Watching Cartoons As An Adult

Many of us know that a great defense of watching cartoons (children's cartoons, mind you) is simply saying, "My child is watching it, so I watch it with them." I imagine that, in any general social situation, I would use the same defense, not that I believe it is necessary, but because making a solid first impression is one of my core philosophies. Most people, after all, are generally suspect of adults that watch cartoons and then go around talking about them. I happen to find such an opinion silly - there are plenty of mature, responsible people that watch cartoons - but I still find myself only able to truly justify watching cartoons when I am watching them with my nine-year-old foster daughter.

Having said that, before the little lady joined our household, I had worked my way through several cartoons from the 90's and early 00's all on my own using the glorious resource known as Netflix, the place to go to seek out those nostalgic shows we watched back when Saturday morning cartoons still existed. Since I have graduated college, I worked through Spiderman (the 90's version off of which many a McDonald's toy were based) and Batman Beyond. Once I had someone with whom to watch, I started making suggestions, all of which the little lady has agreed to watch with much enthusiasm. We made it through all 3 seasons of Beast Wars: Transformers and have recently started watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Several of these cartoons have a definite theme, if you have noticed. I do enjoy my superhero cartoons, probably because I lack the patience to work my way through the vast library of comic books and graphic novels from which these heroes gained their fame. As I believe I have mentioned in an earlier post, I am not completely enamored of reading comic books - that's my wife's territory. I have made several good-faith attempts to get into them - The Sandman was pretty amazing, and I have enjoyed the more recent Iron Man comics, since the first movie came out - but overall, it's not an artistic medium that resonates with me. The content, however, is something I have always found attractive. A hero fighting off scores of awesome villains, and sometimes teaming up with other awesome heroes? An entire universe full of these heroes and villains to explore? To me, the opportunities have always seemed limitless, causing me to craft my own world of heroes very early on in my life. Even now in adulthood, I have flirted with trying to bring some of these heroes into being through my writing, although my fiction writing leaves quite a bit to be desired.

As a result of this life-long interest in superheroes, I am still very interested in what cartoons are out there. One cannot simply get their superhero fix from the movies - TV shows, particularly cartoons, offer so many differing paths for these heroes to follow, often getting things right that I feel the movies have been unable to handle. Watching these cartoons has given me a great glimpse into just what is possible for these heroes, and how big the universe really is. The Spiderman cartoon, at that time in my life, was the only thing I had ever seen that brought so many different heroes and villains into the picture - I was obsessed with gathering toys of them all and playing with that world myself, expanding it as I saw fit and making it something entirely different.

Anyway, enough nostalgia - what about now? I still find myself appreciating how cartoons are presented, and how they tell their own stories. Due to their targeted audience, cartoons keep it simple, something many movies could benefit from doing (here's to you, Avengers: Age of Ultron). They often represent the mantra of "show, don't tell" incredibly well, again mostly due to their audience. Kids don't tune into shows to listen to people talk all of the time - they want to see things unfold, watch how things happen. Yes, there are clunkers out there, but if we look at the medium in general, it's incredibly easy to find a wide variety of cartoons out there that tell their stories incredibly well.

One of my favorite episodes of Batman Beyond is called "The Eggbaby," one of the goofier episodes that actually works. Terry (the boy who is Batman in this particular iteration of the hero) must care for what is essentially one of those fake, robotic babies anyone that's taken a Home Economics class knows about. Of course, he must also fight crime, as Batman is apt to do. What follows is a wonderfully hilarious sequence of events that culminates in Terry actually getting a good grade on the assignment because he succeeded in getting the egg baby the stimulation it needed. It's an example of a "serious" cartoon that does everything well, relying on the visuals to get us through and entertain us, with special emphasis on the egg baby's face and sounds. I actually made my wife watch this episode with me, even though she generally wants nothing to do with my "silly" cartoons, and even my "too mature for cartoons" wife was entertained.

Cartoons are already well-known for making people laugh, though - what about an instance in which it manages to do something else? I tear up every time I watch the Beast Wars: Transformers episode known as "Code of Hero," in which one of the Maximals (the good guys) known as Dino-Bot makes a last-stand effort to protect the future of humanity. It gets a bit over-the-top at times, with Dino-Bot delivering monologues plagued with clichés, but in the end, watching him sacrifice himself to protect the future is quite powerful, given his on-again, off-again relationship with the Maximals, having started out as a Predacon (the bad guys). Beast Wars is a deeply flawed show - it doesn't handle "goofy" quite as gracefully as Batman Beyond - but it does a great job of giving us very well developed characters and putting those characters in interesting situations.

There is, of course, a nostalgic piece to this. A lot of the cartoons I have named are ones I watched growing up. Avengers is the one exception here - that came out within the last five or six years. Even though I am no longer a child, the show still interests me. The little lady is on board with it too - she keeps asking to watch more and more. She's a future Netflix binge-watcher, she is, but she's a child - we expect her to find these things entertaining. I find the show has great comedic timing and gives the characters personalities that are completely independent of their movie counterparts. The cartoon takes the idea that we can craft original stories from already-existing characters and make it solid entertainment. It has its own agenda, its own ideas, and its own identity.

And maybe that's what makes cartoons so fun in general - it is a reliable place to find originality. Are there other sources of it? Of course, but when it comes to a reliable source of original ideas, cartoons are a great resource. This may be due to the nature of animation - if you can think it, you can make it. Other shows and movies are limited by budgets and materials, but animation? If you get the picture in your head, and you have the talent around you, it can appear on page (or, these days, on a computer screen). There are some wonderfully creative minds in the cartoon business, and with a medium that gives a significant amount of freedom in what it can present and how it can present it, why wouldn't there be a plethora of entertaining, original cartoons out there?

So, if imagination is the only limiting factor for a cartoon, then that might explain why they are so attractive. The superhero universe within Spiderman I obsessed over as a child could only be so expansive and varied because of the medium. Even goofy shows like Spongebob Squarepants and Animaniacs are set within a universe that feels huge, where there seem to be limitless possibilities. If someone has a funny idea, then it can be animated, and placed in the context of a universe that is arguably larger than most TV shows and movies can accommodate comfortably and effectively.

So, if you are one of those people that poo-poos the idea of cartoons, do some research and check some out. In order to be an adult and watch cartoons, you don't need to watch things like Family Guy (for the love of God, don't watch Family Guy - watch something that isn't created by a sexist piece of garbage like Seth MacFarlane, like Bob's Burgers or Futurama). Watch some cartoons with your kids and see if you can find something entertaining, or if you don't have kids, watch some with your friends' kids, or your nieces or nephews, or go volunteer somewhere with kids so you can watch cartoons with them. Odds are in your favor that you will find something you will like - it isn't all superheroes and fart jokes. There's a wealth of creativity in the world of cartoons, so even if you don't find any that you like, don't judge those that do watch them. We, like you, just want to be entertained.