Comfort in cartoons
It was somewhere in 2011 when, for the first time in my life, I was allowed to grab a remote and watch television. Knowledgeable of the existence of animations and children’s programming, I knew exactly what I wanted to see and there it was, perfect as I’d always imagined: a whole four hours of assorted kids shows every day, and a little more on Saturdays.
Useless to say my life changed after that, and to this day I stay as hopeless a cartoon head as I was back then. A daily dose of cartoons became an integral part of my routine, and something I’ll prioritize over any other program.
I’m privileged, in a way, for having in me the still burning flame of wonder, and for being able to adore and acknowledge the undeniable magic of animation —, as well as entertain myself with just that. That being said, I’m still a grown up, and for that reason I must bite the forbidden fruit of seriousness and also consider an outlook on problems and responsibilities, as a more critical view over these figments of wonder; dealing with their less magical details.
It’s the age-old conundrum of content for children being handled by adults, and all the implications such practice reserves. The agendas, the translation of problems, the unsavory elements; all which plagues the real, adult world, made digestible to younger audiences and, therefore, the necessary but unceasing discussion of morals and information viability and even leeway given to shady moves due to modern corporate fears, that has to be had today, all with the acquired knowledge and engagement of today’s society — parents to children content producers.
Sure, it won’t be me, at least not here and/or now, that you’ll see truly touch the wound. Nonetheless, I’d like to talk about my experience in this over a decade of growing up watching kids shows and following new releases, and how I deal with certain uncomfortable tropes that I find to be issues of expressly wrongful adult influence in environments vastly populated by children.
First of all, I’d like to talk about what I believe to be the root of the problem in the modern cartoon landscape: the tried-and-true formula of episodicity contre the high-yielding, unpredictable monster of continuity.
If you’re a Buzzfeed millennial or a Generation Z person, you probably did experience the genesis and/or the golden era of channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Your child—/teenage-hood was adorned by what is believed to be the last generation of actually good cartoons. And indeed, you cannot fail with the classics, so to this day, shows like “Hey Arnold!”, “Ed, Edd and Eddy” and “Dexter’s Laboratory” are examples to be followed, and poetically perfect cartoons. Not only for the nostalgia of those able to say so, but for the timeless standard shows like these have set for the feasible future of the industry as a whole.
Writing, music composition, character design, animation, very little can be improved further today if you look back on history, and only once new, modern concepts are explored — and let be explored — that you can truly see innovation in the direction of setting trends and building pieces that can be seen as classics in the long run. And, of course, not only just classics, but timeless works that can live on forever, and influence in the same way, generations to come.
I have a very strong belief that episodicity and continuity can and should work together, but the episodic value of a cartoon must always overlap its continuity, for it is in the very nature of cartoon consumption to reach its audiences with consistency. And even today, when modernity brought all new ways of consuming television shows, it is important to stay consistent with the independent value of each episode in a (cartoon) show, in order not to fail, as was said, the very nature of.
So, what happens when a show like “Adventure Time” appears out of nowhere and completely changes the public’s way of viewing cartoons? Well, a lot. A lot happens.
The late 2000s Cartoon Network brought to the table absolutely amazing works like “Chowder” and “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack”, along with reruns from the early-to-mid 2000s Golden Era cartoons, and all day around you’d find an amazing programming, as well as enough good new releases to look forward to. But, something was happening, that is, kids were growing up, and more importantly than that, Youtube became a thing, as well as easy access to the internet in most households across the world. Children were being born into iPads and commentary/let’s play youtubers, and there was a very strange shift into the general view of how a cartoon should perform, being graced by the eyes of a modernized public that saw entertainment content with an amateur standardization of quality.*
What was classic and what was good was forced to compete with what was new, and appreciation dwindled. Slapstick funnies were a thing of the past, slice of life had gotten a whole new meaning, and the worst of all: random and loud became funny. Soon, shows that remained true to classic standards died suddenly, for Cartoon Network had struck gold. And I still remember that fateful day, when not long after debut, I first watched “Slumber Party Panic”.
In the end, Chowder might've been the last saving grace of that era, along with Flapjack. But seemingly as soon as “Adventure Time” came to be, bringing along its faithful companions — “The Amazing World of Gumball”, “Regular Show” —, things began to change. And as soon as Adventure Time began to sin, so did those that surrounded it.
Before diving deeper into what I think was the ruination of the triad’s reputation, I’d like to say that by no means were the three shows bad. Indeed, the first season of all three was marvel and just like I said before, became true classics of the new age by being examples of technological advancements in cartoon production. More than that, they somewhat gave praise and glory to those that came before them, and that’s very honorable. But, as nothing in this world can be logically perfect, the troubles brought were more than their worth.
