Jackass –vs.- Looney Tunes

When we were younger, the cartoon to watch was Looney Tunes. We loved seeing the crazy antics of the animated giant bunny, sputtering duck, and the mute coyote. But did we realize the amount of violence that we were absorbing? The anvils dropped on the heads of the characters, the dynamite going off, the guns being shot? Now we’ve gotten older, and the craving for “funny violence” is still there, even though the “funny violence” has matured from “Looney Tunes” to shows like “Jackass”, which begs the question, “Is real-life violence truly worse than animated violence in television shows?”

“You’d be surprised how much joy you feel when you see a baby crocodile nearly bite off a man’s nipple…If you see one film for the rest of time, it should be ‘Jackass’.” (Parker 1). For a week in October of 2002, “Jackass: The Movie” had the highest gross of any film on the 35,000 theatre screens across the nation (Brasch 1)...