Eco-Toons

My project called Eco-Toons consists of eight posters advertising a 1930’s “Rubberhose” cartoon, each depicting a social issue in the scenario such as corruption, pollution, and depression just to name a few. These posters will be displayed as laser prints and using grayscale to represent them of how they would look like at the time the cartoons were produced. In the works, I utilize this type of imagery to represent elements of the social issue and to relate with the characters on the given issue. I choose to focus on these two together because not only did I grow up watching these cartoons as a child, but also to call attention to what is happening in our world. Back in the day, the only social issue that was relevant during that time is racism. This was shown in nearly every cartoon during that time when black people were seen as the minorities, giving them exaggerated features such as the large lips. Max Fleischer with his cartoons and Disney with Mickey Mouse would come up with their interpretations. Nowadays that topic expanded to not only targeting black people, but also hispanics and indians. When it comes to my work, I discuss discrimination rather than racism to broaden the situational scenario, using anthropomorphic animals and other weird creatures as the minority when comparing them to the human characters. Other social issues such as depression and pollution either discussed a lot or just weren’t discussed at all. When it came to depression and cartoons, it was more depicted from the great depression. In one cartoon, it used the image of Death to represent the event itself affecting the cartoon animals. With pollution, the only thing relating to that was having small scenes where they show lumberjacks chopping down trees and killing animals. Today it’s more concerning the oil drilling that everyone is focused on. In conclusion there are many social issues that can be discussed through the use of cartoon artwork, including the Rubberhose art style