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NegativeONE
Yeah, we're all gonna get a lot of things done tomorrow.

Aaron Worrall @NegativeONE

Age 38, Male

Beep boop

Toronto

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Where did we go wrong?

Posted by NegativeONE - November 9th, 2008


NOTE: This post contains a few mild spoilers about movies you've either already seen or probably won't ever.

If any of you have perused my profile, you might have noticed All Dogs Go To Heaven listed under my favorite movies and some might have thought it was a joke. This couldn't be much further from the case. The golden age of childrens' animation lasted well over a decade, but it's long dead. This was a time when the industry wasn't averse to grit, darkness, or the good old-fashioned horrors of reality. While the endings were still generally happy - and there's nothing wrong with that - you could surely expect blood, tears, corruption, death, failure, and a lot of other themes that today's kids' movies can be arsed even to allude to.

While this is a sentiment I've carried for almost as long as I can remember, what sparked me to finally write something about it was my recent acquisition of a copy of Watership Down, a dark story of fear and oppression born out of the UK. By it's premise - a group of rabbits search for a new home - it sounds like it could exist in this day and age. Dig a little deeper into the subject matter, and you'll see it most certainly couldn't. Until Kehaar, the drunk Russian seagull shows up, this isn't a journey lightened by comic relief, it's one marred by danger. The group is hunted by animals, shot by farmers and conspired against by other warrens. The climax of the movie features several graphic deaths ranging from throats being torn out to lacerating tosses through the air. I'm not saying all the blood is necessary, but the themes carried in this movie could better prepare a kid for the real world than the fairy gumdrop bullshit you'll find in Space Penguins go to Space or whatever the hell's in theaters now.

Flash forward to 1989. Childrens' animation as a respectable purveyor of storytelling is in its last throes. Donald Bluth releases an admirable stronghold against the oncoming tidal wave of cutesy drivel piling up in the industry. All Dogs Go to Heaven took a few steps towards what today's kids movies represent, but still told a compelling and gritty story, especially for its time. A glance at its cover and it looks wholesome, but make no mistake, this movie follows the story of two smoking, drinking dogs, one of whom co-owns a gambling bracket. Not long into the movie, his business partner gets him drunk and runs him down with a car in an act of unbridled greed. Our hero, Charlie, condemns himself to Hell by escaping heaven and returning to the world of the living. He reunites with his friend Itchy, at which point they proceed to exploit an orphan's ability to speak with animals as a means of rigging horse races.

So how pissed am I when we have to consider something like The Incredibles "daring" in this day and age, just because it deals with some bleak views? It pains me that nothing like either of two aforementioned movies will ever be released again. It's depressing that I'll find more childrens' movies I respect by looking backward than will ever be released during my lifetime. It absolutely kills me that the mainstream idea of 'style' in 3D animated movies revolves almost completely around proportions.

If I ever have kids, I'm not taking them to see Ice Age 7. We're popping my All Dogs Go to Heaven cassette into the dusty VCR and making sure at least one more kid ends up aware that sometimes life spits in your drink and pushes you down the stairs. I'm not gonna be the parent that blames the media for their own failures as a caregiver. I can only blame them for piling all of the best childrens' stories of our time onto a dead cassette format.

End rant. Sorry if that got pretentious, long-winded or melodramatic :P

Where did we go wrong?


Comments

I miss the old days.

Y2k, that's where.

That rant wasn't "pretentious, long-winded, or melodramatic". It was true. Too many media outlets, parents' groups, and others want to give children a sugary-sweet view of the world for 18 years and then push them into reality, where they'll be lost.

I still haven't gotten around to seeing Watership Down....

Never a better time than the present.

Sadly the world has reached a whole new level of sensitivity and over-protectiveness. This has gotten much worse especially recently, things that wouldn't have been "controversial" or "daring" as early was the 90's are now considerent Hot shit in the 2000's, and i find it saddening. I remember watching Watership Down on the vid when i was a little kid, it was a shock compared to stuff i was used to but i enjoyed it, another program thats similar if you wish to check it out is The Animals of Farthing Wood which was a tv series for kids on BBC, it was pretty similar in that it showed the brutality of nature, although if you want to find it you'll be hard pressed as it hasn't really seen much of a release. I agree with you on this matter completely and all i can say is that hopefully the media will take a trip down reality lane before we all become media sensitive and deny people and their kids the realistic and potentially brutal but honest and compelling stuff they should have.

Aye, true say.

...this is why I love old movies. New children's shows also pale in comparison to old ones like Transformers, GI Joe, and Thnudercats. While I do admit some new shows like Avatar are incredible, the glory days of old animation have long passed.

Yeah, I'd say that's true but to a much lesser degree. Television has always been much more rating-sensitive than movies, so even old cartoons are kinda campy and wholesome unless you look pretty far back.

I agree with you, movies back in the day we're a lot better.

