ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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When you think of cartoons, you probably think stuff like funny, exciting, adventurous, hilarious… [Cartoon characters appear]

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…but did you know that cartoons can be serious, too?

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That's right, these puppies are called political cartoons, and adults love ‘em.

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…Well. Not all adults. Some adults love 'em, some are still pretty into Spongebob. [Man watching Spongebob]

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But that doesn’t mean you can’t get into them, too, especially if you learn how to

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understand and analyze them.

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Who knows? You might end up liking them more than Spongebob.

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So let’s get to analyzing!

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Check out this Official Shmoop-Made and Shmoop-Themed Political Cartoon. [Example of Shmoop-made cartoon]

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Now we'll admit that this political cartoon is already more interesting to look at than

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most.

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So analyzing this one should be fun, right?

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…We promise, you can keep watching Spongebob once we're done analyzing. [Man and woman analyzing cartoon]

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So the first step is to begin with the visuals. Let’s list the people and objects we can

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see.

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In this case, we see David Siminoff, the Founder of Shmoop. We also see some sort of machine [David and a shmoop machine]

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with the Shmoop logo on it, a bunch of books, and some kids eating apples from the machine.

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Got it? Good. The next step is to look for symbolism. Symbolism

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is when an object or symbol represents, or stands for a larger idea. Cartoonists use [Definition of symbolism]

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symbolism all the time to get across their ideas.

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So what might be some symbolism here?

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Well, we can see that the machine is turning those books into apples. And because the machine [Arrow points to apples]

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has a Shmoop logo on it, maybe the machine is supposed to symbolize Shmoop as a whole.

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Once you've nailed down some of the symbols, it's time to take a close look at any captions,

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words, phrases, or dates present. So what seems to be most significant?

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A good place to start would be the labels on the books and the apples. On the left,

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the books are all labeled things like “boring” and “confusing,” while the apples are [Books with labels]

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labeled with the word “knowledge.”

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It seems like the Shmoop-machine is turning boring and confusing things into knowledge

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that those kids can consume.

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Now we're getting somewhere. So what does it all mean? We're…not sure [Family driving a car]

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yet, actually!

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Time to describe and analyze.

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It seems like the cartoon is showing how Shmoop turns curriculum that can sometimes seem boring,

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tedious, and confusing, and turns it into delicious bits of knowledge.

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And David Siminoff? He represents all of the hard-working Shmoop employees helping to make [Shmoop employees dancing in a meeting room]

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that happen. But you’re not off the hook just yet. Now

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we have to ask ourselves: what seems to be the cartoonist’s opinion on the issue?

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In this case, we can look at what David is saying and see that the artist clearly likes

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what Shmoop is doing, by implying every student should get an apple. [Student holding an apple]

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And hey, that position makes sense…considering Shmoop produced this cartoon…

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But now you know how to analyze political cartoons, so is this cartoon really all that

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wrong?

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We said, "is it really all that…" oh. You're watching other cartoons. That's fine…we'll

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just…be over here…munching on apples… [Man sits down and eats an apple]

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