Do ‘Tom & Jerry’ Inspire Middle East Violence?
An Egyptian official blames the children’s cartoon for violence in the Middle East.
Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/Reuters
Who’s to blame for the violence in the Middle East? ISIS? Al Qaeda? Hamas?
Or is it Tom and Jerry?
One top-ranking Egyptian official thinks it’s the latter. At a press conference, Ambassador Salah Abdel Sadek, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, said the cartoon and other media have desensitized the region’s young men to violence.
“[Tom and Jerry] portrays the violence in a funny manner and sends the message that, yes, I can hit him… and I can blow him up with explosives. It becomes set in [the viewer’s] mind that this is natural,” said Sadek, as translated by Egyptian Streets.
According to the ambassador, Egypt’s impressionable youths take the cat-and-mouse duo’s attempts to murder each other with dynamite, anvils, and various stabbing weapons in a dangerously literal way.
But that wasn’t Sadek's only concern.
“It has become very normal for a young man to spend long hours playing video games, killing and spilling blood and he’s happy and content,” he continued.
The ambassador did not comment on the culpability of Sylvester and Tweety or other similarly paired cartoon duos.