I finally mustered the courage yesterday to watch the full blown Trump Press Event from Wednesday for a second time, start to finish.
It was the first and last formal (if that term is not an oxymoron here) of Trump’s Pre-Presidential run and hide. It did not disappoint.
We all have to get used to the notion of a permanent lowering of the intellectual threshold powering our highest office for some period to come.
Twitter Speak is King. Schoolyard Bully Rules Apply. But never mind.
What came through the computer screen most powerfully to me on second viewing was Trump’s meta communication skills. Reporters go to college, learn some proper English, study journalism, maybe take a swipe at political science, or economics, or logic courses, and prepare to enter the fierce competition for media jobs and attention. Maybe spend some extra time at the gym and work on the diet and attractiveness thing, in order to appeal to the eye of the camera, and gain a little extra advantage over other competitors.
Some very few of the candidate strivers gain the highest ranks following the President and reporting about the White House and national politics.
Trump could care less about the substantive first half of those qualities. With respect to the second half, Trump has now been around on display for so long, that though he highly values physical attractiveness and fitness in others (especially females), for himself he carries around 30-40 pounds of unfit flabbiness and a hairdo so outlandish it has become a signature prop like Colombo’s tatty raincoat, or Rumpole of the Bailey’s battered old hat.
Rumpole of the Old Bailey in his New Hat, Worn Under Protest
Never mind.
Trump’s media mastery is essentially non-verbal, He commands by evocative gestures and facial expressions, hand movements and body language. He has no poker face but expressive lips and eloquent facial grimaces, smirks, and scowls. He talks incessantly, but it is all so much background noise. The actual audio content is nearly irrelevant to his message power.
It has been reported often that one of Trump’s favorite things is to watch his performances on TV with the sound off. That is not an affectation, nor a sign of extra brilliance on his part in recalling every word or phrase he used. It is because the words simply don’t matter.
Trump has learned the art of visual political theater. He knows, in his gut and hindbrain, whether he scores or not just by watching his own motion track, the dance and physical byplay. It might help a little if there is an audio track of the crowd without his own words, but it is unnecessary after so many years of practice. Trump knows his followers respond and rise to his visual presence and flourishes.
Try it for yourself as a home experiment. Queue up a Trump clip of 2-3 minutes with the sound off. Then listen with the audio turned up. I bet you find you understood what Trump was about almost as well in silence as when he was talking.
Here is the genius connection. Trump’s particular mumble-jumble, circular speech patterns don’t matter to his faithful listeners, as long as he can get out the simple three and four word chantable slogans they expect. That’s all they need, and in fact virtually all they get. So it’s a match.
And therein lies the huge obstacle for the national press corps, and traditional journalists of all types. They keep analyzing and focusing on Trump’s words, but that is the unimportant 99% of his shtick. The 1% cream is the visual impact with a background audio tone for emphasis. Journalists are forever chasing the irrelevant, and will never trap Trump at his game with this method.
Meta-communication. The parties are literally ‘talking’ past each other. One recent simply example. In the second presidential debate in St. Louis (October 9, 2016), Clinton wiped the floor with Trump on facts, logic, words, policy choices, issue plans, options, etc., that is with words. It started with the no handshake visual snub, which was no accident. Then Trump began a constant scowling, pacing, and lurking display behind her while expressing distain, and threat ,and contempt on his face. The Press were universally certain Clinton won handily. Trump voters watched an entirely difference performance and saw a visual wipeout, favoring their strong man winner, words be damned.
Trump’s connection is visceral, not verbal or intellectual. Trump supporters often seem at a loss to explain their powerfully strong feelings of support and identification for him, despite his loose talk. They just gravitate. Get over it, non-believers.
Trump has tapped the human primitive paleo-brain, the reptilian and limbic structures, the amygdala and hippocampus.
Watching Trump for an hour at the January 11 Press Conference (with the sound on), I was drawn back to sturdy childhood memories. I kept thinking of “Tom and Jerry”,* the beautiful animated film shorts of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Worthy competitors to Disney, and animation superstars of the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s.
