Verbal Vs Visual

[AardvarkDog]

Yep, you guessed it - it'a another pointless debate thread!

I've been browsing through Jerry Beck's CARTOON BREW Site, and I came across his review on Camp Lazlo. (http://www.cartoonbrew.com/archives/2005_06.html#001162) Despite liking the show myself (please don't hurt me!!) I did agree with one point he made:


"...It is incredibly perplexing to me that why, on a show with so many distinguished artists, the filmmakers feel the need to cover the artwork and action with wall-to-wall dialogue. Not even the talkiest Billy Wilder films have as much dialogue as some of these modern animated TV series. It's not as if the characters are saying anything witty or having thoughtful exchanges of dialogue; they just yak, yak, yak, explaining every bit of action and every feeling they're experiencing. On more than one occasion, I noticed a scene where the joke was purely visual, yet they had a character injecting a comment on top of the action. Not only was this unnecessary, but also incredibly distracting. For all the talking, it is ironic how little the show actually says..."


This gave me an interesting thought - in earlier cartoons dating back to the Golden Age, we were treated to mute characters who only entertained us by giving us Visual Humour, and even in most cartoons then we laughed at Verbal Humour by what the characters said. I've started to realise that animations nowadays have a LOT more Verbal Gags then Visual, and Jerry's made a good point that made me stop and think.


Do you prefer Verbal or Visual Humour?


EDIT: I know! I misspelled Visual in the Poll! But I can't change it, sorry!! >__<

[Brundledan]

Visual humor, as a rule, but the best writers of the Golden Age (Michael Maltese) could come up with some truly sublime verbal sparring.

But that was then. Joe Adamson summed up the post-theatrical era pretty well in his Bugs Bunny 50th Anni. book, in which he said that action that could once have been communicated in purely visual terms had been reduced to the characters telling us what was going to happen, telling us what was happening as it was happening, and then, afterward, telling us what just happened. Things have gotten better since the '60s and '70s but not by a whole lot.

-Dan

[Kaleido]

So that's why I can't get into Camp Lazlo, despite being a fan of its descendants Rocko's Modern Life and SpongeBob SquarePants--until about halfway through the third season, anyway.

Cartoons are a visual medium. It's fine for gags to be dialogue-based, but characters shouldn't be talking for the sake of it. Compare cartoons produced by the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros. before (good) and after (bad) the departure of Michael Maltese to see (hear?) how dialogue-based gags should and should not be done.

[Mr. Semaj]

Who are you, the narrator? http://www.homer-simpson.de/typo3conf/ext/ve_guestbook/pi1/emoticons/homer.gif

My brother and I are constantly reciting verbal humor, from both classic and contemporary animation, but I believe that visual humor is much stronger by itself.

There are times when verbal humor is what basically defines a cartoon, and in very rare cases, like Daria, it actually works. However, some cartoons, like King of the Hill, have been increasingly, though unsucessfully relying more on verbal humor to carry each episode.

But the verbal humor in Camp Lazlo is one reason why I'm having such a difficult time getting into that show. In spite of most of the crew being from Rocko's Modern Life and SpongeBob SquarePants, Lazlo has none of the visual craft, verbal enrichment, or general sense of wonder of either show.

Recently, I've been watching a lot of contemporary cartoons, just to see how they could easily express something WITHOUT tacking dialogue onto it. When Cosmo and Wanda are in a jam, do we REALLY need to hear, "Oh no! [So-and-so] is sucking all the magic out of Fairy World!"?

Most cartoons are more fun to watch if the viewers can figure out for themselves what's going on. Most of the verbals should be saved for the online reviews. ;)

[J Lee]

This seems to be a standard problem with all of Cartoon Network's original shows as of late -- they can't shut up! The limits of TV animation makes an completely wordless cartoon very hard to pull off, but the CN shows seem to have gone off the deep end the other way, with endless reams of dialogue spewing from all the characters' mouths, to the point you really could shut off the picture and still know exactly what's going on just through the sound (On the other hand, CN's love of unappealingly-designed characters in many of their cartoons makes being able to follow the story without actually having to watch it an asset from time to time).

[Leviathan]

This is my kind of thread. For me, Visual jokes are usually the ones that have the greatest impact.

In a way, it's ironic that today's Cartoons (both animatd films and television, CGI or not) are some of the nicest looking (visually) in history (Camp Lazlo, frinstance, looks really good, and the animation is farily top-notch), are so heavily dependant on mindless nattering and chatter for humor.

This is particuarly unfortuanate for the animated features Chales Solomon has dubbed "Cell-Phone flicks" (The Dreamworks films, Chicken Little, Hoodwinked). CGi supposedly has all this potential and sutff, and filmmakers feel the need to squander it by having Celebrities X, Y, and Z say overrehearsed lines of dialogue for an hour and a half. In fact this has gotten to the point where practically the only nonverbal jokes that make it into cartoon films nowadays (aside from the Scrat sequences in Ice Age) are the dreaded fart jokes and pop culture references.

[AardvarkDog]

This is my kind of thread. For me, Visual jokes are usually the ones that have the greatest impact.

In a way, it's ironic that today's Cartoons (both animatd films and television, CGI or not) are some of the nicest looking (visually) in history (Camp Lazlo, frinstance, looks really good, and the animation is farily top-notch), are so heavily dependant on mindless nattering and chatter for humor.

