As someone pushing close to forty, I confess to watching Tom and Jerry. I also invariably spend my Sunday afternoons with a friend and am often compelled to watch Doremon along with my friend’s ten year old daughter. Between Tom & Jerry and Doremon I like the former. And I spent some time to understand why.

Tom & Jerry engages me in an unique way. Because it contains no dialogue. Every frame behooves me to provide the dialogues in my mind – fill the gaps in my own way to complete the viewing experience. To test my theory I observed a group of kids watching the cartoon. There were several instances where two or more kids blurted out a different point of view during a sequence. It was the same pictures on the screen but the kids filled the gaps in their own way.

This is also why we like cartoons and caricatures that have very little to say along with the pictures. Fill-in-the-blanks become a very personalized experience.