Action Cartoons Are getting Tame

[hdofu]

I remember being a kid and watching shows like Heaman and Transformers, they seemed, I don't know, better then some of the show today. Today the humor somehow seems to be more overbearing and childish, refferences to soda where you'd expect liqour and other stupid thing like lack of action and this weird need for having some little life message in every episode (You know like the ones that used to be at the end of GI JOE). The original WB Batman was fairly good but Beyond added some stuff that I really feel hur the show. Terry just is not presented as cold enough in the show in my oppinion. Justice League, don't get me started on that, what they did to Super Man is unforgivable. Anyone els have any oppinions?

[The Mad Hatter]

Welcome to your new home, thread.

[Killtacular]

I'd have to say that Samurai Jack has certainly disappointed me. Started out strong, and then suddenly the action disappeared. Then there was maybe a small fight per episode, but nothing as smart or violent as episode 3.

And now in tonight's episode, he learns DBZ physics? This show is starting to lose sense.. what does jumping really high have to do with getting back home?

[jimi5150]

In the 80's, when cartoons began to be mainly 23-minute commercials for toy lines; rules were established.

The cartoons had to have some kind of moral message in them. GI Joe & He-Man put theirs at the end. South Park makes fun of these (Y'know; I've learned something today...")

You couldn't say "God" or "kill". This led to many a "Destroy them!!" You don't use liquor. You don't smoke.

For all the posts we write; sometimes we forget that cartoons were made for children. We're also stuck with the fact that almost every cartoon on TV today has either a toy line or a video game (or both).

The marketers will go for their target demographic. The studios will bow to the moneyholders and mother's groups who say they're too violent. These are the facts. They are undisputed.
They are sad.

We want good stories with character development from people who are told their audience has an attention span of 23.5 seconds.

There are evil people out there who don't care about us. They care about market shares and merchandising franchises. We have several options:

STOP WATCHING
STOP BUYING
STOP COMPLAINING
OR
START WRITING LETTERS TO THE STUDIOS AND TOY COMPANIES.

[Killtacular]

Cartoons were not made for children.






Not originally.

[hdofu]

Originally posted by jimi5150
In the 80's, when cartoons began to be mainly 23-minute commercials for toy lines; rules were established.

For all the posts we write; sometimes we forget that cartoons were made for children. We're also stuck with the fact that almost every cartoon on TV today has either a toy line or a video game (or both).START WRITING LETTERS TO THE STUDIOS AND TOY COMPANIES.

Ever seen Fritz the Cat or Hey Good Looking, neither of those were made for kids. Not all cartoons are for kids. Look at the original Warner Brothers Cartoons. Most of them are seen as politically incoreect and cut up removing the stuff that made them funny.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Originally posted by hdofu
I remember being a kid and watching shows like Heaman and Transformers, they seemed, I don't know, better then some of the show today. Today the humor somehow seems to be more overbearing and childish, refferences to soda where you'd expect liqour and other stupid thing like lack of action and this weird need for having some little life message in every episode (You know like the ones that used to be at the end of GI JOE). The original WB Batman was fairly good but Beyond added some stuff that I really feel hur the show. Terry just is not presented as cold enough in the show in my oppinion. Justice League, don't get me started on that, what they did to Super Man is unforgivable. Anyone els have any oppinions?

Ah, you'd better watch He-Man again. The only good thing in that show was Skeletor. Hey, I loved He-Man when I was a kid, but now I realize (after renting an old tape) how juvenile it really was. And cutesy. Gawd, there were so many cute, talking animals with annoying voices in He-Man.

Transformers was a repetitive battle-fest, with little variation in plots. But I loved the show.

Basically, people look at the past through coloured lens. IMO, there really wasn't much difference in quality in the action toons back then compared to today's. I'm not counting to rise of cable here--they have good cartoons, but I'm sticking to network TV as is appropriate for this thread.

[jimi5150]

Fritz the Cat and Hey Good Looking and American Pop and Fire & Ice and Lord of the Rings (wow-lots of Ralph Bakshi here) were all deliberately designed for a mature audience. IN THEATERS.

I was referring to afternoon / Saturday toonz.

There was no such thing as Political Correctness way back when the original Tom & Jerry's and Bugs Bunny's were shown (IN THEATERS). The '60's Jonny Quest were some of the most fantastically violent cartoons I ever had the pleasure of growing up with.

The original post, and my reply to it dealt with cartoons from the last 15 years to the present.

[RogueMartian]

You know hdofu, I'm gonna have to disagree. When I was little I liked lots of different cartoons, but now that I've had the opportunity to see some of them again, I find myself wondering what drugs my parents were slipping into my food. The cartoons of my childhood were overall: Bad(some were good, but not as many as I used to think). I think on some level I even realized that when i was little because to be honest, cartoons or live action didn't matter to me. I didn't get into cartoons again until late-middle school when suddenly there was Batman, Gargoyles, Spiderman, X-men, and later Superman and Batman Beyond. I like cartoons now about 1000 times more than I did when I was little. Its still just 23 minutes of advertisements for action figures, but the advertisements are a lot better now.

[RockItShipper]

Look, mature cartoons are cool.... but they don't make as much money- there's less marketing options (what happened to McFarlane's South Park line?)

The cursing issue brings to mind all the "what in blazes" and "who the devil"s in Gargoyles... You know the meaning if you're older or a kid with some swearing vocabulary.... But for those few who don't- it's not worth the hassle with the FCC to enlighten them. And while on the subject of Gargoyles, Toon Disney seems to be airing editted episodes at 11 PM and supposedly keeping the anti-gun "Deadly Force" off the playlist altogether!

One of the things that surprised me watching the old Beatles show was the presence of alcohol. You wouldn't see an episode set in a vineyard, much less one that employs a little girl.

And that brings me to something that came up Wed. night in stop-motion class. My teacher spends some time talking with a co-worker about a show they're working on. One of their scripts shows a divorcing couple with kids on the first page. But as I was listening in while painting a fish-duck I'd sculpted.... One of the mentioned how divorce happens all the time now on Cartoon Network. (I don't know whether that's true, myself).... But the other mentioned Dexter's still-together parents and Professor Utonium. To which the other replied that Prof. U is purposefully depicted as single and unmarried for a Reason. Evidence being crossdressing incidents... and Mojo being the other 'parent' to the PPG in a way (ok, ok.... I was the one to share that bit o' info)....

The point is, there are things in cartoons from the past that wouldn't pass muster now... and things in modern cartoons you wouldn't have seen then.

[DR. BELCH]

Prof. Utonium's like your typical anime male lead--single, desirable, and clueless. His one big love affair was...Sedusa. So he's not very savvy in picking women. I can relate.

I'll admit to loving cartoons in my youth I squirm uncomfortably at now--Inspector Gadget comes to mind....

Maybe it's a cycle thing. In the fifties, one couldn't say a woman was "pregnant". In the seventies one couldn't even make a fist In the eighties it seemed everything was a commercial, and in the nineties...well, much the same but more sophisticated. So is it possible in the new millennium we're seeing a trend back towards p.c. and disco-era thinking (brought on by Tipper and Al Gore, and Clinton's Carter-era political throwbacking), and things like South Park and Duckman are more cult abberrations than the norm?

As for divorce--on Cartoon Network I don't know about, but a lot of the sitcoms feature single (generally sleeping wtih anything that has two legs and a few wth four), widow(er)s/divorcees, and reconstituted families (never liked that term; sounds like orange juice). The married family unit is going the way of the Edsel. Reflecting our culture, or influencing it, is my query.