Have Cartoons Gone... Bad?

A

Aminirus

Artist
Before I start this topic, I just want to let you know that I am 27 years old and grew up on the ORIGINAL versions of Tom and Jerry, Flinstones, Pokemon, Bug's Bunny, Tazz, Tweety and Sylvester, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Powerpuff Girls, and so on and so forth.

When I attempt to watch today's cartoons, like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Amazing World of Gumball, and Regular Show and others... I have to say I am personally and gravely disappointed. To me, they are not only disgusting and inappropriate, but in my personal opinion, are very lazily done when it comes to style and story. There have been some cartoons from my even my day (that makes me sound old) that I also hated, like Ren and Stimpy, Ed and Edd and Eddy, Grimm's Adventures, and Courage the Cowardly Dog. Those "cartoons" to me are not meant for kids and I watched them as a teen and still hated them. 

I feel like the cartoons today have lost a certain sense of value and importance and feel more demoralizing than they ever were before. I mean sure, Tom and Jerry were violent toward each other and pretty much tried to kill each other in every episode, but as a kid, there was no blood, no fowl language, the movements were so exaggerated and no one died or was mortally wounded, and at the end, they showed the importance of family, trust, and friendship... that even if things went sour and you fought a lot, you could still overcome obstacles together and you always had each other. 

Today's cartoons I feel are just pressing as deep as they can go into topics I find too adult for kids, or so dumbed down that I do believe such shows lead to kids being disrespectful, showing no care for others, find inappropriate behavior funny, and purposely saying that the worse and weird your family is, the better it is. I personally feel like that there is something wrong with that and we start feeding this information into our elementary kids and then they grow up to watch adult shows that shatter the aspects of family, logic, and morals even further. 

So, what do you think of cartoons today? Yah or Nah? 

 
I COMPLETELY 100% agree with you. I'm 28, and grew up with all those cartoons you listed.

The rubbish that my kids watch on cartoons these days are terrible! There is no depth, or story, or even "Teaching morals" in them anymore. It seems they are simply designed to be "how can we zombify our viewers to watch it with a blank expression".

On a side note:
Looking back though, as a Child I always saw Tom as the bad guy..
As an adult though watching them back, OMG, Jerry is the instigator in pretty much all the episodes. Tom FTW.

 
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Have you watched them really because I don't see where your coming from.  I'm 32 and I like those shows even as a adult. I really don't understand were your getting this from. Lots of kid and adults like those shows. I dont ike the idea that kids can't handle things so things need to be dumbed down. 

When that happens we get truly horrible shows like teen titans go.

 
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In terms of animation style, I think it's just different tastes - cartoons have evolved a lot along with the general trends, needs, and technology of animation. Personally I don't watch many of today's cartoons because I don't have the time, but the few episodes of Gumball I saw now and then I actually enjoyed.

 
I think this honestly comes down to Nostalgia and personal preference. "Good" and "Bad" shows are completely objective, and could cover a wide range of potential talking points - art style, narrative, message, etc. It sounds like you're taking a strong stance of "Old Cartoons (or at least the ones you watched) are more moral / wholesome than Today's Cartoons", and I'm not sure if that's possible to argue on such a wide scale because of a gradually shifting culture and societal norms, not to mention the incredible variety of content show-to-show. 

In summary, "the good old days" of cartoons might seem like a fine point of comparison at first, but I don't think it can hold its weight. 

 
Nate said:
On a side note:
Looking back though, as a Child I always saw Tom as the bad guy..
As an adult though watching them back, OMG, Jerry is the instigator in pretty much all the episodes. Tom FTW.
Click to expand...
I always saw Tom & Jerry as sort of a representation of my sister and I. She'd push my buttons, we'd fight and then get into all sorts of trouble, etc. Even looking back it reminds me of two siblings fighting lol. 

runeowl said:
I think this honestly comes down to Nostalgia and personal preference. "Good" and "Bad" shows are completely objective, and could cover a wide range of potential talking points - art style, narrative, message, etc. It sounds like you're taking a strong stance of "Old Cartoons (or at least the ones you watched) are more moral / wholesome than Today's Cartoons", and I'm not sure if that's possible to argue on such a wide scale because of a gradually shifting culture and societal norms, not to mention the incredible variety of content show-to-show. 

In summary, "the good old days" of cartoons might seem like a fine point of comparison at first, but I don't think it can hold its weight. 
Click to expand...
There is a difference between personal preference and what I think is being talked about though. Despite changing culture and societal norms, I still expect childrens cartoons to maintain a certain amount of innocence that they do not seem to be fulfilling. It's the fact that these shows (Steven Universe I'm looking at you) are packed full of sexual innuendos and allusions to what I would consider to be very adult topics. I have no problems with creativity, fantasy or weird and don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of Futurama and I enjoy adult cartoons.  It's the things they say in addition to targeting the show for children that really bothers me. I don't care if societal norms are changing, little kids do not to be exposed to sex and all kinds of swear words with one letter changed to make them 'ok'. I don't think all newer cartoons are that bad, I sat down and enjoyed Kulapari(I think? frogs on netflix) and I've always liked MLP, and some other ones. 

I'm not saying there weren't sexual innuendos or that kind of thing in old cartoons too but it just wasn't as blatant.

 
@Nate Agreed. Jerry probably started about 80% of the fights with Tom and Tom just did what a cat is supposed to do :D

@Corsair Yes I have actually. Watched several of them because my roommates at the time liked them, but I did not. I didn't appreciate the humor they were trying to get at and found the content not suitable for the type of audience they were trying to target. To me majority of cartoons should be for the twenty somethings and up, not for younger kids who are still mentally developing. 

