Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Six)

Part Five

Section Three: Mickey Geist - The Ontology of Mickey Mouse

“For experience is just this, that the content - which is Spirit - is in itself substance, and therefore an object of consciousness. But this substance which is Spirit is the process which Spirit becomes what it is in itself; and it is only as this process of reflecting itself into itself that it is in itself truly Spirit...the transforming of that in-itself into that which is for itself...of the object of consciousness into an object of self-consciousness, i.e. into an object that is just as much superseded, or into the Notion”

(Phenomenology 802).

When we speak of the ontology of Mickey Mouse, we are of course not discuss a living, self-conscious organic being. But simply saying that Mickey Mouse is not an organic being does not tell us just exactly Mickey Mouse is, only what he is not. In this section, I will discuss Mickey Mouse as an object of consciousness, as an artificial self-consciousness, and as a function of self-consciousness.
At first glance, the question of Mickey Mouse as an object of consciousness seems like a simple one. Wouldn't the object of consciousness be the ink and paper of which a drawing of Mickey is made up? After all, Steamboat Willie is composed of a series of paper and ink drawings which have an actual physical existence.

However, while we could legitimately point to a particular ink and paper drawing as an object of consciousness that makes up Mickey Mouse, there are any number of other physical objects that could just as easily and just as validly described as “Mickey Mouse.” Moreover, these disparate physical objects have contradictory elements which make basing our definition of Mickey Mouse on them as invalid as defining both a solid which conducts electricity and a solid which does not as “Copper” invalid.

We could use the definition of “ink and paper,” but a Steamboat Willie is not simply a series of ink drawings on paper, but also a series of ink and paper drawings converted into film cells. Even then, consumers do not view the films cells directly, but rather as light filtered through the cells and projected on a screen. The majority of people who have seen Steamboat Willie have never seen the unprojected film cells, let alone the original ink and paper drawings. Furthermore, we can just as validly refer to a digital stream of binary code which shows the same sequence of images as Steamboat Willie.

Furthermore, not all depictions of Mickey Mouse were originally executed in ink and paper. Epic Mickey and Kingdom Hearts both use computer-generated polygons to depict Mickey, electronically stored zeroes and ones which consumers never see. Instead, they see an interpretation of the zeroes and ones projected onto a television screen, which is just as much of a trick of the light as Steamboat Willie. Even if a consumer were to read the series of zeroes and ones which define Mickey in these video games, they would be unable to interpret them as “Mickey” without the extremely rare ability to read binary code.

In all these cases, the majority of consumers at no point interact with what we originally considered to be the “object of consciousness,” but with a trick of projected light. How then should we understand Mickey Mouse as an object of consciousness? Is he the ink and paper? The electronic code? The illusion of form and movement created by projection?

What becomes clear is that the “object of consciousness” is not a physical object, and in fact has very little relation to any physical object. Whereas “copper” exists as a physical object which our concept of copper can be compared against, “Mickey Mouse” does not. We can test the validity of our concept of copper by comparing it with the physical object. It does not matter if we use “Lump of Copper A” or “Lump of Copper B” (assuming they are both of sufficient purity); either one will have identical physical properties that can be used to test our concept of copper.

However, we cannot test the validity of “Mickey Mouse” in the same way. “Ink Drawing of Mickey A” and “Binary Code Model of Mickey A” would naturally have massively conflicting physical properties, and yet can both be reasonably said to be “Mickey Mouse.” Ink drawings and computer renderings are manifestations of Mickey Mouse, not the object of consciousness itself.

(Continued in Part Seven)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Five)

Part Four

Early sequential art used the same normative framework as pre-enlightenment societies. Egyptian and pre-Columbian sequential art (comics, if we use McCloud's definition) both import the normative models of the societies that created them. They portray sittlichkeit individuals defined by the “eternal” laws of society, which are the laws of nature. 