I think I'll join in the melodramic ranting! :O

I watched watership down when I was very little, and it scared the be-jesus out of me... It's a dark film about how shit life is, almost nothing good happens to those poor rabbits. The book was written in darker times, when English society was struggling with pollution from industrialisation, economic issues, diseases like polio and rubella, the arms race and impending war. Darker times will come again, and from those times darker stories will appear to warn and prepare our children, until then I'll be dancing around with my kids to the madagascan monkeys. Have you seen Persepolis? It's a new film about a girl who grew up in Iran during the revolution, I'll be showing that to my kids, we'll maybe when their 10 or 12, so that they appreciate the delicate balance of society.

Haven't so much as heard of it. I'll have to look into that.

Flip the channel to nickelodean. There's a 95% chance you will see a show with a talking monkey.

I don't have cable and it doesn't even bother me.

Soccer moms. That's where we went wrong.

According to the FCC, one person equals one million, and that's really all it takes to change how something is displayed on the media.

For example, even Fox Kids, which is now 4Kids, used to have shows like Escaflowne where you'd see characters die on a regular basis. In fact, there was an instance where you saw the hero slice his rival's face open, blood and all, UNCENSORED. This was a Saturday morning cartoon show broadcast over the air; you didn't need cable!

Include shows like Monster Rancher and Roughnecks where death and deceit are commonplace and even the 90's had some pretty explicit stuff by today's standards.

However, again, soccer moms caught on to these shows and decided to speak out, thus limiting what people are able to watch.

I know my comment sounds basic and almost unsupported, but it's the truth. Shows like Ultimate Muscle and One Piece were canned because the ever-growing explicit content just made the cautious audience and studio say 'forget it' and move on.

Kinda makes you wonder where it'll stop. Might get to a point where you can't portray death, even gracefully.

Good old days...

Now days its just fantasy movies, that dont show the people or kids the real world where not all is that "happy".

Watership Down is surprisingly brutal and powerful for a kids film.
It's still difficult to watch even today.
Even the artwork for the video featured one of the characters with his head caught in a rabbit-snare..

<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/42/Movie_poster_watership_down.jpg">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /en/4/42/Movie_poster_watership_down.
jpg</a>

When the film was released in the U.S the poster was considered too scary for kids so they were unsurprisingly forced into giving it the "Disney" treatment...

<a href="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005UF84.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg">http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00 005UF84.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg</a>

It received a lot more complaints because parents were fooled into thinking it was a nice, fluffy cartoon for the kids.

Oh God. I had seen the traditional cover but not the debauchery that is the American cover.

I still get moist eyed when I watch The Last Unicorn... and there was another one about 4 wizards, damn I wish I could remember. It used to be one of my favorites... I want to watch it now T-T

I think it was called The Dragon's Flight or something.

Haha, I'm always popping into pawn shops and whatever other last refuges of VHS I can find, looking for the classics before they become impossible to find.

You are true, I believe. But I love pretty much every movie I've seen mentioned above. Incredibles? Loved it. Madagascar? Pretty good. All Dogs go to Heaven? It's been years, but I think I used to love it. Watership Down? Well, never heard of it. Ice Age? Loved it. And while I doubt I'll still have a lot of the innocent movies I used to love in 15 years or so, I'd still show them to my kids if I did. I'd show them movies that I think we'd like. Sure, it won't tell them about what life is like, but I can teach them that in a different way.

On a somewhat related note, I'm dying to watch Toy Story again. <_< >_>

I actually enjoyed Toy Story. It doesn't really fit the formula of today.
And I suppose it doesn't bother me that these movies exist, it's just the type I grew up with don't.

Using Don Bluth films to insult the Incredibles?
I agree with the sentiment that kids films these days are too wimpy.
But you're using WATERSHIP DOWN....a FILM about RABBITS violently escaping poison gas and tearing the fucking SHIT out of each other....

....and you are comparing it to The Incredibles....a tribute to silver age comic books about a dysfunctional family of superheroes living in the suburbs made by Brad Bird?

yeah ok.

Yes, it is a stark comparison, but what else can I compare it to? What would you consider to be the three most daring *mainstream* kids movies of the last decade?

At least we have newgrounds to satisfy our gritty cartoon needs...

And I love Newgrounds for it, but a 5 minute Flash can only carry so much impact when compared to a feature length film.

this is the year 2008, where if you stick a bunch of famous celebrities on an animation project it automatically sells millions and teaches kids that it's perfectly okay to have no fucking sense whatsoever. Welcome.

that film os showing at the film channel all the time and it just seems like some fucked up shit.

also tell the kids to see wall E instead

I am so glad that i was raised on the old movies, teaching me about the world a lot better than "If you try hard enough, it can happen" I hate that saying with a passion

Yeah. I don't mind optimism, but keep it realistic, heh.

you suck

A well founded argument, sir.

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