I might be biased at this point, because at the time (early 2010s) I was working hard to bring the new shows to audiences through Robin Hood acts on the internet. But up until 2015, all the cartoons I’ve watched and knew people watched, were done so on the internet by unofficial means. Communities rose from that, I am guilty of, and all because of easy access to organized serialization. In other words, you could watch a full season back to back whenever you wanted, with available quality subtitles in multiple languages. I guess you could say that was the start of the “new way of watching TV shows”, influencing production, therefore the market towards new platforms, and that’s all but natural as the course of things, but does it excuse quality decline? Worse yet, does it excuse sins against the nature of television?
As soon as Finn entered puberty, so did everybody else. And as soon as vampires began making songs about toxic household dynamics, so did everybody else find a way to become part of a toxic household. Gen Z people were teens, they wanted “realness”. Millennials were adults that couldn’t be mediators. And new children were being born like every year, and things were changing, nobody knew how they would experience this landscape in the future, when it was their time to do so. Chaos reigned, value standards shifted, and The Great Mushroom War was everything people cared about.
Lore was a thing now. Writers couldn’t afford to commit continuity mistakes, otherwise it would look bad for the thousands of theory videos popping up on Youtube every day —, users plaguing subreddits with video frames. To get into a show now didn’t mean catching an episode or two after school, but watching hundreds of episodes back to back, as well as videos from this channel or that, getting in this group chat, discussing shit at lunch. Vampires and goths were cool again, because Marceline had an axe-bass and was an integral piece of the show’s story; a new episode release was a race for who could catch the theory-related easter egg first, and post it to Twitter or something to instigate endless conversations about the origin and existence of elements and element embodiments that ruled that fictional world. The niche became a generation, expanded to popularity, and from this big’a’mess, “Steven Universe” was birthed into existence.
“Steven Universe” was the epithet of sin regarding the classic nature of cartoon consumption. From the get-go it was supposed to instigate the taste for continuity, since everything, absolutely EVERYTHING in that show is foreshadow to future revelations. And if you were in the game for this stuff back then, it was an experience unlike any other.
It was the product of the modern world, born to abide to its rules rather than morph and change to fit said rules. And it became an instant “classic”. It was everything everybody had ever wanted, that is, who was the public for cartoons in that circa 2014: internet addicted teens, childish above age persons, and the worst of all, Tumblr users; all meshed together into the worst place in the world: the internet.
Production had become one of two things: you either didn’t listen to the public, did your own thing, got done with your show and fled— probably canceled by the network; or you were part of that raging public, abide to its moves going beyond any semblance of complimentary reason, and became a staple for either good or evil depending solely on your roll of the dice. The latter was "Steven Universe". Its continuity overlapped episodicity, became a continuous narrative splattered over a calendar of limiting, 10-minute episodes and infinitely long hiatuses, began as an extraordinary piece of media, and died as a sorry mistake.
But you know what was the saving grace? It did breakthrough with new techniques, and brought to the table the exact insignia of the (then) new era: love — in all shapes and forms. Conservative network executives found that letting “radical” ideas pass-through meant appealing to the activist (“general”) public, and banked on that. Although that’s the black part of the Yin-Yang, it’s great that representation now is commonplace, but it’s also bad that the reference for this representation is usually not what we (“those represented”) want it to be — nor is the representation itself completely fair, as it should; so yeah, good things and bad things. But, the undeniable, “après-moral” idea to take from that is the failure of cartoons to what should be the absolute standard of quality for the industry: episodicity seemed to be officially dead.
Shows like “Gumball” still thrived with the right public, and “Regular Show” was still not at the height of its decadence, and Cartoon Network’s desperate attempts of “saving cartoons” by going back to the roots with “Clarence” and “Uncle Grandpa”, all showed signs of a death grip as last hope. But doesn’t matter how hard you scrub, the demon of continuity remains true, as the new integral element of the new formula. Once a show’s episodes can’t be displayed in a dedicated cartoon section because of the organizational problems its continuity will bring, then something is clearly wrong. Thus, modern classics lost faithfulness to Saturday mornings. But at the end of the day, is anyone/thing really to blame?, or was the industry simply bound to this still true phase?
*by no means besides personal experience am I qualified to be talking about this. So take any information given with a grain of salt.
Cartoon critics seem to greatly agree on one thing: love tropes are an unnecessary evil. Where did “Adventure Time” miss the mark? At Finn’s failed love stories. “Regular Show”? Mordecai’s failed love stories. “Steven Universe”? At being a parody of itself as a far too complex, collective love story based upon an incessant need to keep up with a radical agenda, and failing to do so in a way that’s completely valuable and fair. Now, you know what all these have in common?; the awkward love tropes of each show, the forceful agenda, the need to keep up with a “child-unfriendly” status quo? They’re all grown up problems, and they were only brought up to fuel an underage audience lacking of child wonder.
