Posted on 05/27/2004 7:25:15 AM PDT by qam1
Bad cartoons tend to make bad citizens. And my generation suffered from the worst cartoons of all. Pity the poor male children of Generation X: there we sat, on Saturday mornings in the '70s and early '80s, clutching our bowls of Count Chocula and enduring the soul-sucking monotony of ugly Filmation cartoons populated by heroes who fought without actually fighting. You could watch cartoons for hours and never see a superhero actually sock a supervillain in the gut, or a commando pump hot lead into a live non-robot terrorist, or a ranger thrust a pointy-sharp arrow into some dragon's malevolent guts. Preachy mini-sermons abounded, though; the Super Friends couldn't lay a gloved fist on Lex Luthor, but they could sure manhandle those sugary in-between-meals snacks. ("Super Friends," they called them, instead of the Justice League. The difference tells you everything you need to know about the seventies.)
Consequently, we Gen Xers grew up achingly bereft of simulated mayhem and destruction. We turned to cap guns, stick fights, and dodgeball to meet our aggressive needs, but it wasn't the same. We craved red meat, but our cartoons served up tofu.
I always assumed that the threat of litigation had driven violence from Saturday morning. After all, if you show Superman frying a supervillain with his heat vision on Saturday morning, then, sure enough, some idiot kid in Dubuque will fry his little brother with heat vision one fine Saturday afternoon, and then everyone loses except the lawyers. But I was wrong. Federal regulators, rather than nervous trial attorneys, wussified Saturday morning TV in the early seventies. Uncle Sam made our cartoons insipid, in the hope that a nice stiff dose of cultural chloroform would deaden our proto-male violent tendencies and transform us all into prissy poindexters who would eat our vegetables, sit still in our seats, and eventually vote for French-speaking politicians.
That same castrating impulse informs much of our society's approach to violence among teens. God help the poor kid who puts a butter knife in his lunchbox, if he attends a school with a zero tolerance weapons policy. If you squirm in class too often, mouth off too regularly, or act like a boy during mandatory androgyny intervals, expect Uncle Ritalin to move in for a permanent stay in the mischief-making corners of your mind, courtesy of America's peerless public school system. Guns? Behold the spectacle of Rosie O'Donnell at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, exhorting kids to "never touch a gun," lest they get bullet cooties or something. And what about violent video games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City? That game alone is surely responsible for the surge in motor-scooter car-jackings and golf-club assaults on prostitutes, committed by thugs who dress like Ralph Lauren and talk like Ray Liotta.
In each case, the real or proposed government "solution" is the same: outlaw the offending "violent" matter or regulate it to death. And in each case, the result is the same: violence, the forbidden fruit, is marginalized and thus glamorized, and young men start to suspect that civilized behavior is for girls. Thus the state ties itself in knots trying to fight human nature.
The fight against teen violence often degenerates into a proxy war against young men. Don your bureaucrat-colored glasses and behold teenage males: surly, under-socialized, and enamored of physical mayhem, they're a bad influence on the other genders, and probably ought to be outlawed. No one worries about hordes of marauding teenaged girls holding up 7-11s and shooting up high schools. The problem is boys, says the state; crush the social origins of their boyishness, and solve the problem.
Little boys are aggressive, not because their cartoons make them so, but because their Creator saturated them in testosterone. Is ham-fisted state-sponsored nannying the only way to make citizens out of the little hooligans?
One author has a better idea. In his superb and unfairly overlooked 2002 book, Killing Monsters, former comic book author Gerard Jones proposes that society needs an entirely different approach to the issue of violence in children's entertainment. He suggests that children respond strongly to violent entertainment because the violence mirrors their own feelings of aggression -- and those feelings of aggression are legitimate and worthy of expression. Rather than struggling hopelessly to eliminate childhood aggression, we should teach children to harness and employ aggressive feelings in socially useful ways.
Innumerable examples confirm Jones' point. Consider guns again. Each year, thousands of teenagers learn to employ deadly assault weapons for the explicit purpose of killing people in the most efficient way possible. It's called basic training -- and basic rifle marksmanship is part of basic training for every branch of the military. Does that training and exposure to weapons make teenagers criminals? Obviously not. The discipline attached to that training allows soldiers to use rifles in the patriotic defense of their nation and its values. If our society struggles with teen violence, perhaps the fault lies not with our guns but with the inadequate discipline and malnourished moral imaginations of the teens holding them.
Consider also violent video games. According to Jones, most children know perfectly well that video games aren't reality. Kids understand video games for what they are: caricatured representations of a mock-reality, not reality itself. It's true that some notorious teen monsters (like Klebold and Harris from the Columbine tragedy) enjoyed violent shooting games - but so do most teenaged boys. Most likely those savage young men turned to video games as an outlet for the chaotic impulses that they could not control. Perhaps we should be grateful for games that transform adolescent rage into harmless electronic depictions on a screen. Perhaps transformation can succeed where suppression fails.
