Jewish Invention Myths: The Animated Cartoon
In yet another ‘jewish invention’ myth we have the animated cartoon which Pam Karp credits to Max Fleischer; (1) which is untrue but it is worth stating that Fleischer – who was indeed jewish - did play a significant role after the animated cartoon was invented in popularizing it in the Anglophone public sphere with his 1914 ‘Rotoscope’ which was an improvement to how animation was played for audiences in American cinemas/movie theatres. (2)
Yet Fleischer most certainly did not invent the animated cartoon nor was he the first to show them in cinemas/movie theatres that accolade goes to the English film pioneer James Stuart Blackton who produced the first truly animated cartoon filmed in 1907 called ‘The Haunted Hotel’ which ran for a total of five minutes. (3)
After the first showing ‘The Haunted Hotel’ in Paris in April 1907 and its widespread popularity as well as the clamour for more; French artist and cartoonist Emile Cohl created his animated short film ‘Fantasmagorie’ between February and June 1908 which premiered on 17th August of that year, and which began a veritable slew of animated short films from the United States, Great Britain and France. (4)
It is only in 1914 – seven years after the first animated short film was shown in cinemas - that Fleischer comes on the scene to help improve the cinematic quality of these productions.
Now there is only issue left which is that I am sure that it will be claimed – if it isn’t already - that Emile Cohl was jewish based on his surname being a common variant of ‘Cohen’ in the United States, but in fact it seems to have been a variant of the German surname ‘Kohl’ (lit. ‘Cabbage’) if his biographers are anything to go by as they know nothing of any jewish ancestry (5) and Cohl was himself a strident anti-Semite (6) who was a hard-line partisan of the anti-Dreyfusard position during the famous Dreyfus Affair between 1894 and 1906. (7)
So, no jews did not invent the animated cartoon!
References
(1) https://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Inventors/12388
(2) https://www.popmatters.com/160872-american-pop-matters-ron-thompson-the-illustrated-man-unsung-2495833587.html
(3) https://www.acinemahistory.com/2020/05/the-haunted-hotel-1907.html#
(4) https://www.vulture.com/article/most-influential-best-scenes-animation-history.html
(5) Donald Crafton, 1990, ‘Emile Cohl, Caricature, and Film’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 4-5
(6) Ibid., pp. 60-63
(7) Ibid.