Growing up in the Middle East, a big part of my after-school activities involved watching cartoons on TV with my younger brother. Our 21” plasma screens were mostly tuned to the Loony Tunes and the ACME world of make-believe while Mickey Mouse, Goofy and the Disney Ducks made occasional appearances. To this date, Disney’s Jungle Book (1967) and Aladdin (1992) are two of my favorite animated movies. There was a purity of imagination and magic in them before our lives got entangled in a World Wide Web of information pollution.
Today, my 7-year-old nephew is glued to the 10” screen of his iPad. He enjoys watching the adventures of the PAW Patrol, and the Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, as they team up to protect their respective cartoon-land communities. These shows have taken imagination to futuristic, dystopian and supernatural heights. The simplicity of cartoons that once existed, with hand-sketched scenes1 of the plight of a cat chasing a mouse, or a diabolical Coyote trying t…
