Cartoons as Subversion

Manifestoon is an homage to the latent subversiveness of cartoons. Though American cartoons are usually thought of as conveying consumerist and individualistic ideologies, as an avid fan of cartoons as a child, these ideas were secondary to a more important lesson--that of the "trickster" nature of many cartoon characters as they mocked, outwitted, and ultimately defeated their stronger, more powerful adversaries. In the classic cartoon, brute strength and heavy artillery are no match for wit and humor, and justice always prevails. For me, it was a natural process to link my own childhood concept of subversion with an established, more articulate version of subversiveness. These cartoon clips are all from different cartoons, with the exception of one or two, and reflect a broad range of the classic traditional Hollywood animations. In "Manifestoon," the image of Mickey running over the globe has new meaning in the current mediascape in which Disney now controls one of the largest concentrations of media ownership in the world. But it could be asked, is he gaining ground, or could he be running away from the revolt of the disposessed 'toons?

Manifestoon has been screened at at many different festivals and venues such as theYerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Dallas Film and Video Festival, Cinematheque (San Francisco , Museum of Contemporary Arts (Chicago), Barcelona Cultural Center (Spain), The Other Cinema (San Francisco), Orgone Cinema (Pittsburgh), L.A. Freewaves (Los Angeles), Documental Festival (Los Angeles), World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), on Free Speech TV Cable Network. In 2001 it was honored by the ZKM in Germany as one of the best videos of the year and broadcast on SWR, national German television. It has continued to be screened around the world.

Lately, it has been distributed widely through archive.org, youtube, and bittorrent sites. It has been translated into German, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Greek and some languages I don't even recognize!