"The subversive potential of animation"

In one of our readings, Art in Motion, there was a quote from Amy Lawrence’s Masculinity in Eastern European Animation: “The subversive potential of animation was often successfully disguised by its use of genres and styles traditionally associated with children (fairytales, fantasy, folk stories, etc.)” (p. 166). I’ve seen a couple posts on here about adult animation and the types of content that it tackles – i.e., it’s often darker, more cynical, sexualized, violent, and focuses more on comedy than anything else – and I don’t want to be too repetitive, but since we’re talking about it this week I thought it would be appropriate to share!

I think that the subversive subject matter traditionally associated with adult animation is a direct result of the fact that animation has this label of being children’s media. When content creators started making mainstream adult animation, they just took it 180 degrees in the other direction in an attempt to subvert conventional expectations of the subject matter that audiences are used to associating with animation. I think part of the initial appeal is the shock value – we see cartoon characters, we expect clean, PG content. Instead we get a narcissistic alcoholic scientist with sociopathic tendencies. Children’s animation is used to educate or to tell stories – there’s usually a moral core to each episode or movie, and they’re meant to teach kids something.  On the other hand, more often than not, adult animation is very nihilistic. The point is to be humorous in a shocking way, or there’s no point at all. They’re more realist or cynical and usually don’t have happy endings, because that’s considered more mature than idealism or optimism. I think that the nihilism that surrounds adult animation is actually kind of sad, since the only explanation that I can come up with for its prevalence is based on this idea that people are so beat down by the world by the time they become adults that they lose the ability to relate to stories that have happy endings, or that they’re not interested in stories anymore – just escapism through humor. Which is all well and good, but sometimes I feel like it's just not enough.