How Hanna-Barbera turned me into a tiny little feminist.
I loved cartoons as a kid, but Hanna-Barbera cartoons really didn't appeal to me. I didn't voluntarily watch the Flintstones or the Jetsons. Interestingly, I don't recall any of the other kids at school talking about how cool those cartoons were, the way they did with Voltron or Thundercats or He-Man. They were just sort of . . . there. We had all watched them, but nobody talked about them like they were anything special. Still, they were there, on the boob toob, and our little brains soaked that stuff up, same as the other stuff we watched.
I accepted the presence of these cartoons without question, like kids do, assuming that someone must think they were great, but I never liked them, and, as time wore on, they began to feel to me like one of those things that grownups think kids like, or think kids should like, but which actually suck. Their presence began to feel like condescension.
I didn't like the animation, which was both crappy and stylized in a way I didn't find appealing at all. None of the design work appealed to me, and the visual gags were juvenile and often insulting. The main characters were either gross or insipid, and not likeable at all. And I hated, hated, the way it portrayed dinosaurs alongside cavemen, just as if that had ever even come close to happening.
What bothered me most about the show, though, was that it was so rigidly sexist. The gender roles were clearly defined and absolutely rigid. There were no female characters I liked. Sure, I disliked the male characters, too, but because I was a girl the crappy female characters felt like more of an insult.
Even as a kid, I rebelled at gender roles. I did this before I clearly understood what it was I was rebelling against. It was the early '80s. More progressive than previous generations by far, but I live in Oklahoma, and this was not a place where much had changed. The idea that I would be expected to cook, clean, and care for children was not just abhorrent to me, it was terrifying. The idea that I had to wear certain clothes, that certain toys were not for girls, that I was supposed to make myself attractive to men and be modest enough not to draw the ire of other women, these ideas went against what I felt myself to be and, thankfully, I only seldom felt that I was the problem, and not the ridiculous expectations that had accumulated in my life without any consent or promises on my part.
My parents were the furthest thing from assholes about this. I almost never felt like I was being pushed to do something I didn't want to do because of my gender. But culture marches on, I was swimming in the Kool-Aid like every other kid, and I sure felt the pressure in the other parts of my life. I stopped "playing house" in kindergarten after precisely one attempt. I didn't want to be the mommy or care for the baby, but I couldn't be the daddy, either. No boys would play with us, so I got to pick between mommy and big sister. I picked big sister and promptly got stuck with the baby while "mommy" went grocery shopping. What the hell? I said "Fuck this," and left the baby on the stove and went to go draw.
So, many cartoons (The Flintstones was just a particularly egregious example) struck me as . . . horrible mockeries. Moving pictures rubbing my face in the tedium of the roles set out for me. And I was supposed to find this funny and entertaining. But at least there was this glimmer in my mind, the very beginnings of a black sense of humor, that said, "Look at these stupid fuckin' people. Look at how they treat each other. Primitive caveman screwheads." I understood that the cartoon was paralleling and to some degree parodying "modern" life, and that this was based on a definition of "modern" that was already over a decade out of date. But I also understood that way of life was on its way out, disappearing like the caveman into something more evolved and civilized and modern.
It became a kind of meta-parody, paralleling the obsolescence of the Average American Family through its choice of lens: the extinct culture of the lowly caveman. I didn't enjoy it at all, though, even as I saw the connection and appreciated the correspondences. The fact that, to my recollection, no other child I ever encountered objected to it the way I did, made me hate it the way you can only hate stupid things that other people cannot seem to understand are stupid.
For whatever reason, The Flintstones were on all the time, but I almost never saw the Jetsons, either due to my schedule or due to something more interesting being scheduled opposite it. That eventually changed, and it wound up coming on between two of my other cartoons, so I wound up seeing it. I hadn't been opposed to the idea on principle, even though futuristic sci-fi stuff was usually annoying and boring to me (I preferred fantasy quite strongly, and still do). But I went into it thinking that if The Flintstones were a primitive bunch of dipshits whose social roles gnawed balls, well, that was only appropriate for cavemen. I somehow got it into my head that the Jetsons, in The Future!!! would depict something slightly more advanced, with more interesting characters and more evolved social ideals. I wouldn't have put it like that, of course. I was seven. I was just thinking "Maybe this will suck less, because the future is supposed to suck less."