These pre-enlightenment forms of art are as much bound by the “eternal, immutable” laws of society as pre-enlightenment individuals. We might even speculate that the artists who created them were incapable of conceiving of an alternate normative framework, much as Antigone is incapable of seeing a true conflict between the law of the polis and the law of the family. To conceive of an alternate normative framework is to put oneself “above the law.”

In any event, what sequential art survives seems to reproduce authoritative social normativity rather than re-imagine it. Even the gods and other non-physical imaginary (from our perspective) beings are either bound by the laws or actively enforce them.
Modern sequential art was also bound by the normative considerations of the time - or as we might say, unbound by them. It is here that we first see creative attempts to re-imagine society in new forms. Unlike the authoritarian normativity of pre-modern sequential art, modern comic artists recognized social roles and norms as human-made.

I would argue that Winsor McCay was able to set Little Nemo in a world distinct from his own precisely because of the Enlightenment. If the social roles and norms of 1910s America are recognized as human creations, it becomes much easier for an artist to invent his own quasi-historical world. However, we do not see a completely alienated normativity. Little Nemo retains the form of a historic, normative world. Time flows from past to present to future, and individuals occupy particular places in space and time.
Azuma Hiroki, whose work I will refer to later, suggests that these modern quasi-historical narratives come into existence precisely because the greater, authoritarian normativity has broken down. Little Nemo takes place in a fictionalized world which mimics earlier social narratives, even though it was created in an alienated, post-enlightenment world because consumers still crave the lost sittlichkeit. Alienated consumers seek refuge in fictional normativity.
But this fictional normativity is still subject to alienation and the very same ironic detachment that plagues all post-Enlightenment individuals. Though the world of Little Nemo may provide temporary relief for a post-Enlightenment consumer, accepting its normative constraints as binding, accepting its quasi-historical world as true, would be unthinkable. It is no more relevant to alienated “reality” than the world of the Pharaohs. To take it a step further, the world of Nemo is no more real to the alienated consumer than his own society. Both are mere subjective products of human creativity, not a part of objective scientific reality.
We see a further weakening of traditional authoritarian normativity in the world of Mickey Mouse. Whereas in Little Nemo there is a single quasi-historical normative framework, Mickey Mouse cartoons exchange quasi-historical normativity for social recognitive normativity. Mickey Mouse can exist in any time and any place, so long as his physical design and social relations remain intact. 

Conflicting attempts to place Mickey in a quasi-historical framework such as the Mickey Mouse comic strip or Epic Mickey only serve to highlight the relative unimportance of quasi-historical normativity. Quasi-historical narratives of Mickey can be swapped out at will or exist in parallel with each other without a feeling of conflict on the part of the consumer.
In other words, the world of Mickey is given meaning not by a social narrative or by objective physical existence, but by social recognition. Consumers recognize Mickey as an individual because he exists in a fictional network of mutual recognition. By recognizing the validity of these fictional social relations, consumers create a space for Mickey Mouse in their own recognitive networks. What matters is not the physical reality (or lack thereof) of a being called Mickey Mouse, but the social recognitive reality that Mickey Mouse is recognized by consumers as a particular individual with particular traits.

This is precisely how norms of all kinds are recognized in Hegel's Third Stage. Mickey Mouse can be said to have a normative existence precisely because human individuals act as if he does. By consuming media, by recognizing Mickey Mouse in both Steamboat Willie and The Sorcerer's Apprentice as the same individual, we bind ourselves to a normative structure which accepts as normative the fictional mutual recognition of cartoon characters.
Mickey Mouse no more of an objective physical existence as a real being than concepts such as Justice or Good. At the same time, he also has as much potential to be communally recognized as any other concept which joins in the Bacchanalian revel of the truth. Although the concept of Mickey Mouse may change, become worn out, and eventually fall out of the revel, this in no way impinges upon his current socially normative existence.
This is a form of normative recognition which could not take place under the conditions of pre-Enlightenment sittlichkeit or Modern alienation. Pre-Enlightenment sittlichkeit would not allow for alternative societal models. Modern alienation would be unable to recognize a non-physical normative existence as binding. In recognizing Mickey Mouse, we have implicitly bound ourselves to the idea that human-made normative structures are valid.
At risk of taking this argument too far, we might also say that the existence of a globally recognized concept such as Mickey Mouse which exists solely by virtue of communal recognition is a real-world example of the validity of Hegel's third stage of history. After all, the moral valet can easily criticize Justice as a mere abstraction which individuals only adhere to for particular, selfish reasons it is difficult to deny the existence of a concept such as Mickey Mouse. 