But I like I said, it's a matter of opinion. Some people do enjoy things while others do not. I'm sure there are things I adore and you don't. The beauty of humanity is that we all have different tastes and unique mindsets, and thus are able to create variety in art, stories, and concepts in everything we do. It's simply amazing. Without it, the sameness would be boring. Sorta reminds of this movie I watched called The Giver. I liked it, but the concept is showed is a bit of a scary one because in my eyes, I feel humanity is indeed reaching the end of it's realm of possibilities in certain departments simply because we shut out those with a creative mind. 

@Pepper-Head Agreed. I was there when they came out with the programming for Gumball and Steven Universe and even things like Finnis and Ferb (however you spell those) and so on. I got to test the program before a version of it was ever made to the public. It's cool technology but it also made me sad because it really no longer applied any of the true aspects of animation and creativity. Once you created the character, the program was easy and you could do anything with it. There was no longer a need for traditional drawings and paintings or physical storyboards because it was all on the computer. 

I guess I still in the live in the old age where I physically like holding those things and seeing it right before my eyes instead of on a screen. 

I don't hate all the new stuff of course. There's a few episodes of the new things here and there that who ever was in charge of that particular episode actually did a good job. Though as for remakes of the old cartoons, I watched some and was horrified right off the bat. Like the remake for the Powerpuff Girls, I couldn't believe what they did to it and it was quite upsetting they would ruin it in that matter. So yes, there are some good and there some bad. Just all depends on who is looking at it, and who actually does the work.

 
@runeowl yeah, that is true. They do shift just about everything based on today social norms, but in my opinion, today's social norms are terrible and feel like they are trying to tear the aspect of family apart, not put it together. You could say college ruined the movie magic for me because I see past just about everything and can see the deeper meaning behind things. I can tell whenever there is a genera going on because every show will be based on it in some way trying to be as popular as the original. To me, everything just feels like war zone. When one things does well, they want to make a hundred more of them.

@Syntax Thanks for that. You actually hit the nail on the head for my main concerns towards today cartoons. The lack of innocence is quite bothersome to me and thus probably why I do not enjoy cartoons or majority of shows these days. The content is quite highly sexualized, visually violent, and I feel glamorizes "a broken family" rather than one who is whole, sticks together, and supports one another. 

There are things I do enjoy from todays cartoons and some adult cartoons, but I feel like the line between what is considered kids cartoons and adult cartoons is blurring far too much. Sure it was blurred and crossed numerous times with older cartoons, but they were at least decent enough to mark them are "teen rated" or whatever they called it back then. Nothing everything is bad and not everything is good. 

 
@Aminirus - That's pretty amazing that you got to see some of the program behind new animation! I know it's really geared towards getting out something as fast and easy as possible... but I will 100% agree with you on that I miss some of the more traditional animation methods (or even with some of the level of care as animated movies)  :( Some of it will be hand animated in the storyboarding process, but when it continues through the pipeline for a TV show animation... it loses a lot of that spark and energy. It's not always the same eye candy as watching something like Treasure Planet and thinking, "people DREW  this."

There was something so magical about seeing a Don Bluth collection at my university once. Just looking at the animation cells, backgrounds, character sketches, etc. UGH <3 I didn't want to wash my hands afterwards, it felt so special. 

However, I think there's still a good crowd that appreciates the time and skill put into hand created things ( :love:  looking at you, Laika Studios) and I hope that can be given some more affection as the next animation trend swings in. <3

 
@Pepper-Head Yeah, if you ever get to see some of the original slides from the original animated disney movies, they are priceless. Though you do have to be careful with them since the paint is highly...um... explosive. Don't remember what was in it exactly, but my teacher showed us painted slides he had from Aladdin and another, and I remember some from The Thief and the Cobbler. Its quite amazing how they produced films back then and after that, I don't blame them for messing up in parts.

Yeah, I do hope that some of that "hand touched" feeling comes back in trend. Since trends seem to cycle, I hope it's one of the ones that does end up cycling back to the surface.

 
My take on this is that I feel that it comes down to how society has accepted certain things as normal, that were not normal when I was younger. When I say younger, and I am 30, so in the general age range as several of you, we just simply were not submitted to as much "real world" as todays children are. Growing up we had information and facts of what was going on around us filtered for us. We were kinda raised in bubbles per se. Even those of us who were raised in troubled households apply since we are talking about a societal bubble, not familial.

Children today have access to more media, and see what is going on around the world without it being able to be filtered for them. Is this good? That is debatable and a different topic all together. I think because of this shift, cartoons have also adapted to this culture where there is less innocence in them in order to relate.

Having just picked up watching newer seasons of Pokemon, I still prefer the older ones I grew up with. They just seem more wholesome to me. But I also am like @Aminirus in the fact that I prefer the cartoons I grew up, and personally detest the more modern cartoons out there as they just simply don't relate to me like the ones of my youth can.

 
@Digital Towards what you said, I do agree that we were living in bubbles, but I always feel today's kids are not much better in that department. Instead of bubbles, they are being upright lies or incomplete truths and are being subject to only seeing one part of a story rather than the whole product. I actually feel kids are becoming more closed minded rather than open and creative. Schools are forcing art and music out little by little and I feel are pressuring kids away from creative thought. Thus, cartoons and stories all appear the same to me because, even though business says it wants creative minds, in reality they think its too expensive and unnecessary. Thus, you find many products, cartoons, games, and other media appearing exactly the same.

Yeah, I also enjoy the older pokemon shows better as well. Ash at least grew and didn't continue being dumb as a box of rocks. I always feel like that with every season they turn out, Ash goes back to like he just started out on a journey and can't figure out how to use a stupid pokeball >.> 

I also agree that our age has something to do with it. Even though a lot of the truths and the world had been closed off to us as kids, cartoons and art felt as though made up for the lack of creativity in education. 

 
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