“Tom and Jerry” is a classic tale of a powerful cat forever chasing a diminutive but clever mouse. The cat never quits, and the mouse seems to always escape until the next adventure. Between 1940-1958 there were 114 Tom and Jerry short films produced at MGM Studios. The series began before there was broadcast television, and were shown on TV as the new medium in importance. The “Tom and Jerry” episodes were fully animated, and of such high quality they won 7 Academy Awards for their creators. The original series were adapted for widespread TV viewing starting in 1965.
The first watered down version of Tom and Jerry was “Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks”, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that featured as a regular segment of the television series The Huckleberry Hound Show from 1958 to 1961. It is from this derivative show the famous phrase in our blog title is taken: “I hate these meeces to pieces”.
The Tom and Jerry shorts were wildly popular in the U.S. and elsewhere first as short subjects in movie theaters between feature films. Later they were broadcast on TV as feature cartoons for themselves, in several iterations. The original series contained scenes of graphic cartoon violence, even for the time.
The animation was gorgeous, top drawer, and the striking feature was that the entire series is nearly entirely dialog free. Neither main character says a word in about 100 of the 114 episodes. The entire pleasure and performance value is based on physical comedy, visual gags and sight jokes.
Therein lies the Trump connection that came to me unbidden, but holds up on further inspection.
Tom hates meeces in general, and Jerry in particular. He is constantly working to catch the little pest, dispatch it, dismember it, and remove it permanently from Tom’s surroundings. Tom constantly tries and fails, but he never gives up. The creators always leave room for another episode, so we never know the final outcome. After 50 years in animation heaven Tom and Jerry may still be at it.
Trump is always after the Press for one thing and another, or just for their Pressness. The Press thinks of Trump as somewhat dimwitted and clumsy, but powerfully built with real claws. Together they wage an unrelenting permanent battle, unable to make do without the opponent. Every episode is a new variant on the theme.
Trump vitally needs the Press to have a creature to chase and toy with, as cats are prone to do. The mice retreat and plot for survival (and Nielsen ratings) as they must given the disparity in power and influence between one cat and any one mouse.
It is all very amusing in cartoon viewing. It is somewhat less so in its real life application.
So cartoon MAGA is the original Tom & Jerry and not the various later attempts to recapture the magic. Mr. Jinks is orange headed and has a sometimes speech impediment thus bearing some superficial resemblance to parties unnamed, but he is no Tom. Tom & Jerry is the hard stuff, Trump watched as a kid, along with me and millions of others going to the movies and watching TV in 1950’s and 60’s America.
We can honorably attach the phrase to the original series. The catch phrase would have been the best slogan for Tom and Jerry if a word phrase description had ever been needed.
In 2017, Trump as Tom despises the Press as Meeces. “I hate those meeces to pieces.”
And in 2017, Trump as Tom controls more of the cheese, than he ever dreamed possible.
Better watch out little meeces!
*Selected sections from *Tom and Jerry” Wikipedia entry:
Tom and Jerry is an American animated series of short films created in 1940, by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. It centers on a rivalry between its two title characters, Tom and Jerry, and many recurring characters, based around slapstick comedy.
In its original run, Hanna and Barbera produced 114 Tom and Jerry shorts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1940 to 1958. During this time, they won seven Academy Awards for Animated Short Film, tying for first place with Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies with the most awards in the category. After the MGM cartoon studio closed in 1958, MGM revived the series with Gene Deitch directing an additional 13 Tom and Jerry shorts for Rembrandt Films from 1961 to 1962. Tom and Jerry then became the highest-grossing animated short film series of that time, overtaking Looney Tunes. Chuck Jones then produced another 34 shorts with Sib-Tower 12 Productions between 1963 and 1967. Three more shorts were produced, The Mansion Cat in 2001, The Karate Guard in 2005, and “A Fundraising Adventure” in 2014, making a total of 164 shorts. Various shorts have been released for home media since the 1990s.
