Why is western animation just for kids movies?

[Pink Gregory]

I'd like to see a drama movie, one that's just like any other drama, except it's animated. That would be really great.

But but isn't there stuff like Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis?

Admittedly that's probably not 'western' animation, strictly speaking.

Wasn't there a few fairly recent animated French films that were a little more towards the drama?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

Yeah.... South Park and Family Guy are NOT for kids. If a parent had any ounce of discipline, they sure as hell wouldn't show it to their children. South Park has intense gore, language, occasional nudity, and an all around adult subject material. Same with Family Guy. Just because something can be immature occasionally doesn't mean it's ok for kids to watch. Also, I'd argue that kids shouldn't be able to play DOOM so easily. It's that kind of mindset allows droves of 10 year olds to flock to games like CoD. No kid under 13 (and 13 is being pretty generous) should be able to watch or play anything rated MA or R. There's a reason we have the ESRB and film ratings.

But they will watch it anyway, in spite of the rudeness, the ratings and in spite of the creators and TV channels saying what they know they have to say. Those people know exactly what they are doing. If kids didn't watch South Park it wouldn't have made it past its first season. Simpsons probably wouldn't have made it past episode 1.

I do think we have to make clearer what we mean when we saw something is "for" someone. What are we talking about here? The artists intention? The appeal factor? The moral appropriateness?

 

[Nazulu]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

Are you talking about 14 year old kids? All those shows commonly make sex jokes, have cursing in them or has subtle jokes towards them, and I'm pretty sure all of those deal with some controversial issues around the world.

 

[EternallyBored]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

no, just, no, just because you view something with humor as immature does not make it "for kids". The best you could argue is that they are targeted at late teens early 20's demographics, although their actual numbers tend to skew towards late 20's early 30's on most of their ratings charts.

Yeah I know this was probably your attempt at a clever joke about how you find the humor in these shows immature, but at best your post comes off as elitist, and at worst just plain pretentious. The passive aggressive equivalent to, "Only cultured things are mature, everything else is childish, and of course what qualifies as cultured is based entirely on my own opinion".

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

no, just, no, just because you view something with humor as immature does not make it "for kids". The best you could argue is that they are targeted at late teens early 20's demographics, although their actual numbers tend to skew towards late 20's early 30's on most of their ratings charts.

Yeah I know this was probably your attempt at a clever joke about how you find the humor in these shows immature, but at best your post comes off as elitist, and at worst just plain pretentious. The passive aggressive equivalent to, "Only cultured things are mature, everything else is childish, and of course what qualifies as cultured is based entirely on my own opinion".

I don't find South Park immature. It's more mature than most US shows. Kids understand more than we give them credit for, they will get a lot out of watching South Park simply by virtue of its "taboo" status and content, even apart from what is considered "mature" about it.

Again, what do we mean "for kids?" I don't think morality is what this thread was meant to be about.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

Yeah.... South Park and Family Guy are NOT for kids. If a parent had any ounce of discipline, they sure as hell wouldn't show it to their children. South Park has intense gore, language, occasional nudity, and an all around adult subject material. Same with Family Guy. Just because something can be immature occasionally doesn't mean it's ok for kids to watch. Also, I'd argue that kids shouldn't be able to play DOOM so easily. It's that kind of mindset allows droves of 10 year olds to flock to games like CoD. No kid under 13 (and 13 is being pretty generous) should be able to watch or play anything rated MA or R. There's a reason we have the ESRB and film ratings.

But they will watch it anyway, in spite of the rudeness, the ratings and in spite of the creators and TV channels saying what they know they have to say. Those people know exactly what they are doing. If kids didn't watch South Park it wouldn't have made it past its first season. Simpsons probably wouldn't have made it past episode 1.

I do think we have to make clearer what we mean when we saw something is "for" someone. What are we talking about here? The artists intention? The appeal factor? The moral appropriateness?

I'm sure they certainly don't "intend" for the younger demographic to watch something that is not appropriate for them. And what are you talking about saying that South Park wouldn't survive without them? Sure, there's plenty of immature jokes in South Park, but the main appeal is the biting social commentary and lampooing. I doubt a 13 year old would understand half the things South Park talks about, considering I didn't at the time and it was the reason I didn't really start watching it until I was older.

You'd be an exception then. When I was a kid I was intrigued by things I didn't understand and were too "adult" for me. It's funny that kids find fart jokes, swearing, and pee and poop and sex hilarious so we don't let them watch shows with that stuff until they're 18. If children waited for society to dictate what they should learn then they wouldn't learn at all. There's an incredible force behind their inherent willingness to absorb and strive after what they don't know, which is out of our hands. We'll never be able to curb school childrens' fascination with porn, for example.

 

[KazeAizen]

Yeah, pretty much exactly what it says at the top. I think that there's a lot that we could do with animation if it wasn't aggressively marketed to kids and kids alone.

Not that I have a problem with media for kids. Hell, I love some of the stuff that's been made for kids (Batman the Animated Series, Avatar the Last Airbender, The Lion King, nearly everything Pixar's done).

