Aged Media
Been reading peoples rants/thoughts/posts on the elevation of children's media over adult media and I've been thinking about something lacking in a lot of Mainstream adult media, specifically in western adult media.
If you aren't already aware I'm a lover of cartoons, I watch vast amounts of cartoon media, I often prefer it over live action things, even when it comes to adult media and admittedly, I do find a lot of content aimed at children to be more interesting and engaging than content aimed at adults. This is not because I find children's content to be 'better' than adult content, but because the move to adult content for the west often leaves behind something present in most children's cartoons today: long-term plots.
It should be said that this trend in children's cartoons did not used to be the standard. They used to be one off goof with a vaguely connecting thread, it wasn't until the late 90's and early 2000's did bigger shows like Beast Wars and Gargoyles begin to shift the format of children's programming. Gargyoles especially, for me, was the first time I had seen such takes on story telling and I was hungry for it. Then with the introduction to anime it only grew from there, and the western producers saw that influence as well and began to emulate it. Shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender is a culmination of these changes in media in the early 2000's not just in style but in story-telling.
When you start dipping into western adult media you find less and less that have over-arching plots and more singular episodes with the occasional throwback to past event. Adults that grew up with the slapstick of Loony Toons and Hana-Barbara for their media went on to make Sitcoms and Case a Day crime TV shows. I know this was partly because at the time television standards intentionally wanted each episode to be watched without context. It's really sad to think about how the generation before television was perfectly fine with radio dramas that arced over several episode, then that form of story telling evaporated as radio dramas died off.
I think the closest we've gotten with adult media in the west are things a few stand out shows like Stargate, Lost, Heroes. HBO and Stars began making more series with over-arching plots like Boardwalk Empire or Game of Thrones, but it feels like shows of that caliber are few and far between. And too often they find themselves ruined by trying to be as shocking as possible. Either that or they get so caught up in being 'realistic', paired with seeing live action as the more 'mature' form of story telling. I admittedly prefer cartoons because it's easier to suspend disbelief in a fantasy setting as a cartoon, but cartoons are often regarded as frivolous, intended for comedy. And for the adult cartoons that aren't comedy it's like they try to go off the deep end in gratuity, they don't feel like they even want to have fun. The Castlevania Netflix series has been the closest I've seen to a western adult comic series that while gory, still manages to be fun and isn't full of dread.
Sometimes it feels like that soon as the gate is lifted to make something for adults, there's a need to saturate it in as much death and sex as possible. Like someone binging on alcohol the first time they're allowed to have it, and in doing so the drive for nuance in other forms of conflicts and complexities of life gets lost. This doesn't happen with all adult western media, of course, but the ones out there that tackle complications like moral greys and trauma with both nuance and optimism are few and far between. It's why Anime is still so sought after, it has a wider gamut topics covered at different target groups so there ends up being more variety.
I don't gravitate toward children's media more because I think it's inherently 'better' because it's aimed at children, I gravitate toward it because there's a vacuum in the kind of story telling I'm looking for in adult media. A good example of what I'd like to see would be something like, bringing back Batman Beyond for another season but on adult swim so they don't have to shy away from topics like processing grief of death, trauma, and intimacy, while still having an underpinning of hope and humor present in the original series. I'd like more western cartoons aimed at adults that dive into nature of existence and philosophy like Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I'd like more adult media that still knows how to have fun and doesn't find shock value the only value of being an adult. I want more adult media to tell stories.
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/772427.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
If you aren't already aware I'm a lover of cartoons, I watch vast amounts of cartoon media, I often prefer it over live action things, even when it comes to adult media and admittedly, I do find a lot of content aimed at children to be more interesting and engaging than content aimed at adults. This is not because I find children's content to be 'better' than adult content, but because the move to adult content for the west often leaves behind something present in most children's cartoons today: long-term plots.
It should be said that this trend in children's cartoons did not used to be the standard. They used to be one off goof with a vaguely connecting thread, it wasn't until the late 90's and early 2000's did bigger shows like Beast Wars and Gargoyles begin to shift the format of children's programming. Gargyoles especially, for me, was the first time I had seen such takes on story telling and I was hungry for it. Then with the introduction to anime it only grew from there, and the western producers saw that influence as well and began to emulate it. Shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender is a culmination of these changes in media in the early 2000's not just in style but in story-telling.
When you start dipping into western adult media you find less and less that have over-arching plots and more singular episodes with the occasional throwback to past event. Adults that grew up with the slapstick of Loony Toons and Hana-Barbara for their media went on to make Sitcoms and Case a Day crime TV shows. I know this was partly because at the time television standards intentionally wanted each episode to be watched without context. It's really sad to think about how the generation before television was perfectly fine with radio dramas that arced over several episode, then that form of story telling evaporated as radio dramas died off.
I think the closest we've gotten with adult media in the west are things a few stand out shows like Stargate, Lost, Heroes. HBO and Stars began making more series with over-arching plots like Boardwalk Empire or Game of Thrones, but it feels like shows of that caliber are few and far between. And too often they find themselves ruined by trying to be as shocking as possible. Either that or they get so caught up in being 'realistic', paired with seeing live action as the more 'mature' form of story telling. I admittedly prefer cartoons because it's easier to suspend disbelief in a fantasy setting as a cartoon, but cartoons are often regarded as frivolous, intended for comedy. And for the adult cartoons that aren't comedy it's like they try to go off the deep end in gratuity, they don't feel like they even want to have fun. The Castlevania Netflix series has been the closest I've seen to a western adult comic series that while gory, still manages to be fun and isn't full of dread.
Sometimes it feels like that soon as the gate is lifted to make something for adults, there's a need to saturate it in as much death and sex as possible. Like someone binging on alcohol the first time they're allowed to have it, and in doing so the drive for nuance in other forms of conflicts and complexities of life gets lost. This doesn't happen with all adult western media, of course, but the ones out there that tackle complications like moral greys and trauma with both nuance and optimism are few and far between. It's why Anime is still so sought after, it has a wider gamut topics covered at different target groups so there ends up being more variety.
I don't gravitate toward children's media more because I think it's inherently 'better' because it's aimed at children, I gravitate toward it because there's a vacuum in the kind of story telling I'm looking for in adult media. A good example of what I'd like to see would be something like, bringing back Batman Beyond for another season but on adult swim so they don't have to shy away from topics like processing grief of death, trauma, and intimacy, while still having an underpinning of hope and humor present in the original series. I'd like more western cartoons aimed at adults that dive into nature of existence and philosophy like Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I'd like more adult media that still knows how to have fun and doesn't find shock value the only value of being an adult. I want more adult media to tell stories.
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/772427.html. Please comment there using OpenID.