Creativity and You · 4:34am Sep 14th, 2015
I need people to tell me cartoons they watched (cartoons, NOT anime) from years before now, and I want to come up with a list of topics they touched on that seemed a bit dark for a "cartoon". This all somewhat stems from the flak Steven Universe has gotten for it's apparent "lesbian tendencies", even though the character only appear as women and are actually gender-less non-organic aliens. This is part of my response to try and show that kids can handle stuff in cartoons a lot better than most people give them credit for.
Examples:
Courage the Cowardly Dog often had terrifying images (Ramses' Curse, that mummy gave me fucking nightmares), disturbing ideas, flat-out torture and generally uncomfortable acts of violence on a dog.
Ed, Edd and Eddy dealt with addiction, scams, sexual harassment, and overall depression of a cul-de-sac full of misfit kids (including one, Johnny, whose only real friend was an actual piece of wood).
Transformers had giant robots punching one another, shooting one another, blowing everything up they could find, and generally served as the backdrop to a million-year old genocidal planet-wide civil war.
Come at me, I need this: I'm working on a sequel to A Sweet Dream and really need some inspiration to help me through a tough spot. I'll post my answers in a day or two in another blog. As for the story, I'll post it when it's done.
I actually watched this one a while ago, not years, but still. Batman: The animated series. That shit is dark and kids watched that a lot.
Static Shock. I think it touched on race and poverty problems from what i remember.
Avatar:tLA. That definitely had some dark stuff like the "There's no war in Ba Sing Se"
tbh, I didn't watch a lot of TV growing up bc I didn't have cable. I usually got my fix from saturday morning cartoons and whenever i went somewhere with cable. Wish I could give you more, but some shows I didn't see enough of to find topics they hit on (not that i probably understood).
Also, Yay! sequel! I thought you weren't going to do a sequel for this fic? or was that another fic?
Maybe I'm thinking of another author...I've been on this site too long
Batman TAS which gave rise to the DCAU did much to establish Batman as a serious subject more in the vein of the Tim Burton movies than the farcical silliness of Batman '66. Especially for kids (and adults) who didn't read comics. Looking at the Getting Crap Past the Radar page for more recent DCAU shows like Justice League, it's pretty clear they weren't even trying too hard to keep things solely appropriate for kids anymore. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Radar/JusticeLeague
Avatar The Last Airbender and Korra tackled some heavy subjects (beyond Korra and Asami shipping). In the run up to the Scottish referendum, I saw comparisons to The Promise and the problems of redrawing borders and the specter of forced resettlement.
One thing I thought odd was the Earth Queen was graphically asphyxiated on screen and nobody complained, but the characters kept saying the queen had been "taken out." I guess showing the violent deed was okay, but the word "killed" was off-limits for a cartoon show.
TMNT, FUCK YOU, THATCHER! "NINJA" IS NOT A BAD WORD! And for that matter, why did the blunt, impracticable nunchaku get taken out, but the slashy and stabby weapons get left in?
Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain owe their legendary legacy to making plenty of references that went over most kids' heads, like Orson Welles and Les Miserables references.
http://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/are-you-pondering-what-were-pondering-for-pinky-and-the-brains-20th-anniversary-1633683/
Also, from around that time, Histeria! was portraying historical events without pulling too many punches, much like the UK show Horrible Histories.
Before that, the famous banned Tiny Toons episode with the anti-alcohol message.
Grim adventures of billy and mandy
Gargoyles: One episode had a cop almost die from being shot (by their own gun).
I will just leave this link here all the former stuff is what I watched
Couple I can think of are SatAM, with slavery and forced robotocisation.
The Raccoons, just listen to Aint No Planes, Come On Home, and even Run With Us.
Ulysses 31 for the whole Gods play games with mortals, Sisyphus etc.
The Mysterious Cities Of Gold for gun death, cannons, and giant flying death machine plasma cannon. Not to mention the old man and pretty much the end.
I have a list of over 100 cartoons Ive watched somewhere but given its years since Ive watched them I cant even remembe the names properly, so need t think more before finding any more.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers...Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "The show where kids try to stop bad guys from spreading pollution using magic rings and a superhero who overuses puns?!" It may surprise you, however, that some of the episodes from the earlier seasons were actually pretty dark. (I know it was a surprise to me when I started re-watching the episodes). Take these three for example:
Season 2 Ep. 1: "MInd Pollution" - Linka and her cousin Boris become addicted to Verminous Skumm's new designer drug, "Bliss". This episode shows to horrors of drug addiction and ends with Boris dying as a direct result.
Season 3 Ep. 11: "A Formula For Hate" - When a high school basketball player, Todd Andrews, finds out he has developed HIV-AIDS, Verminous Skumm starts a rumor that turns Todd's friends against him. This is the first time an American cartoon deals with the subject of AIDS.
Season 3 Ep. 12: "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast" - The Planeteers go on separate missions across the world to prevent the detonation of three separate nuclear bombs in three major conflict zones between warring religious factions. Verminous Skumm, along with Duke Nukem, is behind the plot of inciting hatred to get people into nuking each other. The main story sees Wheeler arrive in Northern Ireland where the conflict is between the Protestants and the Catholics. Kwame and Linka travel to South Africa where the blacks and whites are raging battles. Gi and Ma-Ti travel to Israel where tensions are high between Palestinians and Jews. This episode combines some of humanity's heaviest themes: hatred, war, nuclear annihilation, religious persecution, racism, etc.