The existence of a concept like Mickey Mouse, which can only be explained by communal normative behavior and has an undeniable impact on the socio-economic behavior of such a wide range of individual humans, is a surprisingly effective counterargument against pure alienation.

(Continued in Part Six)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Four)

Part Three

Section Two: Sittlichkeit Mouse - Toward a Hegelian Model of Cartoon Recognition

[Short post today, might put up another part later this week.]

Having briefly outlined a history of cartoons, I would now like to briefly review Hegel's Three Stages of History. The First Stage is pre-enlightenment sittlichkeit (roughly, 'non-alienation'), where social roles and norms are seen as part of the “architecture of the universe,” that is to say, they are as much a part of the natural world as gravity. Human individuals recognize each other by these laws, and do not suffer alienation. Hegel quotes from Sophocles' Antigone to show the relationship between individual self-consciousnesses and these eternal laws:

“'They are not of yesterday or today, but everlasting,
Though where they came from, none of us can tell.'

"They are. If I inquire after their origin and confine them to the point whence they arose, then I have transcended them; for now it is I who am the universal, and they are the conditioned and limited. If they are supposed to be validated by my insight, then I have already denied their unshakable, intrinsic being, and regard them as something which, for me, is perhaps true, but also is perhaps not true...” (Phenomenology 437).

Problems arise when these eternal, perfect laws come into conflict, particularly the self-consciousness-dissolving law of the community and the individualistic law of the family. The community “creates an internal enemy for itself in what it suppresses and what is at the same time essential to it (femininity in general)” (ibid 475). The two “natural” laws come in conflict, exposing their human-made nature. This conflict paves the way for the Second Stage.

The Second Stage is the Modern, where the Enlightenment reveals social rules and norms to be entirely man-made. Modernity is making a contrast between things that physically exist and moral attitudes, which are created by humans. Although Hegel views this as an overall positive development, it also results in alienation and cynicism. Hegel gives us the picture of the “moral valet” who can only see the disparity between handlung (intention) and tat (actuality) that all action involves.

This niedertkiet individual sees nothing but invalid man-made normative attitudes all the way down. It is in this stage that Hegel frames the tension between Faith and Reason. In his formulation, Reason rightly criticizes Faith's ontology, while failing to recognize the value of the communally recognized normative structures that Faith allows.

The Third Stage is the Post-Modern, in which Enlightenment is recombined with sittlichkeit. Social roles and norms are recognized as valid and binding, not in spite of the fact that they are the products of the human mind, but rather precisely because of mutually binding social recognition. In other words, norms really exist and people's normative attitudes are sometimes right. By a process of repentance and forgiveness, all of history is made meaningful and the inherent meaningfulness of communally-recognized norms is established.

This is, of course, an extremely truncated version of Hegel's model, but it will serve for the purpose of comparison with the evolution of comics and cartoons.

(Continued in Part Five)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Three)

Part Two

But before jumping into the more detailed argument, I think it is important to establish that this ahistorical, meta-narrative recognition of cartoon characters is indeed the primary form by which consumers recognize third-phase cartoon individuals such as Mickey Mouse. After all, there have been attempts to put Mickey Mouse into an over-arching narrative framework that would give a pseudo-historical context to his adventures.

The earliest was the Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip which debuted in 1930 and made use of events from films such as Plane Crazy. The newspaper comic, unlike the cartoons, had a continuity and timeline. It eventually diverged from the film version of Mickey by focusing less of comedy and more on adventure-based extended story lines. These two versions of Mickey Mouse (ahistorical films and narrative comics) were consumed side-by-side by fans with no perceived contradiction. While it is possible to be a fan of both film-Mickey and comic-Mickey (or one of the two, or neither), the character is equally recognizable as the same conceptual individual in both a pseudo-historic and an a-historic settings.

