Why in American cartoons shed anvils on the head and slip on a banana peel

American children's cartoons of the beginning and middle of the 20 of the 20th century are rather cruel. In "Tom and Jerry" the cat is constantly tormented, "Sly coyote" is blown up with dynamite. And behind some of these jokes sometimes lurk the whole story. Why is it that way? Unexpectedly, the answers to this question can be found in the history of the United States.

The scriptwriter of the Bubble publishing house (and the Igor Grom comic, in particular), Alexey Zamsky, in a mini-thread revealed the background of some popular gags: slipping on a banana peel, chasing with a trim of a pipe and falling anvil on his head. It turned out that the answers can be found in US history. Tjournal publishes threads with additions.

Warner Bros. Entertainment founded the four brothers Warner - Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack. Between them sometimes had a difficult relationship. By the middle of 1950's, Harry and Jack (who were then older) had a fight so badly that they didn’t communicate and avoid each other. And when they did meet, they quarreled like children.

One of the most vivid examples of the brothers' relations: the studio employees said that they once saw Jack Warner running through the parking lot to his car. Harry was chasing him with a steel pipe in his hands. Then this moment began to appear in the cartoon "Looney Tunes" as an internal joke.

Zamsky said that the joke with a banana peel is not related to the fact that it is slippery. And with the fact that at the beginning of the 20-th century, bananas became the most popular street food in the United States. Before that, Americans were barely familiar with this fruit: it was considered expensive and exotic.

That all changed in the 1890s, when businessmen Andrew Prestun and Minor Cooper Keith decided to import bananas to the east coast of the United States. They founded the company Gros Michel bananas, and later renamed it "Chiquita". This is the same company that then influenced politics and organized coup d'etat in the "banana republics".

One way or another, bananas have become extremely popular in New York. The only negative: everywhere on the streets was a banana peel.

New Yorkers buy bananas. Photos of Library of Congress / Wikipedia

Zamsky found an explanation for the anvil falling on his head in American history. A long time ago in Britain, the anvils were tested for strength by launching into the sky: gunpowder was poured into the recess, set on fire, after which they flew several tens of meters and fell. It was believed that if the anvil after this did not break, then it can be used.

This is how anvil launch looks like:

In the 19 century, anvils launches were used as fireworks, when there were none or not enough. For example, such a tradition was in some states on US Independence Day. The main disadvantage of such launches is that the anvils after the flight sometimes fell on people’s heads, leading to death.

According to the authors of the blog TV Tropes, collecting popular plots of pop culture, this tradition has led to a lot of anvil in American cartoons.

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