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Worker and Parasite
Jun. 15th, 2012 12:20 amAnyone remember “Tom and Jerry: The Movie”? The misbegotten film where Tom and Jerry are friends and have to help an orphan girl escape her evil aunt? And they talk and sing all the time? Well, you’re in luck, because you can buy the DVD from the Warner Brothers website! And they describe it as thus:
Perhaps we can see the film’s new villains, the greedy relatives and dogcatchers, are representative of the growing rise of corporations and financial institutions at the expense of the traditional nation-states represented by Tom and Jerry?
And, of course, there is the film’s coda, where Tom and Jerry revert to their antagonistic ways. A criticism of Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’? An implied return to cold war rivalries, that would prove prophetic of the more hawkish foreign policies of George Bush and Vladimir Putin? Or perhaps an allegory for the Yugoslav wars, and the way they returned the spectre of war to a Europe that had thought such things long buried?
Truly, Tom and Jerry: the Movie has far more political depth than I had given it credit for! Thank you, anonymous Warner Brothers blurb writer, for opening my eyes!
Tom and Jerry return to the big screen in the 1990s, when the Cold War is over and the whole world is a kindler, gentler place to be...almost.
The Cold War? Of course! Tom and Jerry wasn’t just slapstick, their battles represented the constant struggle for control between the two superpowers! The seemingly bizarre decision to have them as friends in the movie represents the zeitgeist of the 1990s, the sense of optimism and hope that so many felt following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union!Perhaps we can see the film’s new villains, the greedy relatives and dogcatchers, are representative of the growing rise of corporations and financial institutions at the expense of the traditional nation-states represented by Tom and Jerry?
And, of course, there is the film’s coda, where Tom and Jerry revert to their antagonistic ways. A criticism of Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’? An implied return to cold war rivalries, that would prove prophetic of the more hawkish foreign policies of George Bush and Vladimir Putin? Or perhaps an allegory for the Yugoslav wars, and the way they returned the spectre of war to a Europe that had thought such things long buried?
Truly, Tom and Jerry: the Movie has far more political depth than I had given it credit for! Thank you, anonymous Warner Brothers blurb writer, for opening my eyes!