What is with this new trend of quirky adult cartoons? Here's what I don't want to be: another cartoonist making graphic drawings of sick animals.
There's been a strange popularization of the "grotesque/cute" genre in adult animation -- not that it's a new thing, it's just entered the mainstream with a bang. I'm sure this coincides with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming, which has been airing hours of adult cartoons and anime every night for the last 5 years. Before that there was The Simpsons (namely the interactions between Itchy and Scratchy), Ren and Stimpy, and Rocko's Modern Life. Cartoons seem to have a strange affinity with the gratuitous grotesque including eyeball humor, explicit excretory references, and plenty of guts under the pretense of humor.
The phenomena has hit the internet too. If you haven't seen the successful Happy Tree Friends series before, you may want to heed the warnings on its website which used to sport the motto "Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children or big babies." The show revolved around a plucky group of animals who, in a brief 7 minutes, get themselves into ... brutal situations. They basically all end up being gruesome deaths. Wikipedia writes, "Despite its childish appearance, the show is extremely violent, with every episode featuring blood, pain, and gruesome deaths." Bloodshed and dismemberment are depicted in a vivid manner but a comical tone.
These shows are fine and dandy by me. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy a good dark comedy as much as the next idiot (more rusty screwdriver to the tongue, please!). I just don't want to be mixed into the same graphic category. I feel inevitably linked to these cartoons in that I make illustrative imagery depicting innards.
Back to "grotesque/cute." This can be understood as when a seemingly "cute" thing (a wide-eyed anthropomorphized woodland creature, for instance) doing a seemingly "gross" thing (like pulling out its small intestines and strangling himself with it). My issues with the cartoons is that I just don't think they don't warrant any serious attention. Even if you like the toons, they don't beg any further thought or analysis. Each short animation works as it's own existing piece, only important for the few moments that they are played.
I worry that my work might fall into that category, losing any sense of immediacy or importance. For me, the pieces are imbued with said components, but I can't really be sure if they are reading that way. Overall, i don't want my work to be reduced into the "ghettoized" cartoon world which is popularly dismissed. I don't think I'm at risk of that now, but i'll have to make sure to steer clear.
photo credit:
top center: Itchy and Scratchy courtesy of http://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/vlcsnap-6359056.png
right: detail from Happy Tree Friends, http://www.freevideogamestuff.com/wp-content/uploads/happy_tree_friends.jpg
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