Fredrick “Tex” Avery was born in Texas in 1908. He started making comic strips in highschool and wanted to be an animator/cartoonist from a young age. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for a summer. After which he moved to California and got a job at Warner Brothers as a storyboarder in the early 1930s, creating/working on Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. A disagreement with Leon Schlesinger led Tex to quit Warner in early 1941. He passed away in 1980, at the age of 72.
Tex was less focused on creating lasting characters and rather was more interested in creating gags and slapstick jokes and creating humorous animations. Of all of his original characters, Droopy is the most popular of them. (The character recently got a small resurgence in popularity with the term ‘Sigma’, and he was referred to as ‘The Most Sigma Dog’, but quickly got taken over by the ‘My New Character’ nonchalant dog. )
After leaving Warner Brothers, he went to MGM, but left there right as they stopped making theatrical releases. He then went to Walter Lantz and made the Chilly Willy penguin character before eventually switching to TV commercial animations rather than episodic cartoons.
His style is distinctly slapstick and over the top. He likes visual gags and doing a slight subversion of what the audience expects, and then plays into it some more. He doesn’t focus as much on character as he does on situation, as opposed to some of the other directors at Warner Bros, who were itching to have more distinct characters and iconic characters to rival the likes of Disney. Another thing I noticed is that he tends to like to play on the humor of the everyday exaggerated rather than crazy sci-fi situations, like space adventures, big over the top science projects and what-not.
However, while watching his work, I came across an almost unproportional amount of Racist themes. Nearly every other cartoon of his that I saw with a person in it had some kind of stereotype, and even the ones without people still had them. I understand this was more common in that era, but this seemed like a lot even for the time. There were literal dogs in blackface, racist depictions of Hindu people and Romani people, incredibly offensive depictions of Native Americans, and more. Again, this was more common in the past, but it was absolutely abhorrent to watch.
Beyond the racist themes and such, I will admit overall I do not much care for the vast majority of the cartoons of his that I saw. They all seemed to be gag after gag after gag with no payoff, no emotional resonance, no reason to keep watching. It felt like early form of Brainrot, really. As a general rule I do not much care for Loony Tunes cartoons because of this, as a lot of the characters seem lifeless and just pawns for visual gags, and I admit that this was even more so with Tex Avery’s work.
His cartoon “The House of Tomorrow from Yesterday” was somewhat fun to watch, and really shows the statement of ‘Flying Cars they said’ to be forever relevant. However, if anything else, there are some themes that he loves to play on, Racism, Sexism, Hating your Mother in Law and Gags.
I won’t lie, this is America as Cartoon Media. I think that this perfectly represents what we are as a country, in many ways. And I don’t mean this in some philosophical or beautiful way, I just mean it plain and straight up. Messy, chaotic, loud, over the top, however still mundane, historically and still presently racist, casually racist, casually sexist, dreaming big of the future and heavily nostalgic about the past.
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