I love old cartoons like Tom & Jerry and Loony Tunes, they are very often amazing art. People nowadays almost never really know what art is, not even those usually called "artists". The reason is, in the words of famus grafiti artis Banksy; "The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little. "
As for those old cartoons being "overly coarse, and reusing the same jokes over and over again", I might inform people of that opinion that it's called "slapstick", and is a curius thing.
The word "humour" is an umbrella term, it consists of a few cor concepts, Puns, Irony, Nonsense, some others I have forgoten... and slapstick. Slapstick is as old as humanity itself, or perhaps older, and an imense amount of powerfull traditions have formed around it. If I tell you to think abaut a being that embodies the conept of humor, what do you think of? Most likely a clown, or a jester, and both these specialize in slapstick. If I tell you to think of an item asociated with humor? Most likely a banana peal, or a thrown pie. Slapstick again.
Slapsting is phehaps the one thing that is both highly sophisticated at the same time as apealing to the lowest comon denominator, the same slapstic scene can be seen by a small child, a mentaly ill person, a genius, an artist or a general, a pesant or an elevated leader, and all will laugh side by side.
Slapstick is an art, and hard to archive beyond the basics, just because i something you laugh at, and something the greatest idots can enjoy, does not mean that it itself is silly or idiotic, for is not laughter the most archetypical sign of happyness?
Slapstick is the art of making peaple happy, and to master it you must sacerfice the thing you hold most dear; your dignity.