Icarus B. Nezzer
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2019
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/mrenter/journal/Growing-Around-Common-Criticisms-Answered-829538494
If you don't know, Growing Around is aimed at the 7-11 age, and the show is supposed to "grow" with them in a sense. It gets darker as time goes on. But this isn't really about... me. It's about the environment of children's entertainment.
Children's entertainment is really fucked up. There's a word for it, Dahlian. Named for Roald Dahl. Remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? How sweet and funny it was, exploring a chocolate factory. Where kids dropped like flies. Charlie nearly gets his head ripped off by a ceiling fan. Verruca falls into a goddamn incinerator. Mike Teevee has been permanently altered. He's either small as a doll or stretched out like candy for the rest of his life, and Violet... well, she's become a Purple People Eater.
Jumanji - getting sucked in board games, spiders the size of dogs, a goddamn plant that eats you. Giant mosquito who break glass. In the first Harry Potter movie, a guy gets his faced burned off. Matilda and Harry Potter both exist in worlds where they're just casually abused by their parents. Do I need to say anything about Coraline and all of its imagery? Sharp claws, Coraline asked to get buttons sewn over her eyes.
Adventure Time had basically a metaphor for alzheimers. Watership Down, a movie where rabbits tear each other apart in a bloody mess is rated PG. Avatar: The Last Airbender... it's in the title. Aang is the last airbender because the Fire Nation committed a genocide against his people. Invader Zim has all kinds of grotesque and violent imagery, same with Courage the Cowardly Dog.
Do you want me to keep going on? I have examples for days. Children's media is fucked up. Or rather... Grimm. Even our fairytales are messed up. Hansel and Gretel, parents abandoning their kids in the middle of the woods and them almost getting baked in an oven and being cooked alive. Red Riding Hood, the woodsman cuts open the wolf's stomach. Nursery rhymes are even morbid. "It's raining, it's pouring The old man is snoring He bumped his head when he went to bed And he couldn't wake up in the morning." You know, cuz he's dead.
I'm sorry, I grew up with Majora's Mask, a video game about people contemplating their own inevitable death as they stood days away from Armageddon, where Cremia is implied to give her little kid sister Romania an alcoholic beverage to numb the pain as the moon falls to earth and sets the world in a fiery blaze.
I think that kids... could handle a little darkness here and there.
If you don't know, Growing Around is aimed at the 7-11 age, and the show is supposed to "grow" with them in a sense. It gets darker as time goes on. But this isn't really about... me. It's about the environment of children's entertainment.
Children's entertainment is really fucked up. There's a word for it, Dahlian. Named for Roald Dahl. Remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? How sweet and funny it was, exploring a chocolate factory. Where kids dropped like flies. Charlie nearly gets his head ripped off by a ceiling fan. Verruca falls into a goddamn incinerator. Mike Teevee has been permanently altered. He's either small as a doll or stretched out like candy for the rest of his life, and Violet... well, she's become a Purple People Eater.
Jumanji - getting sucked in board games, spiders the size of dogs, a goddamn plant that eats you. Giant mosquito who break glass. In the first Harry Potter movie, a guy gets his faced burned off. Matilda and Harry Potter both exist in worlds where they're just casually abused by their parents. Do I need to say anything about Coraline and all of its imagery? Sharp claws, Coraline asked to get buttons sewn over her eyes.
Adventure Time had basically a metaphor for alzheimers. Watership Down, a movie where rabbits tear each other apart in a bloody mess is rated PG. Avatar: The Last Airbender... it's in the title. Aang is the last airbender because the Fire Nation committed a genocide against his people. Invader Zim has all kinds of grotesque and violent imagery, same with Courage the Cowardly Dog.
Do you want me to keep going on? I have examples for days. Children's media is fucked up. Or rather... Grimm. Even our fairytales are messed up. Hansel and Gretel, parents abandoning their kids in the middle of the woods and them almost getting baked in an oven and being cooked alive. Red Riding Hood, the woodsman cuts open the wolf's stomach. Nursery rhymes are even morbid. "It's raining, it's pouring The old man is snoring He bumped his head when he went to bed And he couldn't wake up in the morning." You know, cuz he's dead.
I'm sorry, I grew up with Majora's Mask, a video game about people contemplating their own inevitable death as they stood days away from Armageddon, where Cremia is implied to give her little kid sister Romania an alcoholic beverage to numb the pain as the moon falls to earth and sets the world in a fiery blaze.
I think that kids... could handle a little darkness here and there.
tl;dr "Gee, people complain so much about MY cartoon being dark, yet they conveniently ignore so many other examples of popular children's media that go even darker."
Yes, but when most other children's media goes into nightmarish territory, the protagonist is a victim of that cruelty; not the instigator. In a situation like "Growing Around," where adults are thoroughly abused and neglected by their child overlords, Mr. E is expecting his audience to always root for the overlords and laugh when the adults suffer, when any sane writer would take things in the exact opposite direction. Yes, the world can be terrible. Yes, some children should understand the world can be terrible. No, they should never be led by media to make the world even more terrible. This is what makes the premise of "Growing Around" so horrific.