I just think that there's a lot that western animation could do if it didn't always have to pander to the 7 to 12 demographic. I mean, if we're lucky, we could be looking at drama as poignant as the first 10 minutes of Up (which I don't think would have worked as well in any other medium). If nothing else, think about the special effects that we could have in an animated movie. Tarantino-esque gore could be as exaggerated as we like. Horror could be more surreal and possibly legitimately scare us with a monster that changes form. We could make a noir movie with the artistic style of Frank Miller's Sin City books.

So, what do you guys think? Why hasn't western animation for a more mature audience caught on (Simpsons/South Park/Family Guy aside)? And what are some other ideas that would be cool if animation appealed to more mature audiences?

Well its not like they didn't try. Atlantis the Lost Empire and Titan A.E. are two that stick out in my mind. Heck the second one I actually wouldn't have a kid watch. At least not at 7. That's a straight up serious sci-fi adventure story done in high quality 2D animation.

I think I see a problem with your question. While yes a lot of that was marketed with kids in mind a bunch of the stuff you named in terms of movies is actually a different kind. Its family entertainment, not kids. Care Bears movies and Dora movies are straight up kids movies. Stuff they'd enjoy but we might cringe at. Family entertainment is what most big budget animated productions are these days. Simple enough and engaging enough that it captures the kids attention, but respects the audiences intelligence enough and delvs into real emotional drama at times.

The thing that gets me is that the only kind of animated cartoon that is marketed for older audiences are man child sit com style shows. Pretty much just comedies and nothing else. I don't know why that is. Japan pretty much makes an anime for anything. Its just a cultural thing I suppose. Just the way the cards fell.

 

[EternallyBored]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

no, just, no, just because you view something with humor as immature does not make it "for kids". The best you could argue is that they are targeted at late teens early 20's demographics, although their actual numbers tend to skew towards late 20's early 30's on most of their ratings charts.

Yeah I know this was probably your attempt at a clever joke about how you find the humor in these shows immature, but at best your post comes off as elitist, and at worst just plain pretentious. The passive aggressive equivalent to, "Only cultured things are mature, everything else is childish, and of course what qualifies as cultured is based entirely on my own opinion".

I don't find South Park immature. It's more mature than most US shows. Kids understand more than we give them credit for, they will get a lot out of watching South Park simply by virtue of its "taboo" status and content, even apart from what is considered "mature" about it.

Again, what do we mean "for kids?" I don't think morality is what this thread was meant to be about.

By "for kids" I believe people generally mean, produced and targeted for children, with the general public mindset being that the show was made to entertain children, generally in the 12 and younger demographic. Anything in the 13-20 bracket is usually referred to as teen entertainment, and the 18-30 market is usually referred to as the young adult market.

Any way you slice it your still wrong about south park, the majority of the audience that watches it is in the 20-35 age range, unless your viewing that as "kids" now, in which case your using a definition of kids that nobody here is going to agree with you on.

South park doesn't even come on until most kids not in their teenage years are in bed, and among teenagers, sure, south park is watched by teenagers. That's not their largest audience, nor is it the audience targeted by the producers of the show, south park is famous for being popular amongst college students, I.E. the 18-30 demographic.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

South Park, Family Guy, Simpsons, Boondocks, Venture brothers, Archer, Hellboy even off the top of my head I could go for awhile.

Come on dude, Simpsons is for kids.

"But what about the joke with the..."? It's still for kids. I would venture to say the same thing about South Park and Family Guy. Just because it has a bunch of rude jokes and adult references doesn't mean it's not for kids, just like the shooting monsters and blood in DOOM doesn't make it not for kids.

Yeah.... South Park and Family Guy are NOT for kids. If a parent had any ounce of discipline, they sure as hell wouldn't show it to their children. South Park has intense gore, language, occasional nudity, and an all around adult subject material. Same with Family Guy. Just because something can be immature occasionally doesn't mean it's ok for kids to watch. Also, I'd argue that kids shouldn't be able to play DOOM so easily. It's that kind of mindset allows droves of 10 year olds to flock to games like CoD. No kid under 13 (and 13 is being pretty generous) should be able to watch or play anything rated MA or R. There's a reason we have the ESRB and film ratings.

But they will watch it anyway, in spite of the rudeness, the ratings and in spite of the creators and TV channels saying what they know they have to say. Those people know exactly what they are doing. If kids didn't watch South Park it wouldn't have made it past its first season. Simpsons probably wouldn't have made it past episode 1.

I do think we have to make clearer what we mean when we saw something is "for" someone. What are we talking about here? The artists intention? The appeal factor? The moral appropriateness?

I'm sure they certainly don't "intend" for the younger demographic to watch something that is not appropriate for them. And what are you talking about saying that South Park wouldn't survive without them? Sure, there's plenty of immature jokes in South Park, but the main appeal is the biting social commentary and lampooing. I doubt a 13 year old would understand half the things South Park talks about, considering I didn't at the time and it was the reason I didn't really start watching it until I was older.

