I know I’ve never physically appeared in a cartoon PTA meeting, let alone an episode where I’m parenting my goofy, titular character children, but I felt called to speak today concerning the growing threat of falling piano violence in our cartoon schools. We hear about falling pianos out in the dangerous world of Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, The Road Runner Show, and other violence-driven parallel cartoon universes. But it pains me to see it infiltrate our schools when we just cleaned up our sexual harassment problem of men’s eyeballs popping out of their eyesockets whenever they saw a highly-sexualized woman cartoon. Our children need a safe place to learn, especially our cartoon students whose studies essentially don’t matter because they’ll be repeating the same grade until our series is cancelled.
To better convey my point, let me cite some statistics for you. Did you know nearly 11,000 children are crushed by cartoon pianos every single year, with 11,000 of them coming back to life in the very next scene? Preposterous! And here’s another eye-opening factoid for you: only 65% of that same group go on to slip on a clearly visible banana peel in a later episode. My question to you, Mr. Head of Animation Production, is how you can continually claim “pianos don’t hurt cartoons, animators hurt cartoons,” even as this problem persists well into movie adaptations, reboots, and ill-advised spin-offs. Countless studies from the world-renowned Dexter’s Laboratory have proven again and again, the violence all stems from falling pianos.
I’m also greatly concerned this continued falling piano violence will affect our children’s interest in the cartoon performing arts. Why would a cartoon who would never age out of the school system even take interest in music when there is the ever-looming threat of an 800-pound instrument crushing their little 2D body? In other, more modernized television shows like Glee, no such problems exist because the characters are taught as early as the pilot episode to break out into song upon the very first note that comes out of nowhere. These shows have drama department-mandated orders to train teens to properly tune and harmonize. Glee respects the piano. With such story arcs in place, Glee boasts 0 piano falling deaths every year, which gives them the production money and capacity to focus on its gun violence plotlines. When will we catch up with TV shows like Glee?
Falling pianos have dangerous, long-term effects on our children, too. At its mildest, cartoon children who suffer a falling piano crush will have a sustained brain injury that decreases their likelihood of a lightbulb appearing above their head when they have a good idea. At its most severe, the trauma turns their teeth into piano keys which then requires cartoon tweens to wear gigantic metal headgear that serves as braces that they never get off. And you know how mean those kids at generic elementary schools named after old-timey presidents can be.
It’s beyond me why we have resorted to falling pianos in our cartoon schools. Whatever happened to real violence? Acme Corporation was built for situations like this. We call on all cartoons to look at alternative violent tactics like dynamite. The kind of dynamite that covers the character up in black ash and leaves their legs detached from their body, and then have to magically attach back on themselves. What about guns? Elmer Fudd is always hunting for cartoon rabbits and although sometimes his gun inexplicably folds down, it’s a safer alternative to falling pianos. Our kids should be more like Mr. Fudd, and resort to gun violence, not piano violence if they want to be violent. That’s the role model I’m looking for my child: a gun-toting, underperforming hunter with a slight speech impediment.
If you want to take care of our children in cartoon schools, I challenge you to remove every piano that is tied by a thin rope outside a window and think of alternative conditions for our children to succeed in our schools. Only the brave, faceless, school administrators who do not speak real words will be the ones who have the authority to enact change for next season. My advice is, be ready to face the music and begin the school year on a high note with our season premiere.