Fear and Loathing in Toontown
Don’t be fooled by those fuzzy little faces—animated entertainment is filled with filth. It’s time to bring morality back to Saturday morning
BY Richard Poplak
Illustration by Rob Elliott/Swizzle
When I was a youngster, I spent the bulk of my Saturday mornings in front of the television, entertained by the hand-drawn shenanigans of a host of animated cartoon characters. I remember so many of them fondly, like family members or good friends: Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Scrooge McDuck, Ronald Reagan. It’s only now, armed with the wisdom and hindsight that comes with age, that I realize how dangerous an indulgence this may have been. For this, I have the good Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, to thank. He noticed the effete tendencies of a pant-wearing sponge on a video entitled We Are Family: A Musical Message For All. (The video bears the name of the infamous disco song that hinted at the indiscriminate inclusiveness of vice-ridden dens such as Studio 54.) We Are Family is a video that was distributed to school groups all over the United States and, by all accounts (no, I have not seen it), it can make people either tolerant, open-minded and/or homosexual. In other words, it’s like a chocolate-fudge mousse cake at a Jenny Craig convention—and by that I mean highly dangerous. Dobson, with characteristic sharpness of mind and tongue, has opened up a Pandora’s box, and the torrent subsequently unleashed will change the face of popular entertainment. Forever.
Or, at the very least, for several weeks. One thing is certain—the days when the animated community could walk roughshod over our values are fast coming to an end.
Who among us can forget Robert Zemeckis’s prescient Who Framed Roger Rabbit? With great insight, this film portrayed the dark underbelly of a place called Toontown, a Hollywood ghetto where cartoon characters live out a seedy, iniquitous existence. The hero, ’toon-hating Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), must put his principles and very survival at risk by navigating this wacky cesspit to get to the bottom of an atrocious crime. So it is with Dobson and others like him, who so courageously wrestle the animated industry monolith, taking it to task for its indiscretions. Their purpose, as I see it, is simple: to pore over the history and current state of animated entertainment—specifically the widely accessible televised variety—and to call out those who seek to coat the genre with a patina of social and sexual deviance. This is a more difficult undertaking than one might expect, because animators have a powerful weapon in their possession. This formidable apparatus works in a similar manner to Wonder Woman’s airplane or Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. It renders certain, let’s call them “traits,” indiscernible.
This weapon is cuteness.
Put buckteeth, short pants and a coat of yellow paint on a nuclear bomb, and is it not still a nuclear bomb? The obvious answer is, “Yessir!” But that wouldn’t stop us from smiling and waving like idiots as it rocketed downward, about to blow us to Kingdom Come. So it is with cartoon characters. We are blinded by cuteness, and the very traits that make a character either virtuous or insidious are lost on us. We’re suckers for fur, a squeaky voice and big, blinking eyes. Take Robin Williams’ recent speech at the Oscar ceremonies, when he suggested that Donald Duck lives what is nowadays dubbed an “alternative lifestyle.” Mr. Duck is perhaps one of animation’s more masculine characters (gruff voice, no-nonsense attitude, Daisy) but Williams’ trite punchline—“little sailor’s cap, no pants”—brings the issue into sharp focus. One of the foremost problems with our society is that certain subcultures consider it within their rights to appropriate the dress code of certain vocations, and pervert them to their own nefarious purposes. (Doubt me? Dare I mention a certain “People” who dwell in a “Village?”) Mr. Duck dons sailors’ apparel, and his very sexuality is open to question by hirsute ex-junkie comedians? Well, excuse Donald for having a job! I happen to have met several individuals who work in seafaring-related capacities—one a midshipman on a pleasure cruiser, the other a ship-in-a-bottle builder. Despite the occasional use of choice verbiage and the odd bout of rowdy behaviour, these gentlemen are straighter than the mizzen-mast on Lord Nelson’s HMS Victory. And since when does wearing no pants necessarily denote homosexuality?
SpongeBob, I should point out, does wear pants. And he’s flaming. Clearly we require a system for discerning what constitutes a deviant cartoon character and what doesn’t—a frame of reference that allows us the tools to strip away cuteness and interpret the true nature that lies behind it. The dissembling of special-interest groups, animal-rights activists, Hollywood studio honchos and home-cleaning product manufacturers must not lead us astray. We need to look at the hard facts, and for this we must peer through the dimness of time and arrive at the dawn of the animated age, an era when a duck was a duck and a mouse was a mouse.
