Carl Stalling and Humor in Cartoons
What exactly is the role of music in cartoons? This is a question I have been trying to answer for years. Music can serve many functions within animated cartoons, several of which apply to its more widely accepted big brother, live-action films. Music can set mood, fill in "empty" sonic space, and emphasize motion. In cartoons, music also helps to enliven and yes, animate, a long sequence of drawings which, taken singularly, don't carry much life, or as a professor of mine always said, "forward motion." The modern cartoon, and especially the Hollywood cartoon from the Golden Age of Animation, relies so much on music that it is truly difficult to conceive what they might have been like without a soundtrack. One more role that music may play in a cartoon (and occasionally in movies as well) is that of storyteller; and what better stories to tell in a cartoon than funny ones? When you look at cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s, one of the primary roles of the music is to enhance the come