A number of spin-offs have been made, including the television series The Tom and Jerry Show (1975), The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (1980–82), Tom and Jerry Kids (1990–93), Tom and Jerry Tales (2006–08), and The Tom and Jerry Show (2014–present). The first feature-length film based on the series, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, was released in 1992, and 12 direct-to-video films have been produced since 2002.
Numerous Tom and Jerry shorts have been subject to controversy, mainly over racial stereotypes that involves the portrayal of the recurring black character Mammy Two Shoes and characters appearing in blackface. Other controversial themes include cannibalism and the glamorization of smoking.
The series features comic fights between an iconic set of adversaries, a house cat (Tom) and a mouse (Jerry). The plots of each short usually center on Tom’s numerous attempts to capture Jerry and the mayhem and destruction that follows. Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry’s cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck. However, there are also several instances within the cartoons where they display genuine friendship and concern for each other’s well-being. At other times, the pair set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, such as when a baby escaped the watch of a negligent babysitter, causing Tom and Jerry to pursue the baby and keep it away from danger.
The cartoons are known for some of the most violent cartoon gags ever devised in theatrical animation such as Tom using everything from axes, hammers, firearms, firecrackers, explosives, traps and poison to kill Jerry. On the other hand, Jerry’s methods of retaliation are far more violent due to their frequent success, including slicing Tom in half, decapitating him, shutting his head or fingers in a window or a door, stuffing Tom’s tail in a waffle iron or a mangle, kicking him into a refrigerator, getting him electrocuted, pounding him with a mace, club or mallet, causing trees or electric poles to drive him into the ground, sticking matches into his feet and lighting them, tying him to a firework and setting it off, and so on. Because of this, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent. Despite the frequent violence, there is no blood or gore in any scene.
Music plays a very important part in the shorts, emphasizing the action, filling in for traditional sound effects, and lending emotion to the scenes. Musical director Scott Bradley created complex scores that combined elements of jazz, classical, and pop music; Bradley often reprised contemporary pop songs, as well as songs from MGM films, including The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St. Louis, which both starred Judy Garland in a leading role. Generally, there is little dialogue as Tom and Jerry almost never speak; however, minor characters are not similarly limited, and the two lead characters are able to speak English on rare occasions and are thus not mute. For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in nearly every cartoon in which she appears. Most of the vocal effects used for Tom and Jerry are their high-pitched laughs and gasping screams.
Before 1954, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio and format; in 1954 and 1955, some of the output was dually produced in dual versions: one Academy-ratio negative composed for a flat widescreen (1.75:1) format and one shot in the CinemaScope process. From 1955 until the close of the MGM cartoon studio a year later, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in CinemaScope, some even had their soundtracks recorded in Perspecta directional audio. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were shot as successive color exposure negatives in Technicolor; the 1960s entries were done in Metrocolor. The 1960s entries also returned to the standard Academy ratio and format, too. The 2005 short The Karate Guard was also filmed in the standard Academy ratio and format.
Both characters display sadistic tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other, although it is often in response to a triggering event. However, when one character appears to truly be in mortal danger from an unplanned situation or due to actions by a third party, the other will develop a conscience and save him. Occasionally, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture and humiliate them both. Sometimes this partnership is forgotten quickly when an unexpected event happens, or when one character feels that the other is no longer necessary. This is the case in Posse Cat, when they agree that Jerry will allow himself to be caught if Tom agrees to share his reward dinner, but Tom then reneges. Other times however, Tom does keep his promise to Jerry and the partnerships are not quickly dissolved after the problem is solved.
Although many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so themselves. Tom, most famously, sings while wooing female cats; for example, Tom sings Louis Jordan’s “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” in the 1946 short Solid Serenade. In that one as well as Zoot Cat, Tom, when romancing a female cat, woos her in a French-accented voice similar to that of screen actor Charles Boyer. At the end of The Million Dollar Cat after beginning to antagonize Jerry he says, “Gee, I’m throwin’ away a million dollars… BUT I’M HAPPY!” In Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring, Jerry says, “No, no, no, no, no,” when choosing the shop to remove his ring. In The Mouse Comes to Dinner Tom speaks to his girlfriend Toots while inadvertently sitting on a stove: “Say, what’s cookin’?”, to which Toots replies “You are, stupid.” Another instance of speech comes in Solid Serenade and The Framed Cat, where Tom directs Spike through a few dog tricks in a dog-trainer manner. Co-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effects from the series, Tom’s leather-lunged scream (created by recording Hanna’s scream and eliminating the beginning and ending of the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack) and Jerry’s nervous gulp.
