionary defines visual as “A9 picture, piece of film, or display used to illustrate or accompany something” and culture as “The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively”. However there isn’t a definition for visual culture in the oxford dictionary. This is because Visual culture is limitless and ever changing which makes it difficult to define. An attempt to define visual culture is a reflection of everyday attitudes, behaviours, ideas and mannerisms on works of art rather than its aesthetic value.
A cartoon is described in the oxford dictionary as “a simplified or exaggerated version or interpretation of something”. When we think about cartoons in the modern day we think about fun, innocent, brightly coloured animation or children’s books and television shows as typical cartoons. Adult cartoons such as family guy, South Park and American dad are considered as inappropriate because they differ from the typical forms of cartoons. They contain very adult themes such as sex, violence, racism, death, explicit language and drugs but yet visually they seem very innocent and easy enough for children to watch.
Adult cartoons differ from the conventional cartoons seen on children’s television channels they normally come on later in the night to be viewed by an adult audience. Adult cartoons are still seen as unconventional and different but as we take a trip back through time we will see that until the birth of animation cartoons have been aimed at adults for a very long time and have played a big part in human visual culture over hundreds of thousands of years. Every art piece tells a story, visual culture is the understanding of the world through an image or piece of art. Cartoons can be seen as forms of modernist and postmodern art, telling their own stories using various types of art forms such as comics, animations, caricatures etc. Cartoons
The Oxford dictionary defines visual as “A9 picture, piece of film, or display used to illustrate or accompany something” and culture as “The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively”. However there isn’t a definition for visual culture in the oxford dictionary. This is because Visual culture is limitless and ever changing which makes it difficult to define. An attempt to define visual culture is a reflection of everyday attitudes, behaviours, ideas and mannerisms on works of art rather than its aesthetic value.
A cartoon is described in the oxford dictionary as “a simplified or exaggerated version or interpretation of something”. When we think about cartoons in the modern day we think about fun, innocent, brightly coloured animation or children’s books and television shows as typical cartoons. Adult cartoons such as family guy, South Park and American dad are considered as inappropriate because they differ from the typical forms of cartoons. They contain very adult themes such as sex, violence, racism, death, explicit language and drugs but yet visually they seem very innocent and easy enough for children to watch.
Adult cartoons differ from the conventional cartoons seen on children’s television channels they normally come on later in the night to be viewed by an adult audience. Adult cartoons are still seen as unconventional and different but as we take a trip back through time we will see that until the birth of animation cartoons have been aimed at adults for a very long time and have played a big part in human visual culture over hundreds of thousands of years. Every art piece tells a story, visual culture is the understanding of the world through an image or piece of art. Cartoons can be seen as forms of modernist and postmodern art, telling their own stories using various types of art forms such as comics, animations, caricatures etc. Cartoons