I was just watching old cartoons on Youtube to lift my mood, and in one produced in 1956 ends with the suicide of Tom and Jerry.
Did attitudes used to be different back then? Was fictional suicide a laughing matter?
Can’t watch the cartoon now, but suiciding cartoon characters have been common throughout the history of cartooning, and they’re still with us.
And not just in cartoons. There have been plenty of live-action comedies about people committing or trying to commit suicide, and making jokes about it. If I had a dollar for every stockbroker-jumping-out-the-window gag, I wouldn’t feel like jumping out a window. Faking suicide is an entire subplot ion Harold and Maude.
Bear in mind that cartoons from before about 1960 were not explicitly intended for children, but were bumpers for movies. Saturday morning didn’t equal kiddie cartoons until around 1968, and a good chunk of it then was old Warner Brothers stuff with dicey content.
Fleisher Bros. cartoons were loaded with morbid content in the early days; look up Betty Boop’s “St. James Infirmary” on YouTube sometime! It wasn’t rife with suicide, but it was in that neighborhood a lot.
Always wondered how that show ended. They were locked into a mutually destructive spiral. A tragic outcome was inevitable.
Watch Red Hot Riding Hood. It ended with the Wolf killing himself as well, and this was in 1943.
It’s not just something from the cartoons of yore. In recent seasons of The Simpsons, Moe often tries to kill himself. IMO, the jokes are in pretty bad taste.
Li’l Abner had lots of jokes where the characters are so happy that they’re going to die rather than participate in Sadie Hawkins’ Day (for example), or that they’d be better off blowing each others’ brains out.
Cartoon characters experience and perpetrate a *lot *of things that would hurt, maim, or kill actual people/animals. I grew up watching classic Looney Tunes (as did many of my friends and family members), and I never knew anyone who thought it was okay to actually drops rocks off a cliff onto somebody else’s head, beat somebody over the head with a wooden mallet, or kill oneself.
I think watching cartoon characters experience these horrible things induces a sense of catharsis. We can laugh at the morbid shit without feeling guilty, because we know that next week, Tom and Jerry will be at each other’s throats again. No harm, no foul.
Even Mickey Mouse tried it.
http://ridz.sg/blog/2008/04/mickey-mouse-loses-minnie-attempts-suicide/
I found this short, staring DeForest “Bones” Kelley, as a man failing at various suicide attempts to be pretty interesting.
One of my favorite Popeye cartoons ends with Popeye murdering his well-meaning but annoying Navy buddy.
Bugs and Yosemite Sam commit suicide at the end of their failed battle for mayor. Bugs ducks, Sam doesn’t.
I’m always amazed at the continued popularity of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. How much protest would there be if a band released a pro-teen-suicide song nowadays? (I realize the band now claims the song isn’t about suicide but I see that as just part of what I’m talking about. No group can admit to advocating suicide nowadays.)
Blink182 had “Adam’s Song.” Not advocating suicide as such, but sung from the perspective of one.
Not a cartoon (and might be more recent than OP had in mind), but what about “Heathers”?
Cracked has an article on it, which includes the cartoon mentioned in the OP.
The only protest I can think of is from people who want more cowbell.
/Sorry
Anyone remember an old 1970’s “Buddy Comedy” (of-sorts) movie with Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise, where Reynolds’ character is told he is dying and so decides to off himself in order to give the Grim Reaper the big finger? (After he cocks-up his suicide attempt, he gets tossed in the funny farm where he meets DeLuise, a fellow inmate, who decides to help out his new friend by helping him do himself in)
I haven’t seen it in years, but it made it look like self-euthanasia was a reasonable (and hilarious) act under certain circumstances.