The only other reasonably common vocalization is made by Tom when some external reference claims a certain scenario or eventuality to be impossible, which inevitably, ironically happens to thwart Tom’s plans – at which point, a bedraggled and battered Tom appears and says in a haunting, echoing voice “Don’t you believe it!”, a reference to the then-popular 1940s radio show Don’t You Believe It. In Mouse Trouble, Tom says “Don’t you believe it!” after being beaten up by Jerry (this also happens in The Missing Mouse). In the 1946 short Trap Happy, Tom hires a cat disguised as a mouse exterminator who, after several failed attempts to dispatch Jerry, changes profession to Cat exterminator by crossing out the “Mouse” on his title and writing “Cat”, resulting in Tom spelling out the word out loud before reluctantly pointing at himself. One short, 1956’s Blue Cat Blues, is narrated by Jerry in voiceover (voiced by Paul Frees) as they try to win back their ladyfriends. Both Tom and Jerry speak more than once in the 1943 short The Lonesome Mouse, while Jerry was voiced by Sara Berner during his appearance in the 1945 MGM musical Anchors Aweigh. Tom and Jerry: The Movie is the first (and so far only) installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duo regularly speak. In that movie, Tom was voiced by Richard Kind, and Jerry was voiced by Dana Hill.
Even though the theme of each short is virtually the same – cat chases mouse – Hanna and Barbera found endless variations on that theme. Barbera’s storyboards and rough layouts and designs, combined with Hanna’s timing, resulted in MGM’s most popular and successful cartoon series. Thirteen entries in the Tom and Jerry series (including Puss Gets The Boot) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons; seven of them went on to win the Academy Award, breaking the Disney studio’s winning streak in that category. Tom and Jerry won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series.
Tom and Jerry remained popular throughout their original theatrical run, even when the budgets began to tighten in the 1950s and the pace of the shorts slowed slightly. However, after television became popular in the 1950s, box office revenues decreased for theatrical films, and short subjects. At first, MGM combated this by going to all-CinemaScope production on the series. After MGM realized that their re-releases of the older cartoons brought in just as much money as the new cartoons did, the studio executives decided, much to the surprise of the staff, to close the animation studio. The MGM cartoon studio was shut down in 1958, and the last of the 114 Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts, Tot Watchers, was released on August 1, 1958. Hanna and Barbera established their own television animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, in 1957, which went on to produce hit TV shows, such as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and The Smurfs.
Beginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons began to appear on television in heavily edited versions. The Jones team was required to take the cartoons featuring Mammy Two-Shoes and remove her by pasting over the scenes featuring her with new scenes. Most of the time, she was replaced with a similarly fat White Irish woman; occasionally, as in Saturday Evening Puss, a thin white teenager took her place instead, with both characters voiced by June Foray. Also, much of the violence was edited out. However, recent telecasts on Cartoon Network and Boomerang retain Mammy with new voiceover work performed by Thea Vidale to remove the stereotypical black jargon featured on the original cartoon soundtracks.
Debuting on CBS’ Saturday morning schedule on September 25, 1965, Tom and Jerry moved to CBS Sundays two years later and remained there until September 17, 1972.
Watch three of the original “Tom and Jerry” shorts on YouTube below:
Tom and Jerry, Episode 34 – Kitty Foiled (1948)
Tom and Jerry, Episode 33 – The Invisible Mouse (1947)
Tom and Jerry, Episode 45 – Jerry’s Diary (1949)
Pay special attention as Tom and Jerry play golf. Tom gets some self-inflicted cosmetic dental work at the golf club. No anesthesia was administered.