Human Director Confronts Cartoon Actors in Who Framed Roger Rabbit

This was far from the last attempt to rationalize the disparate, ahistorical adventures of Mickey Mouse (and other cartoon individuals) into a pseudo-historical narrative. 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit posits a world in which cartoon individuals coexist alongside humans in the real world, acting as characters in “live-action” films much as a human actor takes on a role.

For example, “Baby” Herman is a middle-aged, cigar smoking cartoon who appears in films as an infant. Here, a crucial distinction is made between the cartoon individual as “character” and the cartoon individual as “actor.” By creating a fictitious behind-the-scenes world, the narrative discrepancies between Mickey as steamboat worker and Mickey as sorcerer's apprentice are neatly explained away. Many famous cartoon characters make cameos in the film, such as Mickey Mouse and long-time real world rival Bugs Bunny.

This narrative device of cartoon-as-actor goes a long way toward both illustrating and explaining the nature of third-wave cartoons. Their identity does not consist explicitly in a historical narrative (whether a real one like President Jackson or a fake one like Nemo), but rather “behind the scenes.” Mickey Mouse is not perceived as existing solely inside his films and comics, but as a individual concept distinct from them. The box-office success of Roger Rabbit shows that this framework was at the very least palatable to audiences.

Other attempts to place Mickey Mouse in a quasi-historical setting linking the mythos of Disney films have been made, particularly the Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey video game franchises. While the details of these quasi-historical settings are perhaps not worth detailed analysis at this point, it is worth mentioning that both franchises attempt to re-imagine Mickey's ahistorical cartoons adventures into a single personal narrative. The narratives posited in these franchises are mutually incompatible, but they share certain features. Steamboat Willie is brought up in both franchises as an episode of Mickey's early life, while Yen Sid from Fantasia appears as Mickey's mentor.

Perhaps the most interesting point of these franchises is that they are contemporaries. Kingdom Hearts was released in 2002 and since has spawned ten sequels and prequels set in the same quasi-historical narrative, with an eleventh installment planned for 2014. Epic Mickey was released in 2010, the same year as Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. Both series have enjoyed commercial success in international markets, despite having conflicting “histories.”

Audiences are able to move fluidly between the two contradictory quasi-historical settings without confusion, precisely because what makes Mickey Mouse “Mickey Mouse” is not his place in a socio-historic order, but his physical appearance and relation to other characters. Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey both ring true with audiences for the same reason Steamboat Willie and The Sorcerer's Apprentice ring true - because Minnie is Mickey's romantic interest, Yen Sid is his mentor, and Pete is his antagonist.

This, then, is an overview of the history of cartoon characters. In the next section, I will discuss how this history relates to Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel, of course, does not talk about cartoon characters in Phenomenology. However, he does provide a three-stage model for the historical development of recognition. It is my argument that the evolution of comics falls in with this three-stage model; moreover, that contemporary recognition of cartoon characters falls squarely into the third stage of the model.

(Continued in Part Four)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part Two)

Part One

Mickey Mouse debuted to the public in 1928's Steamboat Willie. This “sound cartoon” featured Mickey as the low-ranking man on a polymorphous musical boat. Whereas Little Nemo was a silent cartoon with title cards for the dialogue, Steamboat Willie emphasizes the spectacle of Cinephone sound as well as animation. Priority is given to musical sound instead of dialogue; the characters communicate by grunts and whistles instead of speaking in English. This form of communication is extended to animals such as the musical goat and “inanimate” objects such as the boat's steam whistles.