Note: Notice how all three episodes have Verminous Skumm as the villain. I just realized that.
Batman Beyond had its moments.
"The Winning Edge" dealt with underage PED use in a way that never really felt shoehorned into the plot at all, which I really liked - too many Very Special Episodes seem to just plunk in AIDS or drugs and say "Hey, kids, don't do this." "Splicers" could also count to a smaller extent. Both of those episodes ended up with the VotW Hulking out and eventually being defeated by their own strength.
The premise behind "The Last Resort" is also pretty scary in real life, if only because the main villain brainwashes kids into believing their parents hate them for putting them into his "ranch". Nor does it help that he puts them in sensory deprivation chambers when they misbehave. And no, that's not supposed to be arousing in this context.
I absolutely refuse to watch "Lost Soul" and "Sneak Peek" simply because the endings of each episode terrified me when I watched them as a kid. "Lost Soul" in particular was especially haunting.
I grew up on a lot of cartoons but even more on Anime...mostly Speed Racer. Anyways, i think one cartoon that always freaked me out at times was Flying Rhino Junior High due to the constant misadventures and unbelievable whimsy.
Like putting a Sun into a Basement where a person lives...Seriously, did the writers forget how hot that sucker is at the surface?! The Phantom would have been cooked alive if it had be scientifically accurate!
3391958 By one of the good guys none the less.
The Powerpuff Girls had some stuff that, when you simply see it as a premise rather than see how it is used or addressed in practice, would raise some flags.
To name only a few:
-The Ganggreen Gang all had green skin, presumably gangrenous ("gangrene").
-Mojo Jojo had an enlarged, exposed brain.
-Him. I needn't expound on that to anybody who watched the show.
-The bully, Mitch Mitchelson, abused animals onscreen. It was not played for laughs.
-The aptly-named Professor Dick mass-produced cheap, fragile Powerpuff knockoffs. Each one was a living, certainly sentient, and likely sapient prepubescent girl like the original three Powerpuffs. The production process gave them physical deformities, and their limbs would detach if they fought too hard. They all burned to death when, in existential despair of their loveless "father", they turned on Dick and set his factory ablaze with them all inside. This all happens onscreen.
Some of these were more "gags" than anything, not even explored in the show. But other topics, like Mitch's bullying, the Rowdyruffs' misogyny, Morbucks' spoiled lifestyle and relentless vendetta, Femme Fatale's deliberate twisting of feminist arguments, Professor Dick's con-man scheme to acquire Chemical X, and such were often written into episodes in ways that showed me what they looked like in practice (and therefore how to spot them in real life) and what sort of hard feelings or trouble they could cause. Looking back, I appreciate their inclusion.
Even episodes where the good guys make poor decisions (like when Blossom's well-meaning refusal to intervene in a conflict between very old and frail retired superheroes and supervillains put both groups in the hospital) were good because they demonstrated why those decisions were not ideal.
The movie, on the other hand, I remember actually making me uncomfortable as a child because of the, to me, overly-visceral way in which Mojo threatened to kill Professor Utonium. He held him in a choke hold and bent his neck at a dangerous angle. The noise the Professor made, coupled with the whole scenario in general, was just too dark for me at the time. Even now, I think it went a bit far.
Every. Disney. Film. EVER!
Aladdin: Aladdin's intro song has him passing through a brothel and includes the lines "Just a little snack guys," "Rip him open, take it back guys."
First attempt to get the lamp results in death by smothering.
Thievery.
Forced marriage.
Mind control.
Attempted murder.
Attempted personality change.
Robin Hood:
Crossdressing.
Thievery.
Mind control.
Furries.
Imprisonment.
Attempted murder.
Jungle book:
Being hunted.
Kidnapping.
Mind control (I see a pattern here).
Attempted vore.
Beauty and the Beast:
More furries.
Misogyny.
Xenophobia.
There is plenty more, but I don't want to write everything. Besides, I also wanted to touch on MLP itself:
Lesson Zero (it deserves its own spot).
Fifty shades of mind control (Lesson Zero, Discording, Sombra, Chrysalis ,Nightmare Moon, alicorn amulet...)
Communism.
Bullying.
Self-punishment(tantibus).
Slavery.
War.
Identity crisis (cutie mark mixup, cutie pox).
Racism (Zecora episode).
Multiple end of days scenarios.
And much, much more.
The Smoggies routinely focused on the fact the lead characters had no issue completely destroying a habitat to gain the life-giving coral.
My Pet Monster was based around the idea the lead characters pet monster was totally harmless unless his chains came off and there were episodes where it wasn't obvious the kid would convince him to put them back on.
Tiny Toon Adventures has an episode here the characters go to hell because they get trapped in a haunted mansion. Another episode I recall vividly was Plucky being scared by a Freddy Kruger character tormenting him in his dreams. I recall their halloween episode being pretty grim too. Almost any episode centered around the character Elvira was pretty ghoulish too as her specialty was loving pets to death.