Male teenage aggression is a fact, not a problem. And that fact is an embarrassing reminder that sex differences don't permit us to choose everything about ourselves, or about our children. If the aggression of boys is scandalous, then it's easy to see why society is tempted to pretend that teachers and bureaucrats can bind the boyish heart with rules and restrictions. But if we accept that sex differences are something to be celebrated, not denied, then we can get back to the age-old task of taming - but not breaking - the male spirit. If the government wants to help this process, it could start by butting out. Raising men is a job for men, not bureaucrats.
Despite our bad cartoons and the spineless regulators who required them, my generation is finding its way. We produced Pat Tillman. We produced the brave men and women keeping Iraq safe. And we produced Batman, Superman, and Justice League cartoons wherein heroes pound the snot out of bad guys, and damn the FCC. Our cartoons have learned to use violence to promote the greater good. Perhaps we've learned that lesson, too.
They had that one and several others like it on this special that runs on the Cartoon Network occasionally (Had 'Herr meets Hare, the Ductators I think, etc.). I believe the special is an hour long, and it's called "Cartoons at War" or something like that.
CN also does specials or have hours devoted to some of the "classic" cartoonists of the '30s, '40s, etc. and you'll see some of those. Some of them were quite racy (Tex Avery, etc.). You won't find them on the broadcast networks. I never knew just how racy they were until later on when I was older. Most of it went right over my head when I was a kid.
Granted, it's Cartoon Network, they don't exactly show PC kid-fare every evening - they have some cartoons that are very un-PC.
Cartoon Network has also been fighting Warner Brothers and some of the other studios/estates for years, to show some of the un-PC cartoons, and occasionally they win or pull it off in someway that they don't get in trouble legally.
If WB had their way, I think all of those cartoons would have been destroyed.
I hated the Smurfs. I despised them with every fiber of my teenage being. I wished torturous hot death on them. I hated them more than I hated the freakin' Shmoo, which should tell y'all the depth of my hatred for the Smurfs.
That's my old roommate's puppy, Ralph. He doesn't yap, unless it's deserved.
He's cute!
( and I like him if he doesn't yap...)
atomicpossum wrote:
Are you trying to start a Race war???
Race-ism is one of the most pressing problems we face. To paraphrase Dr. King, I suggest that we be judged by only 'by the content of our cartoon character.'
RightWingAtheist wrote:
Oh man, I just realized that I had the most DEPRIVED childhood imaginable. On Saturday mornings, I had to endure Turbo Teen, Carebears, Snorks, the Monchichis, and, so help me, RUBIK THE AMAZING CUBE, with the guy who played Horseshack on Welcome Back Kotter voicing the titular character. At least Muppet Babies was good.
I wasn't really into cartoons, but LOVED both the old Lone Ranger and the Cisco Kid series...
Yea but Johnny Quest was not a Saturday morning cartoon the original whole first run was as a summer time replacement show in early or pre prime time (7PM) shows like the Flintstones where.
Johnny Quest was adult enough for the whole family to watch with the adult stuff going over the kids heads (remember Race & Jade…)
Oddly the best cartoons were always written for a mix ages audiences …The Bug Bunny and alike cartoons were originally for the movies mix ages audiences
Rocky and Bullwinkle while always for TV had tons of adult stuff in it going over the kids heads….
The best cartoon are not simple pabulum that someone thinks they need to feeds to the kitty for there own good.
There more a tasted of the adult world cut up in to little bites that a kid can digest more and more of at there own pace as they grow up till there ready to move on to the real world
I think that the "edumacational" lesson at the end of GI Joe and He-Man were because there needed to be an "educational" component (something of "value") added on to what was a glorified toy commercial.
When Cartoon Network gets around to showing something with as much overt sex, violence, and racism as Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarves, get back to me.
Another great set you can get are the Tex Avery cartoons on VHS. You can get those unedited, including all the explosions causing black-face and all that. I have 4 videos of his great cartoons. It has everything from Screwy Squirrel, Droopy, Spike, and that Confederate Wolf that always whistled that funny dixie song. "Real cool maaaan."
Luckily I have a copy of Song of the South that I got in London about 10 years ago. I need to get that thing transferred to DVD so I can keep a good copy of it. I remember seeing that when I was a child (I'm 27 now). I think it's a great show and a wonderful story.
At what point did "adult" humor change to only mean dirty jokes?
They all have the maid that beats Thomas, Jerry's uncle that plays the guitar and sings Froggy Went a Courtin', and a ton of other great clips.
There is a complete Tex Avery DVD set but it is only available from France. I don't know if the French subtitles are forced on or if you can turn them off (you would also need an R2 or Region Free, PAL capable DVD player; I have one but have held off on this DVD set).
Cartoon censorship has been big since 1968 (I am talking about re-editing the old cartoons).
It's sad these classic cartoons aren't being released in America. The Tex Avery shorts are HI-larious. You can't go wrong with the Swing Shift Cinderella cartoon with the old wrinkled Godmother knocking back that big ass martini glass with one gulp. heh heh :)
This shows that Disney's suppression of this film is because of protests in America; they seem to stand behind the film as a corporation in other countries where it does not draw any outrage.
Now that DVD permits any nation's media to be viewed in America (region blocking and PAL/NTSC are really such minute matters), I don't see Disney Corp. ever permitting Song Of The South to be issued again. And for those who say they don't like the scenes of happy singing slaves, this film takes place AFTER the civil war.
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