The main characters of Steamboat Willie are neither purely human nor purely animal. Mickey and Minnie behave like humans in that they wear clothing, work jobs, carry possessions, form relationships, and occupy a privileged space above the “pure” animals, and yet their form is as much mouse as it is man. They occupy a space between human, animal, and animated ink and paper.
Even in this first Mickey Mouse film, there are hints of departure from the ideological world of Little Nemo. While the opening title card of Little Nemo gives artist Winsor McCay top billing, Steamboat Willie gives that honor to the character Mickey Mouse.

In a similar fashion, Nemo ends with a shot of McCay's thumb holding the final frame of animation, while Willie ends with an image Mickey and Minnie framing the words “The End.” Although Walt Disney (and animator Ub Iwerks) do receive credit, it is Mickey's name which is done up in a large, bold letters. Little Nemo may be a film about Winsor McCay, but Steamboat Willie is a film about Mickey Mouse.
As the Mickey Mouse “sound cartoons” progressed, the emphasis continued to be on Mickey Mouse as a personality instead of a historical/quasi-historical individual. No attempt is made to assign Mickey to a particular social role; whereas in Steamboat Willie Mickey is a boat worker, Plane Crazy (1928) has Mickey living on a farm, and The Opry House (1929) has him running a vaudeville theater.
Although Mickey's social role changes from film to film, his social relationships remain relatively static: Minnie Mouse is his romantic interest, Pete is his antagonist, Daisy the Cow is a hapless bystander to his antics. Later characters such as Donald Duck and Goofy expanded this network of social relationships which exist without any reference to time or place.
The era of color films only expanded Mickey and co.'s range of social and historical roles. In The Brave Little Tailor (1928), set in a cartoon approximation of medieval Europe, Mickey is the titular tailor, Goofy is a knight, and Minnie is a princess. Through the Mirror (1936) takes place in the world of Alice in Wonderland, while The Nifty Nineties (1941) is a love letter to 1890s America.
There are two common threads that run throughout these films, which can be said to serve as the identifiers by which consumers recognize Mickey Mouse. First is Mickey's “physical” appearance, which remains relatively unchanged even to today (exceptions include the addition of white gloves in 1929's The Opry House and slight revisions made for the addition of color in 1935's The Band Concert). While Mickey makes costume changes when appearing in different historical eras, he retains the trademark round ears which often serve as a symbol for the Disney Corporation as a whole.

Second are the previously mentioned social relationships. Even when social roles change from film to film, the emotional relationships remain unchanged almost without exception. Friends remain friends, romantic interests remain romantic interests, and antagonists remain antagonists. These fictionalized forms of mutual recognition are critical for maintaining emotional continuity between vastly different settings.

However, this form of recognition is not limited to the characters themselves. The viability of these fictionalized forms of recognition is dependent on the audience's acceptance and recognition of the bonds between the characters as valid. This is an essential feature of this third phase of the evolution of the cartoon: consumers, in recognizing the fictional recognitive relationships between cartoon characters, form their own non-fictional recognitive relationships with them. Though these relationships are not mutual in the sense that recognition between two humans are mutual, they are (as I will argue in more detail later) contingent upon the conditions of post- enlightenment sittlichkeit social recognition.

(Continued in Part Three)

Who Frames Roger Rabbit? - Cartoon Characters as Recognized Individuals (Part One)

(Series Hub)

What is a cartoon character? How is a cartoon character framed as a concept? How do we create a being such as Mickey Mouse which is both instantly recognizable by and relatable to billions of humans, and yet has no concrete physical being? In this paper, I will argue that recognition of cartoon characters occurs in a manner along the lines of Hegel's Third Stage: a mixture of modernity and communally-created sittlichkeit normative behavior. That is to say, Mickey Mouse does not exist as a biological organism, but he does exist by virtue of his communal, normative recognition.

First, we will take a brief look at the development of cartoon characters and how they were recognized by consumers. I will focus on the transitional period between parodic, imitative “comic images” found in early political cartoons and the development of “cartoon characters” as individuals. Since time does not allow for an exhaustive history of sequential art, I will primarily use Mickey Mouse as an example of how contemporary cartoon characters are recognized by consumers.

