Obviously, Popeye cartoons use many ingredients to make them so special. Throbbing is one of them.
Personality is another, but those are secondary qualities of cartoons. Well, actually maybe throbbing is pretty important since it is hard to imagine live action being able to throb to the beat.
But the one creative quality that is unique to animated cartoons is demonstrated artfully in this here clip.
POPEYE SHOWS US WHAT CARTOONS ARE ABOUT
There are 2 types of impossible gags here.
1) Visual Metaphor - the hand with the vice grip. It's a good gag, and appropriate to the character and story, but kind of obvious since it is half literary.
2) The Eye gag - this one is more creative because it just comes out of nowhere. When I show the clip at festivals, the hand gag gets smiles, but the eye gag gets huge laughs. it's less expected.
I wonder if this is one of Dave Fleischer's gags. I talked to Shamus Culhane and Myron Waldman and they both sort of complained about how Dave would come around and make them add gags that were really out there. Good for Dave, I say!
1) Visual Metaphor - the hand with the vice grip. It's a good gag, and appropriate to the character and story, but kind of obvious since it is half literary.
2) The Eye gag - this one is more creative because it just comes out of nowhere. When I show the clip at festivals, the hand gag gets smiles, but the eye gag gets huge laughs. it's less expected.
I wonder if this is one of Dave Fleischer's gags. I talked to Shamus Culhane and Myron Waldman and they both sort of complained about how Dave would come around and make them add gags that were really out there. Good for Dave, I say!