What's the Deal?

This was based on "Guy Things" by Gordon Korman (found in Guys Write for Guys Read), a writing prompt I gave to my 9th graders today.

Cartoons—unfortunately there don’t seem to be any good ones any more. True, the media is trying to bring some of them back, like Scooby Doo or Tom and Jerry, but they are ruined. I mean, who ever heard of a cat and mouse being friends? The funniest elements of the cartoons have been eliminated—the insane violence. Cats are supposed to have nine lives, right? But any intelligent kid knows that cartoon cats have about 9 million. And in each episode they should lose a dozen or so—in the most bizarre, humiliating, painful ways imaginable. Look at it now. Nothing. Maybe Tom catches a golf club in the mouth every once in a while, but it’s more of an actual plot now…a story where the characters cooperate. What’s that all about? Kids have to deal with appropriate behavior in real life. Cartoons are meant to be an escape from reality. It’s not a classroom, but a fantasy where anything can happen. We all know that the worlds are separate. Those quacks who truly believe that cartoon violence leads to actual violence have been watching too much Roger Rabbit and not enough Looney Toons. The more outlandish the slapstick, the more we kids enjoy these cartoons because they’re NOT real.