Second, I will compare the history of cartoons with Hegel's Three Stages of History. I will argue that contemporary recognition of cartoon characters as normative individuals is an example of Hegel's Third Stage of post-enlightenment sittlichkeit - and in fact can only exist in that setting. Third, I will examine the ontology of cartoon individuals, using a variation on Azuma Hiroki's concept of “moe elements.”

Section One: Pharaohs, Presidents, and Round-Eared Mice - The Evolution of Comics

Pinning down a history of comics can be just as as difficult as defining them. Scott McCloud proposes the 22-word phrase “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” to define comics and argues that their history begins with Egyptian and pre-Columbian American sequential paintings (McCloud 9). For sake of simplicity, we will focus in on the birth of modern comics at the turn of the 20th century, particularly as they gave birth to the cartoon character.

President Jackson Beats the Bank (1829)

19th century comic art focused on imitations or parodies of humans and animals, in the style most commonly associated with Punch magazine or political cartoons. Some focused on historical individuals and events (such as President Jackson in the image), while others focused on “generic” characters - the familiar images of the portly banker or greedy politician. In this, they share much in common with the earlier forms of art McCloud identifies as the ancestors of the comic. For example, the Egyptian art portrays both specific Pharaohs and “generic” craftsmen, farmers and slaves.

Insofar as they portray either humans that actually existed (Jackson, the Pharaohs) they also portray individuals with a personal history and social context. In the case of the “generic human” (the banker, the slave), they portray a general type of human with an assumed personal history and social context, thus reflecting the society in which similar humans existed. The role they play within the comic narrative is assumed to be identical (at least, in the mind of the artist) with the role they play in a social narrative. That is to say, they perform the role of characters with a single history as opposed that of actors which can take on a variety of roles and histories.

The earliest animated cartoon characters also performed as characters indistinguishable with the role they play in a narrative. The titular character of Little Nemo (the first comic strip character to also appear in an animated film) has a fictional personal history that takes place in a fictional world. Although this fictional world is intended to be distinct from the physical world imitated by Egyptian painters and political cartoonists, Nemo is positioned within it much as President Jackson is positioned in political cartoons. His serialized story has a linear continuity, a timeline stretching from past to future, in which Nemo exists in particular times and places.

Nemo drawing the Princess (1911)

This is particularly apparent in Winsor McCay's 1911 animated film Little Nemo. The film opens not with Nemo, but with film of McCay explaining the concept of an animated film to his friends. The animated characters relate to each other as works of art as well: in one scene, Nemo himself uses a pen to “draw” the Princess to life.

Slumberland, the world of Little Nemo, is explicitly portrayed as a fictional creation distinct from the “real world” of the artist and his friends. So although Nemo, President Jackson, and the Egyptian slaves all appear as historically-defined individuals in a larger social narrative, Nemo is confined to a fictional history while President Jackson and McCay, though also portrayed in comics and films, are considered part of a separate, non-fictional world.


The original run of Little Nemo lasted until 1911, when a legal battle over rights to the strip led to its discontinuation. The comic returned to papers in 1924, but this run ended 1926 due to lack of reader interest. A final effort to bring Nemo back was launched in 1927, but by 1928, a new cartoon character had emerged to capture hearts and minds: Mickey Mouse.

(Continued in Part Two)

Whatis: The Rev 3.0

Let's get a few things out of the way.

This is a non-academic academic blog. I'm going to mostly be posting papers about Hegelian philosophy as it applies to incredibly dumb subjects. I will be updating infrequently. I will try to limit posts to around ~800 word chunks to make things more digestible.

To get the self-introduction out of the way, I'm a translator (English-Japanese) who occasionally writes faux-academic papers when I'm supposed to be working. I went to the University of Pittsburgh for my MA, so my Hegel is going to largely follow that lineage. However, my main area of interest is the work of Hiroki Azuma, so you know, expect to hear a lot about him.

I love arguing, so feel free to leave as many nitpicking comments as you like. On the other hand, I love arguing, so I sometimes take things to far. When I argue back, please understand that I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just having fun.

That should be enough of that.