Symmetric Chaos
Fractal King
Originally posted by elgasp
It's disturbing because it's a Cartoon so I guess the point was for kids to watch it!!!
Oh please in the United States and (Western) Europe, animation is widely seen as a frivolous medium suitable only for children's entertainment. Things that have helped this prejudice include the fact that animation is a great medium for light slapstick; the fact that the dominant production company in the early days, Walt Disney, was and has remained dedicated to "family-friendly" artwork, and the structure of the film industry of the 1930s and 1940s.
Back in the days when TV didn't yet rule the Earth and going to the theater was often an all-day event, most cartoons were shorts intended to be shown between screenings of the feature film and the B Movie. Viewers would come in somewhere in the screening cycle, watch through several hours of features, newsreels, cartoons and serials, then leave once the cycle got to "where I came in". As a result of this and the Hays Production Code (which regulated the content of films), everything on the screen had to appeal to all audiences equally, lest they go hang out in the lobby or even leave the theater. (Ironically, this also meant that most animated shorts — even by Disney — had quite a bit of Parental Bonus material, something which has been largely missed by today's audiences. Only Pixar seems to get it right nowadays.)
Thus, "serious" animation has had great difficulty getting a foothold in the United States, especially anything involving sex (violence is more acceptable, as long as you Never Say Die). Few serious animated works get produced at all, and those which are, are immediately decried as "corrupting the youth" by Media Watchdogs, even when it is clearly intended for an adult audience. This has had a chilling effect on the animation field at large in previous years and on the morale of older fans. Basically, if it's animated, it's a Guilty Pleasure.
This has slowly been reversed to some extent in recent years. After the success of The Simpsons and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there was a backlash against this ghettoization, leading to more animated shows for adults and family audiences, but these shows were all comedies, since animation was still not regarded as a suitable medium for purely dramatic content. This trend eventually led, through a sort of Flanderization (perhaps ironically), to several animated Dead Baby Comedy series. But this way of coping is something of a double-edged sword. The results may be mature, but whether or not they contain substance or even plot is another matter.
In this case, we can speak of a lack of maturity in Western adult cartoons: the rules are being broken and adult animation is slowly becoming more acceptable, but in an attempt to break the rules, the writers and animators are penning the grossest Dead Baby Comedies known to man. This is not new at all: the Dada movement was about breaking the Bourgeois Art Ghetto that was already taking over the European art, and their followers did so by creating something that was deliberately ugly and gross. This trend may be changing soon: some animated shows like Avatar The Last Airbender certainly seem to be targeted to pre-teens, but they also have a big adult component that also makes them serious, respectable works, free from the grossness of a Dead Baby Comedy.
The problem is somewhat smaller in Japan, as well as some of Western Europe, where cartoon stories are more likely to be seen as "stories" before "cartoons", and given a certain measure of respect. Although the Japanese public is more receptive to manga than to anime, both are seen as storytelling media that can carry any plot and premise. As a result, anime is used to tell any and every kind of story, from children’s adventure to adult drama. Also, in the Japanese case, the strong cultural bias against being a public figure, reinforced by the utterly rabid media paparazzi, results in a shortage of live actors, so animation is often used even in serious film despite the higher costs, as voice actors (seiyuu) are easier to find. This unfortunately results in the misconception in other lands that anime is predominantly overly violent or sexual, and the branding of those that like it as either children, perverts or, well, us, even in Japan. (Look up "figure moe zoku" if you think the grass is greener. Probably no one's ever called you a serial killer in waiting. Well, maybe Jack Thompson has.) The Animation Age Ghetto is more widespread in, but unfortunately not limited to, the United States. Cartoons are also actively squared into the "for kids" region in the rest of Europe, never getting an "adult" timeslot and suffering that worst of indignities: bowdlerisation.
This Western "only kids watch cartoons" mentality is the driving force of much Bowdlerisation and Macekring during the English dubbing process for anime, since the original source material was targeted, or at least appreciable, toward a wider demographic. In the last decade, the rising popularity of action-based anime has led to more attention in animation toward this older demographic, resulting in shows like Avatar the Last Airbender and programming blocks like Adult Swim (along with the above adult comedy animation).
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Western animation moving towards more serious stories is the Merchandise Driven nature of most modern cartoons. It is standard procedure for shows that skew toward older viewers than their intended demographic to be Screwed By The Network due to the fact that older viewers, aside from a few dedicated collectors, don't usually buy toys & other products which, all pretensions of art & story aside, the cartoons were created as extended advertisements for. This is, ironically enough, also one of the major reasons that more "adult" series are so successful in Japan, as older fans buy almost as much, if not more merchandise as the children. This is partly because of the wider range of products offered which appeal to the older set, such as artbooks, music & other items in addition to toys & partly because of various factors that lead to even "childish" things like action figures being bought by older collectors (one popular theory is that Japan's humiliating defeat in World War Two plunged the country into a state of perpetual infantilism, but this is obviously controversial).
totally not stolen in order to save time ranting