This is particuarly unfortuanate for the animated features Chales Solomon has dubbed "Cell-Phone flicks" (The Dreamworks films, Chicken Little, Hoodwinked). CGi supposedly has all this potential and sutff, and filmmakers feel the need to squander it by having Celebrities X, Y, and Z say overrehearsed lines of dialogue for an hour and a half. In fact this has gotten to the point where practically the only nonverbal jokes that make it into cartoon films nowadays (aside from the Scrat sequences in Ice Age) are the dreaded fart jokes and pop culture references.

You know, that's something that CN ought to try and observe, really. If they were to look at the classic Warner Bros "Silent" Animations, they can learn that cartoons can still be funny even if the characters don't utter a single Syllable. What really ticks me off sometimes is when we are show a sign/poster full screen, one of the characters is BOUND to read out what we can see for ourselves!
And the other mention of "Gross Out Jokes" being the ONLY "Visual Gag" sadly appears to be the truth, and it's become so worn out it's praticually exhausted to death.

Take my advice for anyone who wants to create a show everyone likes - have a good mix of QUALITY Visual Humour whilst having a blend of Verbal Humour if nessicary. (Makes me want to watch a few Black 'n White Toons now!) :bosko:

[Chow Hound]

I prefer a good blend of both in a cartoon, but I lean toward the verbal.

[Nick]

This seems to be a standard problem with all of Cartoon Network's original shows as of late -- they can't shut up! The limits of TV animation makes an completely wordless cartoon very hard to pull off, but the CN shows seem to have gone off the deep end the other way, with endless reams of dialogue spewing from all the characters' mouths, to the point you really could shut off the picture and still know exactly what's going on just through the sound (On the other hand, CN's love of unappealingly-designed characters in many of their cartoons makes being able to follow the story without actually having to watch it an asset from time to time). That's a problem I have with a lot of new cartoons, the unnecessary dialogue is very distracting and annoying. Does anyone remember the pilot episode of "Courage the Cowardly Dog"? I think that one short was much better than the series that followed because it was almost completely visual. I also remember the early episodes of "Dexter's Lab" and "Powerpuff Girls" managed to balance out the verbal and the visual aspects well, but in the recent episodes, the characters seem to be talked throughout the entire thing! I can never understand why the creators would want to do this.

[Kaleido]

I also remember the early episodes of "Dexter's Lab" and "Powerpuff Girls" managed to balance out the verbal and the visual aspects well, but in the recent episodes, the characters seem to be talked throughout the entire thing! I can never understand why the creators would want to do this.With those two, the creators had little involvement with their series by the time they went downhill. (Well, the fourth season of The Powerpuff Girls was awful even with creator Craig McCracken, but it didn't become completely unwatchable until the fifth, when he left.)

See also SpongeBob SquarePants season 4.

[JDWeil]

This seems to be a standard problem with all of Cartoon Network's original shows as of late -- they can't shut up! The limits of TV animation makes an completely wordless cartoon very hard to pull off, but the CN shows seem to have gone off the deep end the other way, with endless reams of dialogue spewing from all the characters' mouths, to the point you really could shut off the picture and still know exactly what's going on just through the sound (On the other hand, CN's love of unappealingly-designed characters in many of their cartoons makes being able to follow the story without actually having to watch it an asset from time to time).


It's what Chuck Jones called "illustrated radio". "They make a radio track and produced as little drawings to go along with it" Originally this was necessary because the budgets on TV cartoons were microscopic any decent animation was out of the question. Things have improved these days somewhat animation wise, but the writing is still wanting. Today's gagmen seem to have majored in scatalogy in their college days.

[Jack G.]

Visual humor, as a rule, but the best writers of the Golden Age (Michael Maltese) could come up with some truly sublime verbal sparringI agree. There's also that cliche 'A picture is worth a thousand words". Although cartoons are a marriage of sounds and moving pictures, the visual has more impact to me.

But I do appreciate good writing. The Simpsons (when it was in it's heyday) had very clever writing and dialog (the animation was just passable). So I guess I'd say I lean visually, but it's great to have clever lines in there.

[Ray Pointer]

The entire point of cartoons, whether print or animated is that they are visual. And those that are intended to be humorous are based on "visual humor." There are countless examples in the book, TOO FUNNY FOR WORDS, which gives many examples of the types of visual animation gags used in Disney cartoons. Imagine somone slipping and falling down stairs with a bedlam of crashes followed by a puff of dust, then seeing the character is a deshevled state. It would be really stupid to have the character describe its appearance in a situation like this. If it was to speak, it would be some short ironic response related to the result.

[Dafffy Duck]

This is a difficult question, because shows can rely on both verbal and visual humor, and if properly executed ,both can come off very entertaining. As for my preferance, I cannot choose, I like them both - if done properly. Look at it this way Looney Tunes relied more on verbal humor , while Tom and Jerry mostly relied on visual, but both shows were as good because they did both ways in a funny manner.

[MF TOON]

Visual aesthetic goes a long way for me. Regardless of humor.


I think that's why I tend to prefer the earlier WB, MGM, Fleischer, Disney, etc. studio shorts.


Animation is a medium, not a genre.

I view theatrical cartoons as I do any other films and judge them based on the same merits. Humor is rewarding, but doesn't affect my opinion of a short alone.

I'd rather watch an aestheticaly beautiful animated film, that doesn't necessarily rely on conventional storytelling in a defined structural sense... than a bland looking cartoon that tries to be funny.

Another reason the majority of 50's on WB cartoons don't really appeal to me.