Yeah, about that.
The Jetsons was just as bad. And there was nothing there subverting the stupidity. Not that I could see, anyway. It was in earnest. It was The Flintstones, set in the future. It was exactly the fucking same. And nothing had changed, from the year three bazillion B.C. to the year three bazillion A.D. Not a damned thing. As though the entirety of human history had been nothing more than the evolution of ever-more-complex technology, and we had not advanced socially at all.
I will pause here and say that maybe these cartoons were more self-aware and more tongue-in-cheek than that, and I just wasn't aware of it at the time. Somehow, though, I really don't think that was the case, and I don't think I'd believe you if you tried to convince me of it.
So I watched about three Jetsons shows, and I got really, really mad. To the point I wanted to make posters and put them up everywhere telling the other kids not to watch those shows -- especially the Flintstones -- that they were crap, and offensive. I'm glad someone, somewhere, talked me out of that, though I do dimly recall drawing a few. The other kids already hated me for trying to make them stop stomping on toads and ripping up every flower they could find.
I got angry that this trajectory plotted for me, for the human race, didn't include anything that I would want to take part in. Where were the people like me? Surely they existed . . . unless someone had just gotten rid of them. Quietly. Which, to a kid who very often felt like everyone just wanted to get rid of her, was a horrible, painful thought.
Popular culture has a major effect on children, especially children too young to appreciate irony. I also believe there is an obligation on the part of people who make media aimed at children to promote the construction of a better reality by showing the kids what a better reality might look like (or, alternately, showing them such a horrible dystopia that they will work to make sure that it never comes to pass, but nobody would buy that as a Saturday morning kids' cartoon).
Cartoons aren't just cartoons. They aren't just passive entertainments. They have an effect on young people, who accept them as part of their world. The fact that these same cartoons are still being aired frankly bothers the crap out of me.
We need to discuss the past with young people, and we need to encourage them to imagine a future that is not limited by the past, or even by the present. We need to encourage them to believe in progress. Media, entertainments, provide a good chance to do this, since kids are exposed to it anyway. And if we manage to do this well enough, maybe once those kids' kids get to the point of having robot dogs and flying cars, the future really will suck less, and none of us will be stuck playing house when we'd rather be fighting space dragons or piloting starships past lightspeed.
I accepted the presence of these cartoons without question, like kids do, assuming that someone must think they were great, but I never liked them, and, as time wore on, they began to feel to me like one of those things that grownups think kids like, or think kids should like, but which actually suck. Their presence began to feel like condescension.
I didn't like the animation, which was both crappy and stylized in a way I didn't find appealing at all. None of the design work appealed to me, and the visual gags were juvenile and often insulting. The main characters were either gross or insipid, and not likeable at all. And I hated, hated, the way it portrayed dinosaurs alongside cavemen, just as if that had ever even come close to happening.
What bothered me most about the show, though, was that it was so rigidly sexist. The gender roles were clearly defined and absolutely rigid. There were no female characters I liked. Sure, I disliked the male characters, too, but because I was a girl the crappy female characters felt like more of an insult.
Even as a kid, I rebelled at gender roles. I did this before I clearly understood what it was I was rebelling against. It was the early '80s. More progressive than previous generations by far, but I live in Oklahoma, and this was not a place where much had changed. The idea that I would be expected to cook, clean, and care for children was not just abhorrent to me, it was terrifying. The idea that I had to wear certain clothes, that certain toys were not for girls, that I was supposed to make myself attractive to men and be modest enough not to draw the ire of other women, these ideas went against what I felt myself to be and, thankfully, I only seldom felt that I was the problem, and not the ridiculous expectations that had accumulated in my life without any consent or promises on my part.
My parents were the furthest thing from assholes about this. I almost never felt like I was being pushed to do something I didn't want to do because of my gender. But culture marches on, I was swimming in the Kool-Aid like every other kid, and I sure felt the pressure in the other parts of my life. I stopped "playing house" in kindergarten after precisely one attempt. I didn't want to be the mommy or care for the baby, but I couldn't be the daddy, either. No boys would play with us, so I got to pick between mommy and big sister. I picked big sister and promptly got stuck with the baby while "mommy" went grocery shopping. What the hell? I said "Fuck this," and left the baby on the stove and went to go draw.
