its weird that cartoon violence is generally accepted as fine and harmless by everyone except the most pearl-clutchy of pearl-clutchers, but cartoon perversion is looked at differently. I'm not the only one who thinks that weird right?
[guy looks up a girls skirt and gets whacked on the head with a giant hammer] wow this is so fucked up, that guy's probably going to get a grievous brain injury
okay but in all seriousness, i understand the immediate feeling of cartoon perviness being worse. I feel an immediate sense of disappointment when a character acts like that (ask me about my Sanji opinions!!!) but when i look from outside of an emotional reaction it really feels kind of silly to get any more upset about it than violence. in real life they're both awful traumatizing things but in cartoons theyre easily shaken off no harm no foul. i might be overthinking this idk
I think part of it is, as a culture we more widely acknowledge physical violence as wrong and collectively condemn it and have done so for enough generations for it to become a Cultural Value (rendering depictions of it obviously humorously hyperbolic because like, we Know people aren't supposed to do that and we trust our fellow Society to police and enforce that value); whereas sexual violence we're still learning how to see and condemn as a society, meaning we don't have as much assurance that the person making the joke and the person we might be sharing the joke with see it as "funny because its obviously wrong" instead of "funny because we all wish we could"
this can have some interesting complications where going more over-the-top can help address those concerns by aiming more clearly at the "obviously hyperbolic" territory, but then if other stories start copying the same elements, it can get more muddled
hmm i think i disagree with the premise of "people know physical violence is wrong but we're still learning to condemn sexual violence". sexual violence and nonsexual violence are pretty much equally frowned upon broadly by society. It's just that the particulars of what counts as sexual violence and how it manifests isn't as agreed upon as what counts as nonsexual violence. The kind of overt perverted behavior that gets played for laughs in cartoons would absolutely be correctly recognized as sexual harassment in any real life setting.
I also disagree with the implication that everyone who sees cartoon violence is laughing because its "obviously wrong". Lots of people have fantasies of violence. Kids draw themselves killing people all the time. People talk about how much theyd like to punch their shitty boss. People write songs about roughing up or killing their cheating/abusive partners. Cartoon violence does have a kind of catharsis to it. Cartoon perversion has a similar catharsis for sexual frustration. Indulging in a fantasy of doing something you know you would be wrong irl, with no consequences other than a lump on the head or temporary embarrassment.
hmm. there are points of agreement about how to regard sexual violence, but I don't think there's as much agreement as you're suggesting. many "horny comedy" scenes involve actions that would be broadly agreed upon as bad in real life but might have significant disagreements about how seriously to take them. there is, after all, plenty of history of organizations overlooking various forms of sexual harassment
I do think it's reasonable to describe them as related forms of catharsis, but I also think it's important to keep in mind the complication that the violence kind seems to have much broader appeal than any specific instance of cartoon perversion. which isn't to say that there's something wrong with aiming for a specific target audience, but it does mean that this is something that can evoke particularly strong feelings of "this was made for people who feel very differently about this thing than I do". so that's another reason this can be such a charged topic!
I think "obviously wrong" isn't quite right - "obviously unrealistic" is probably a better way to say it. Like, smacking over the head with a hammer is unrealistic because that's not likely to happen to anyone, while being perved on, while still exaggerated for comedy, is not exaggerated to such an extreme that it's unrealistic. I don't think you can exaggerate it in a way that's unrealistic tbh.
Also cartoon violence doesn't seem to be particularly gendered (or at least the instigation of it), that might also be part of it.
There's also the question of the target, I think.
Cartoon violence isn't ALWAYS funny. An adult hitting a crying child will likely avoke an outrage reaction from the audience, too, for example. Hitting a child who isn't crying and just flinches and looks upset will also make people upset and uncomfortable rather than entertained.
Meanwhile, fictional perversion CAN be funny - for example, Oldbag's advances towards Miles Edgeworth in Ace Attorney, or Indrani pinching Masego's butt on first meeting in PGTE.
It's about the power dynamic. Most funny cartoon violence is between equals, or from someone weaker to someone stronger (Tom&Jerry - there aren't a lot of instances where Tom hurts Jerry, and they are usually moments of dramatic tension, not comedic relief). Meanwhile, most cartoon perversion is aimed at someone who cannot stop it or fight back. That's what makes it unfunny once you recognize it as a form of violence, too.
This has to do with "obviously over the top / unrealistic" - cartoon violence is often a power fantasy, aimed at someone you COULDN'T attack in real life, certainly not win against. The power dynamic is what makes it unrealistic, and makes it, well, not uncomfortable.
