Animation Is Not Just For Kids

Anyone who knows me knows how much I hold animation near and dear to my heart. Most of you reading this though I assume, do not know me, or did not know this about me.

There are many reasons I love animation. There’s a great sense of playfulness it brings to the world of film and television. Artists can experiment with their craft and make characters move and look like they can’t in live-action. I gained a lot of respect for the art even before I was an animation major for a bit in college. The amount of time it takes to draw, color, rig, and animate a 2D character is insane. Add that to coloring an entire background (still or moving) to every shot, and don’t even get me started on 3D animation. I used to be in the lab for hours just trying to find the right texture for an object and getting it to lay right on the shapes I’ve created. It’s so funny to me that animation is always associated with children even though adults are the people that make this a reality.

I think a big part of the association with cartoons and childhood is not just because of the bright colors and eccentric character designs, but the imagination it plays on. Cartoons also tend to be shorter form, so kids don’t need to keep their attention on the screen for too long. Cartoons are also often stand-alone, meaning each episode wraps up the conflict within it, and the next episode is a new adventure. This isn’t always the case obviously, as seen in cartoons like She-Ra and The Princesses of Power on Netflix and Avatar The Last Airbender from Nickelodeon.

Those are just two examples of cartoons on kids’ networks that are rated more kid-friendly, but contain heavy adult themes and are serialized. Serialized shows are more for older crowds just because you need to remember things that happened in previous episodes to understand the upcoming ones.

Kids’ content comes in so many more forms than animation, though. Barney, The Wiggles, Blues Clues, Bear In The Big Blue House, and even The Muppets, are all live-action, and all catered to kids. All kid’s content is, is something that is generally considered appropriate for kids to watch. This is super subjective, but I think the consensus is no cursing, no gore/blood, no gun/knife violence, and for the young kiddos, purely educational content.

Now, there are tons of “kids cartoons” with violence. “Some researchers (such as Kirsh [2006] and Islam et al. [2021]) have found that the difference between controversy and comfort with animated violence is quite simply comedy. When animated violence is comedic, it is non-threatening. Yet, when it is realistic and serious, it is uncomfortable (Kirsh, 2006: 549). This is why the bloody scenes of Watership Down are notorious and Beauty and the Beast (1991) has been heavily criticized, but the constantly violent, yet light-hearted, battles between Tom and Jerry are overlooked. Whilst Beauty and the Beast does have comedic scenes, these are notably separate from the film’s many violent scenes, such as the aggressive hunt for the beast towards the end of the film. In contrast, the violence in Tom and Jerry is almost always comedic, it is slapstick, and it is cartoonish. Despite the harm that Tom experiences, he never dies, bleeds, or is in pain for long. Therefore, the violence towards him isn’t serious and is thus non-threatening.”

Kids will turn an age where they can distinguish between cartoon violence and real violence, and if parents decide to shelter their children from it even as they grow older, then that’s completely fine. I just think the example of Beauty and the Beast goes to show that even cartoons can contain adult-ish elements.

Take Spongebob Squarepants, for example. There are adult jokes littered throughout because adults are working on the show. Spongebob is silly and even a tad annoying, and the villains are goofy and unserious, but there are also themes of friendship struggles, growing up, and overworking yourself at your job, just to name a few. TV and movies are nothing if they don’t have relatable elements to them. All of the situations made up for TV or cartoons are exaggerated versions of situations that could happen to real people in real life (unless it’s a superhero or supernatural kind of show…but even then, vampires have human struggles too).

Now, with all of that being said in regards to animated shows on channels that have predominately kid viewers, there are also just adult-catered cartoons. These include shows like Invincible on Amazon Prime and BoJack Horseman on Netflix that go beyond surface-level concepts and deep dive into family trauma and anxiety. There’s also more gore and swearing in shows like these. Yes, BoJack is a talking horse, and that can seem ridiculous and imaginative, but that shouldn’t downplay the serious and relatable adult themes in the show.

At the end of the day, cartoons are JUST TV shows that happen to be drawn. Animation is not just a genre, but a medium, and I will stand on this hill. Some cartoons are action, adventure, fantasy, goofy, serious, dark, violent, mystery, etc. I’m tired of the narrative that animation is only for kids because it’s just simply not true. I don’t know why adults tend to reject it either as if it’s shameful to enjoy imaginative concepts as we grow older. If you don’t watch much TV or just haven’t liked any cartoons you’ve seen in recent years, then that’s totally fine, but I wouldn’t knock the medium as a whole just because of the common association it has with children.