So, many cartoons (The Flintstones was just a particularly egregious example) struck me as . . . horrible mockeries. Moving pictures rubbing my face in the tedium of the roles set out for me. And I was supposed to find this funny and entertaining. But at least there was this glimmer in my mind, the very beginnings of a black sense of humor, that said, "Look at these stupid fuckin' people. Look at how they treat each other. Primitive caveman screwheads." I understood that the cartoon was paralleling and to some degree parodying "modern" life, and that this was based on a definition of "modern" that was already over a decade out of date. But I also understood that way of life was on its way out, disappearing like the caveman into something more evolved and civilized and modern.
It became a kind of meta-parody, paralleling the obsolescence of the Average American Family through its choice of lens: the extinct culture of the lowly caveman. I didn't enjoy it at all, though, even as I saw the connection and appreciated the correspondences. The fact that, to my recollection, no other child I ever encountered objected to it the way I did, made me hate it the way you can only hate stupid things that other people cannot seem to understand are stupid.
For whatever reason, The Flintstones were on all the time, but I almost never saw the Jetsons, either due to my schedule or due to something more interesting being scheduled opposite it. That eventually changed, and it wound up coming on between two of my other cartoons, so I wound up seeing it. I hadn't been opposed to the idea on principle, even though futuristic sci-fi stuff was usually annoying and boring to me (I preferred fantasy quite strongly, and still do). But I went into it thinking that if The Flintstones were a primitive bunch of dipshits whose social roles gnawed balls, well, that was only appropriate for cavemen. I somehow got it into my head that the Jetsons, in The Future!!! would depict something slightly more advanced, with more interesting characters and more evolved social ideals. I wouldn't have put it like that, of course. I was seven. I was just thinking "Maybe this will suck less, because the future is supposed to suck less."
Yeah, about that.
The Jetsons was just as bad. And there was nothing there subverting the stupidity. Not that I could see, anyway. It was in earnest. It was The Flintstones, set in the future. It was exactly the fucking same. And nothing had changed, from the year three bazillion B.C. to the year three bazillion A.D. Not a damned thing. As though the entirety of human history had been nothing more than the evolution of ever-more-complex technology, and we had not advanced socially at all.
I will pause here and say that maybe these cartoons were more self-aware and more tongue-in-cheek than that, and I just wasn't aware of it at the time. Somehow, though, I really don't think that was the case, and I don't think I'd believe you if you tried to convince me of it.
So I watched about three Jetsons shows, and I got really, really mad. To the point I wanted to make posters and put them up everywhere telling the other kids not to watch those shows -- especially the Flintstones -- that they were crap, and offensive. I'm glad someone, somewhere, talked me out of that, though I do dimly recall drawing a few. The other kids already hated me for trying to make them stop stomping on toads and ripping up every flower they could find.
I got angry that this trajectory plotted for me, for the human race, didn't include anything that I would want to take part in. Where were the people like me? Surely they existed . . . unless someone had just gotten rid of them. Quietly. Which, to a kid who very often felt like everyone just wanted to get rid of her, was a horrible, painful thought.
Popular culture has a major effect on children, especially children too young to appreciate irony. I also believe there is an obligation on the part of people who make media aimed at children to promote the construction of a better reality by showing the kids what a better reality might look like (or, alternately, showing them such a horrible dystopia that they will work to make sure that it never comes to pass, but nobody would buy that as a Saturday morning kids' cartoon).
Cartoons aren't just cartoons. They aren't just passive entertainments. They have an effect on young people, who accept them as part of their world. The fact that these same cartoons are still being aired frankly bothers the crap out of me.
We need to discuss the past with young people, and we need to encourage them to imagine a future that is not limited by the past, or even by the present. We need to encourage them to believe in progress. Media, entertainments, provide a good chance to do this, since kids are exposed to it anyway. And if we manage to do this well enough, maybe once those kids' kids get to the point of having robot dogs and flying cars, the future really will suck less, and none of us will be stuck playing house when we'd rather be fighting space dragons or piloting starships past lightspeed.