Remember that post a few days ago where I groused about not being able to relate anything in a cartoon to reality? I was partially blaming the censors, but as I sit here trying to storyboard a funny children’s cartoon while offering cold comfort to my teacher friends in the midst of this week’s national tragedy, I’m afraid I’m going to have to place most of the blame on reality itself. Or at least the reality we’ve created for ourselves here in the United States, and which we ship out to the rest of the world as “entertainment”.
If you want cartoons to be good again, you’re going to have to make life better first. The whole point of satire is to hold a mirror to society with a touch of hyperbole, but when you live in a world where there are mass shootings like clockwork, of course you’re never going to be able to address violence in any form on a children’s show. I mean, I’d love to shove some of these uncomfortable truths in some people’s faces, but that’s just not going to happen on children’s TV. I can’t come within a million miles of that. It’s radioactive. And I get it.
I think it’s interesting that there’s so much more violence now that we don’t have Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny around with a shotgun. I wonder sometimes if there isn’t a certain catharsis to seeing bad people punished. Elmer Fudd never won. He was the bad guy and he got his comeuppance. We used to watch people hit KKK members with furniture on Jerry Springer. Maybe that’s where they should’ve stayed; not as boogeymen but as loser clowns; defeated remnants of a failed racist insurrection destined to be beaten soundly with folding chairs for the rest of time. In truth though, I suspect that the problem has much less to do with depictions of violence in the media than it does with forty-plus years of Republicans legislating against education and the resulting entitlement that engendered.
A certain segment of our society is really frightened. Frightened enough that they elect “strong men” who talk tough whether they’re “strong” or not. Frightened enough to hoard guns. Many of these people start off believing that a magic man in the sky will guide their morality, and I think many of them take that as an excuse never to learn or grow or develop any sort of morality of their own. Existential crises (IMO) are what humans use to better themselves. They’re difficult and unpleasant and can really ruin your day/week/month/year. In other words, they are “a real downer”. During an existential crisis, you’ve got to reflect on what you believe and why you believe it, and evaluate how changing those beliefs might ripple through your life. You’re going to have to make changes, and changes take work. But over time, you sort it out and come out the other side better and stronger for the work you’ve done. However, when the greatest crime you can think of is to admit fault, then you will do literally anything to avoid an existential crisis. It’s gotten to the point where a lot of these people have spent their entire lives lying to themselves.
I suspect that most of them know that they’re full of shit. Like, way back in their mushy little goldfish brains there’s a little voice that points out the cognitive dissonance. But listening to that voice will cause an existential crisis that will negate the past thirty-to-sixty years of their lives and leave them a sobbing wreck wondering why they wasted so much time on absolute bullshit. So instead, they keep lying to themselves so that the dam doesn’t break. And then they lie to others to reinforce the dam. With enough reinforcement, they can live together, hermetically sealed in an ignorant dreamland. And god help anyone who starts trying to poke holes. Without ever having experienced an existential crisis, these people would now literally rather kill you than admit fault. “Don’t talk about race. Don’t talk about gender. Don’t talk about gun violence. If you do, we’ll remind you that we have all the guns for the coming civil war our politicians are openly calling for.”
Did any of you watch “Chernobyl”? There’s a part where the lead scientist goes to Moscow to relay his findings to the Kremlin and he gives them the bad news that a real and deadly disaster has already happened. And the Kremlin says no, that sort of stuff doesn’t happen here in Russia. And the scientist says, “Well, no. I’m saying that it’s already happened. I don’t think you understand.” And he’s told, “No you don’t understand. We said that sort of stuff doesn’t happen here in Russia“ And then our hero starts to understand how truly screwed everyone actually is. That’s us now. That’s entertainment reflecting our real world back at us. If we can’t even start by admitting we’re wrong, we are all doomed.
My opinion on what TV animation is for is changing. When I started out as an artist in the animation industry, it was all about “art” and “freedom” and “sticking it to the man”. Now, I think, it’s more about providing an escape from the real world for children. That’s what it was for me growing up as a child so maybe that’s not too surprising, but I think I’d started to forget about that fact (granting that I was just trying to escape standard bullying and my own Aspie brain rather than mis-educated nihilist gun-nuts and their throngs of right-wing murder-fans).
Things will get worse. More killings will happen, and more frequently. And the stuff you’re watching is likely to get even less relatable as networks scramble to cover up our society’s exposed seams. And I guess that’s fine. “Relatable” is fucked. I’ll bet some people stumble across this in a few days or weeks or hours and wonder “but which shooting is he talking about?” Shit, if I hadn’t mentioned kids, we’d have three or four to choose from this week.
So that’s why your cartoons suck. It’s the same reason most things suck now. Because your society is catering to hypocritical, anachronistic, ego-maniacal, cousin-humping racist idiot death-cultists.
Now… if you don’t mind I’ve only got a few hours to craft some silly jokes about corn while thinking about abandoned kids having to smear the blood of their dead friends on their clothes to stay alive.
*Please send all whataboutisms, both-sides-isms, gun facts, and death threats to P.O. Box Gofuckyourself, Cancel Me, CA.
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