Problems I’ve mentioned at the very start of this post —: “The agendas, the translation of problems, the unsavory elements; all which plagues the real, adult world, made digestible to younger audiences[...]” — are what I believe to have been the toll taken by the cartoon industry that lead it to ruination for sensible eyes.
Cartoons began to treat themselves way too seriously, I feel. And possibly due to Eastern influence of all things, for anime, undoubtedly, has had a hand on the changes. Nonetheless, there seems to have been a switch from child-friendly to family-friendly that went beyond semantics. Grown ups became part of the “current generation”, and they were not interested in magic, they wanted drama. So, producers gave it to them.
You see, it’s when the “slice of life” aspect becomes too lifelike in relation to the obvious adult problems of its writers, that a kids show becomes null, and the overwhelming dramatic weight turns too heavy.
When writing a show for kids, you need to take into consideration, absolutely, a child’s right to connect and relate, so love said show, its characters, story, tropes. For that, there needs to be a connection between the writer and the infantile world, be it their childhood, be children around them / the collective experience gathered over the years and thousands of works that stay faithful to a child’s ways. If not for that, for keeping this specific appeal, what even is the point of bringing a story to such a niche realm? Or are you going to tell me you don’t need maturity to understand “Adventure Time”?
What’s the difference between “Hey Arnold!” and “Steven Universe”? One of those seems to actually have been written to entertain children, the other to prove a point to grown ups and tutor kids on real life problems. What’s the difference between Helga and Arnold’s relationship and that of Finn and his many love interests? Or even that of Craig and Wildernessa (Craig of the Creek), for that matter? In one there’s naturality, in the others, forcefulness; a big ole ball of unasked-for drama, that in no way should appeal and/or be targeted at children.
If there’s a thing the “Adventure Time” generation was keen on recognizing and preying upon was the shift in interest from the cartoon-watching public. Kids were edgy now, concerned, opinionated; kids were essentially adults. They didn’t want the simple humor of “Chowder”; they’re not watching “Dexter’s Laboratory” reruns at 06:00AM, they’re watching R-Rated series on Netflix and Snapchatting or something. Après ça, adults themselves were being vocal, but they all sounded like kids, because essentially they were such.
Something I loved to read back in 2015 was Josh Lesnick’s (Slipshine) tweets. And one of my absolute favorites was when he sketched out a stereotypical keyboard warrior / Metacritic reviewer typing “haha you might not get it! it’s like a cartoon, but for adults!”, this being about the newly released talk of the week: Sausage Party. And that’s what “Sausage Party” was, a ridiculous take in the growing public of adults meddling with children’s entertainment. But more than that, something to make everybody aware of how things were going on that side of the industry.
Didn’t take long for things to evolve from that. I wonder how much of a catalyst “Sausage Party” actually was, if more than a herald of doom. 2015-2016 were to me the worst of years, with certain big cultural phenomena receiving second seasons, and the looming ghost of cancellation haunting the livelihoods of good and great cartoons fighting for the right to remain true. And I just didn’t know where to bury my head with the cringe-inducing flaws of my favorite shows.
You know, I’ve watched all of these shows mentioned up to this point, in their entirety, multiple times. I have a special place in my heart for all of them, and I owe “Steven Universe” a great thank you for absolutely changing my life for the better. But, looking back today with the eyes of both a future parent and a children’s content creator, I can all but condemn shows from that early-to-mid 2010s era, unable to recommend them to the largest part of the children demographic. If they make me as uncomfortable now as they did back then, imagine the effect they could have in those younger than me.
All in all, things are not as bad as I might’ve made them sound. That 2014 line up had its own “saving graces”. The spirit of Chowder and the Golden Era was still not dead, and as mentioned before, “Uncle Grandpa” and “Clarence” were a relieving breath of fresh air. That’s how you make cartoons, how you keep true to history’s “ups”. But more than that, I believe those two, as well as the first season of “Steven Universe”, to be Cartoon Network’s way of wishing to reverse that trend of “too mature for kids” shows plaguing their environment that is and should be populated majoritarily by kids. Those who shouldn’t have to abandon the “best moments of their lives” to keep up with what higher ups put on their plates.
What makes me the most sure of this fixing up, too, is the generation that came right after: the 2017-2018 releases. “Craig of the Creek”, O.K.K.O.”, “Apple and Onion” and even my favorite show of all time, “Summer Camp Island”. These all manage/d to be amazing pieces of media, that concretized the hope we’ve had for a better future. Reigniting the magic and returning the comfortable feeling of simple, carefree, comfortable shows. They’re not perfect, can never be, but they’re so much more than good enough, and I love them for that, recommending anyone with the least interest in modern cartoons to give them a chance.
Shit, this is over 3k words long.💀
P.S.I’m abusing Cartoon Network shows here because it is the origin of quality standards in cartoon television. Mentioning other channels from the 2010s is not going to help much, since the same problems can be pointed out, although in smaller sizes.
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