The art form did not begin auspiciously. The first de facto animated film is attributed to James Stuart Blackton, an Englishman who made a picture misleadingly entitled Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. But it is a Frenchman named Emile Cohl who consensus has dubbed the first of the great animators. In his hoary youth, Monsieur Cohl was a card-carrying member of the Incoherents, a group whose central ethos stated that all is chaos, nightmare and insanity. How very French. The question, of course, is whether our children should be watching an art form that has such concepts as source material. Yet, Cohl is the man we have to thank for quiet Saturday mornings spent reading the paper while our progeny absorbs filth, one painstaking frame at a time.
Things looked up for a while, when a gentleman from Chicago named Walter Elias Disney made his entrance on the scene. For a brief time, Mickey Mouse wrested control of the animated film industry from the freaks and perverts. Sure, when Mickey’s voice was first heard on Steamboat Willie in 1929, alarmists may have suggested that he sure didn’t sound too manly. To them I ask, “Ever heard a basso mouse?” Of course not. They are by nature a falsetto species, God bless their precious little hearts. It is in Mickey’s tender, solid relationship with Minnie Mouse that parents can take comfort. This ideal union, based on love, mutual respect and identically shaped ears, should be an inspiration to us all. Indeed, the entire Disney universe is a panoply of hand-drawn wholesomeness. Whose breast has not swelled with emotion when Snow White is kissed by her Prince Charming, when the Little Mermaid acquires the ability for land-based ambulation, or when Bambi’s mother is taken down by an excellently placed high-calibre round to the torso? Although I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with the Pluto/Goofy dichotomy—this I chalk up to a very healthy and well-exercised paranoia—Disney has no flies on its back catalogue. Other studios cannot lay claim to such a spotless record.
Take Warner Brothers, for example. How it has dodged the bullet of mass derision and contempt escapes me. Looney Toons? Try Porney Tunes. The litany of subversive, deviant behaviour extant in the burrows, nests, cages and tree-knots of the Looney Toons universe is astonishing. Bugs Bunny’s serial cross-dressing! Co-habiting male chipmunks! Elmer Fudd! And French—there they are again—French skunks! If one employs a discerning Dobsonian eye, the antics of the Looney Toons stable are nothing less than shameful. Despite Chip ’n’ Dale—and the issues regarding those two sciuridae tamias requires no further discussion—Looney Toons characters don’t even restrict their dalliances to the same species! The immense success enjoyed by these cartoons has provided subsequent animators a licence for licentiousness. And they have used it with abandon.
Animation’s rap sheet is so lengthy that time and space do not allow for full elucidation. Some examples do, however, strengthen the case: Scooby Doo was nothing more than a drug addict’s in-joke. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Lord knows you don’t keep four teenage boy-turtles cooped up together all the time without adult supervision. Shrek 2, as Dobson helpfully points out, is as brash an example of “pro-homosexual activism” as can be found at your neighbourhood Blockbuster. As for Winnie the Pooh—that pantless bear’s relationship with Christopher Robin deserves some time under a harsh klieg light. And this brings us to that pantfull sponge, Mr. SquarePants himself.
SpongeBob must go, and so too must the host of characters associated with concepts out of step with mainstream beliefs. My suggestion—one I hope to table at an upcoming Focus on Family convention—is to suggest long-time cereal pitchmen, such as Toucan Sam, Snap, Crackle and Pop, and Count Chocula, star in their own shows. The reasoning behind this is simple: Instead of promoting gay sex, these hard-working characters have encouraged nothing more than the benefits of a vitamin-enriched, hearty breakfast. This initiative has the added benefit of showing children that we do indeed live in a meritocracy—hard work and consistency (I believe Toucan’s been at it for more than five decades) does indeed pave the road to success.
Regardless of what pans out in the future, we must understand that cuteness is often a method of obfuscation. Parents need to remember that, just because a character lives in a pineapple, sings songs and is best friends with a starfish, he should not be free and clear of scrutiny. Dr. James Dobson and his fearless congregation have pointed out that Saturday mornings can be the most dangerous time of the week, and as guardians of decency, we must be on the alert for even the slightest signs of excessive tolerance appearing in children’s entertainment. Tolerance is fine and dandy to talk about in a classroom setting, but by portraying tolerant attitudes in entertainment, we run the risk of children actually adopting such a mindset. And that won’t do. Unless we want the next generation of North American sons doffing sailor’s caps (pants optional) without venturing anywhere near the sea, we must cast a constant, unwavering eye on the animated film and television community. SpongeBob has been caught with his pants down. He’d best pull them up quickly, and the animated community’s socks along with them.
