Felix could do anything. He was the master of both the narrative space and the graphic space. This meant that he could straddle the line between rational and irrational discourse without self-consciousness.

These excerpts from Seeing the Brick and Cameraless Animation gave a lot of insight on the development of animated pictures. The area of animation, and particularly early cartoons intrigued me. Like any other child with a television, I loved my Saturday morning cartoons growing up. Even now, adults still indulge in animated movies and television shows. From the beginning, animated pictures offered an opinion or idea on a particular topic. Cartoons are used to teach young children everything from morals to language, and even for adults, cartoons carry a larger ideal and message. I loved when the author described Felix the cat cartoons and their use to share ideals.

Reflecting on this, I began to see the immediate impact of cartoons on their audience and the relationship between the two. Cartoons are wonderful because of their ability to replicate reality and show it in an altered, or shaped way. The audience is then able to view what the artists wants them to see, or how he or she sees the world. The artist is virtually limitless in how he or she can represent the world and share ideas. Since cartoons often are similar to every day life in one aspect or another, we then apply what happens on the screen to our own lives. Morals, lessons, and themes shown in the animated picture are placed in our lives without us even knowing it.

Animation is powerful because we can say whatever we want. Artists can create and manipulate characters, environments, and situations to say whatever they want about the world. Which makes me question my whole childhood.