Response to Lead Blog #9

The show Tom and Jerry has always been a favorite of children everywhere despite the fact that it was released and created in the 1940s. This cartoon classic has been making the audience laugh and giggles for centuries because of its use of incongruity theory and the slapstick form of comedy it presents. Tom is a cat usually enraged and out to get Jerry, a tiny mouse that lives in a hole in the wall of Tom’s house. While Tom is a cat much larger than Jerry, Jerry always wins their brawls and fights with ease and cleverness. Jerry will go to great lengths to make sure that Tom gets off his back and leave him be. The mouse is often depicted using weapons such as dynamite, cannons, guns and much more in order to get Tom off his back. This where incongruity theory comes into play as the audience is not expecting either of the two to have such an arsenal of weapons nor the intelligence to use them. In addition, Jerry always wins these fights which adds to the incongruity of the situation because we normally would expect a cat to be able to easily overpower a mouse. Although many cartoon styles in recent years have changed, Tom and Jerry will always remain a classic comedy that all audience find appealing due to the music, the use of incongruity, and the constant battle between the two stubborn characters.