Seven Minutes ― The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon

Seven Minutes is a social and aesthetic history of the “controlled anarchy” of the cartoon, from the first talking Mickeys to the demise of Warners and MGM theatrical productions in 1960. Norman M. Klein follows the scrambling graphics and upside-down ballet of Fleischer’s Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman of the Wolfie cartoons by Tex Avery, of the Bugs and Daffy, Tweetie and Roadrunner cartoons from Warners, of full animation at Disney, of the “whiteness of Snow White”, and of how Mickey Mouse became a logo. Reviewing the graphics, scripts and marketing of each era, he discovers the links between cartoons and live action movies, newspapers, popular illustration, and the entertainment architecture coming out of Disneyland. Klein shows that the cartoon was a perverse juggling act, invaded constantly by economic and political pressures, by marketing for sound, by licensing characters to stave off bankruptcies, by Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II and the first wave of television.

Norman M. Klein is a critic and historian of mass culture, editor of Fragile Moments: A History of Media-Induced Experience, and author of Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon from Verso. He teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.