The Magic of the Walk

            It’s like one of those scenes in a cartoon where the character goes hunting for something with a magnifying glass or goes off searching in a room, and he starts walking up the wall, unknowingly. He is too concentrated on what he’s looking for so he doesn’t realize he’s walking on the side of a wall. But the second he drops that magnifying glass to look down towards the ground, he realizes that he’s walking on a wall. He screams, and then suddenly everyone realizes that he’s on the wall, and it’s obviously impossible to walk on walls… so of course he falls with a big drop.

 

             It’s funny that there is that certain magic in cartoons where anything is possible, but sometimes we have moments of realizing that it’s impossible in 3-dimensional life so that moment shatters. Animaniacs are brilliant for bringing up the truth to this “cartoon magic” to mind. I forget which two characters exactly, probably Dot and Yakko (or Wakko) that walked on the sky in an episode and Dot was afraid to walk. The other character (Wakko or Yakko) said to Dot something similar to, “You can walk on air as long as you don’t look down.” He said that it's some sort of cartoon rule that makes it possible to do so. She was timid at first, but as she tiptoed without looking down… she didn’t fall. They safely got to the ground shortly after. Even when I was watching this at the age of maybe 9 years old, I thought it was the most brilliant thing that Steven Spielberg did.

            So as I watch these dancers and this man walking on a wall with harnesses, all I can think about is that cartoons can walk on walls without the rule of gravity or having to attach themselves to ropes. I know that this is not a dance. It is just the coolest thing – as children everyone wants to walk on walls and do the impossible. The way these dancers are walking on walls gives me the feeling of nostalgia. As I watched those cartoon characters on the walls at a younger age, I thought that it wasn’t fair, and that they get to do anything they want. These people are also similar to the cartoon characters because they are intensely concentrating on what they’re doing – “magically walking.” But, the only difference is that the cartoon character doesn’t know he’s walking on a wall for a moment and the people do understand this.

            I want to know what these people are thinking though, how they’re feeling; and if they’re laughing, smiling, scared, anxious, or whatever. I would definitely be feeling all of those emotions at once. There isn’t any noise and we can’t see the expressions of their faces because of the angle of the camera. We see them as we would see nails at eye level on a wall; most of the time we can only see their heads, bouncing in a forward or backward motion, gliding along with their legs in an unnatural gesture. I feel like it would be an incredible experience to be loaded onto a harness and defy the rules of science. But I know for a fact that it would be truly amazing to be able to walk on walls with no harness, and no gravity limitations like in all the cartoons.