You'd be an exception then. When I was a kid I was intrigued by things I didn't understand and were too "adult" for me. It's funny that kids find fart jokes, swearing, and pee and poop and sex hilarious so we don't let them watch shows with that stuff until they're 18. If children waited for society to dictate what they should learn then they wouldn't learn at all. There's an incredible force behind their inherent willingness to absorb and strive after what they don't know, which is out of our hands. We'll never be able to curb school childrens' fascination with porn, for example.

I never said parents should block out everything until the kids are 18, just that they shouldn't be watching that crap at 10. Again, I'm not saying we should all be Puritans or some shit, just that there should be reasonable restrictions. It's the same reason a good parent would have a curfew imposed on a teenager, or reasonable restrictions on dating and drinking. Parents need to learn to find a balance between gradually exposing kids so they aren't too naive and creating barriers so they aren't getting into anything they shouldn't be.

I agree with the restrictions part, I'd be silly not to if I were a parent. But here's the thing. If they WANT to watch it and WILL watch it (we can hardly stop them in the computer age, can we?), how can we say it's not "for" them? Because when you sweep all that legal crap aside and look at the art itself, it's meaningless to say heavy metal is an "adult" music form when it was all teens listening to it back in the 80s, even though it wasn't appropriate for them from the perspective of the common man.

 

[Violet Action]

The main reason there are few adult oriented animated shows is the same reason that Sci-Fi (I refuse to use the polish word for syphilis) keeps cancelling shows that people like and Toonami was taken off the air even though the rating were astronomical. It's not because these things are doing badly. it's because they aren't hitting the specific demographics that those networks have presold advertising for in those timeslots.

So basically we get Adult Swim and Fox Sunday nights as a consolation prize since Cartoon Network doesn't want to risk losing a fraction of a second of that awesome Mattel or colored sugar water money during average kid viewing hours. Kids are worth more money than the average 18-30 year old in America since the average kid can rationalize any personal expense since they don't care what it costs. The average 18-30 is less likely to impulse shop on some breakable doodad-a-day because they'd rather buy transportation or pay a bill or go someplace to meet people for sex happenings.

tldr; tv execs would rather build shows around current advertising demo's than bother trying to build new one's with entirely new shows.

 

[Rad Party God]

South Park and... uh... anything from Adult Swim and... South Park... and... Family Guy / American Dad / Cleveland's Show, and South Park and... uh... MTV had a lot of great adult animations, like Daria (not precisely for adults, but it's neither for children), Aeon Flux, also there was Duckman (internet cookie to whoever saw that) and right now Bob's Burgers isn't too shaby, actually it's pretty good.

EDIT: OOOHHHH movies!... shit... you're right, there aren't many :/

There was Animatrix, but that one was released directly to DVD (also I wouldn't consider it completely western, considering half the studios, if not all, were asian based). Maybe there are a few, but just on a "direct to video" basis, rarely do we get something adult on the theatres.

 

[AlexanderPeregrine]

The answer to the question is because of a cultural mindset that places animation as the cheap, inferior option to live action and because the areas where it excels (free reign of color and visual design) are not valued by western adults nearly as much as they should be. (When you really look at them, most American movies and television (can't comment much abroad) have drab, samey color palettes consisting largely of orange (flesh) and teal (closest complimentary color) [http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html].)

The better question would be why has adult animation caught on in Japan[footnote]Yes, there is content from other Asian countries, but Japan contributes the majority of Asian animation and most of the adult-oriented stuff.[/footnote]? The answer to that comes down to two words: real estate. The population centers are really overcrowded [https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.681605,139.677889&ll=35.680812,139.678094&spn=0.006597,0.016512&num=1&t=h&gl=us&z=17] and as such, there aren't many soundstages or open areas for elaborate sets. This makes any live action project either competing for a very small number of places to film anything that doesn't take place in apartments and offices or required to go abroad, both of which are rarely economically viable for their (not very good) average return of investment. Hence, animation ballooned to fill that cultural gap.

This isn't to say that animation is inherently for children or that it wouldn't be great if there was more diverse western animation, but we may never know how many Japanese animation projects would be live action if they only had the resources.

 

[ShipofFools]

You anime eaters seen Disney's Fantasia? It was amazing!

 

[Queen Michael]

I'd like to see a drama movie, one that's just like any other drama, except it's animated. That would be really great.

But but isn't there stuff like Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis?

Admittedly that's probably not 'western' animation, strictly speaking.

Wasn't there a few fairly recent animated French films that were a little more towards the drama?

Huh. TO be honest, I didn't thjink of those, even though I've watched Persepolis twice.
Making my then-girlfriend watch it was hard, but when she finally agreed to it she really liked it.

 

[ShipofFools]

On another note, my ex once showed me this anime that should prove how mature it could be, and it was Elfen Lied, and it fucking sucked.

It was ugly, cruel, unnecesary violent, tasteless and made me barf in my mouth.
I'm not that well versed in anime, most of it seemed to me to be like Disney, for kids and adults.

But if Elfen Lied is what passes for "mature", then heck no, keep that crap away from me while I watch Beauty and the Beast for the xxxth time.

I want magic, I want feeling, I want beauty! Elfen Lied had none of that.