Why are cartoons less likely to have serious themes nowadays?

[Orby]

I remember this as a kid. Talking about death of Sesame Street. Still gets to me

Real theme starts at 4:10


I think it's very important for TV to teach kids about all important life lessons, loss, love and fear. Kids need this. I grew up in the 80's and 90's and my god kids shows knew no bounds to rip out your heart strings.

Sure some of the PSA's were cheesy as hell and really did nothing other than try and shove it down your throat. (Looking at You Captain Planet). But when TV got it right they did it really well. IF its about racism, prejudice, or addiction, TV was always there for me to teach me this stuff

I don't watch cartoons now days, I feel a bit old, sometimes if there's a show people recommend like Gravity falls I'd watch that. I remember that having some really serious themes. But for the most part I think emotional themes are still there in cartoons, but I cannot say for sure as I am not a kid anymore. Only that as a kid I remembered when I was young there were a lot of moments I remember that did give life lessons.

I grew up watching a lot of Don Bluth movies like Land Before Time, American Tale and Secret of Nimh. Don Bluth was the master of teaching lessons to kids....

As you follow the escapades or the journey of the hero through a story, it evokes some kind of emotion in the viewers. The director's job is to make sure that the audience goes through the journey and has an emotional reaction. - Don Bluth

[tyrlaan]

Society itself and the need to feed the hate and drama people is what happened to cartoons. And not just cartoons, but TV and even movies.

If you joke about race you are racist.
If you do not include a minority or a black character you are racist
If you make a joke about gays you are a homophobe
If you do not include gays in your program you are a homophobe against the LGBTQ community
If you do not include a Gender neutral you are against the LGBTQ community
If you make a joke about allergies or how people react to them you are mean.
If you speak out against government you are an anarchist
IF you speak out against religion you are something to that(not sure what lol
If you make jokes about introverts you are targeting them
If you make jokes about disabled you are mean
If you make jokes about a persons bad experiences you are mean.

If you made it to this line in this post the TL;DR is this, today's directors and producers cannot make shows that are creative to their liking or style because there will ALWAYS be someone who will be OFFENDED by something or anything that you did or did not include........\

Can you imagine all that people of today and the horrors they would have to endure if they were adults in the Golden Age of the 70's 80's and early 90's where shows and actors could actually have FUN and crack jokes and the audience KNOWING that it was just that a joke and had NO real reference or impact on the people..........

Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Red Foxx, man I miss these people and their I dont give a F**K what you think approach to comedy, movie and show design.


When you have to go through 100 different censors and make sure you include ALL the check marks of the SJW PC crowd......... is the show you are wanting to create still your original creation? When you have to completely redesign a show so that you can hit all the check marks, is it really worth the effort?

Your opinions stated here are so far removed from reality. What this sounds like to me is you like being an asshole and have gotten called out on it, so now you're projecting... A LOT.

[GennGreymane]

well are merchandise sales up or down? Most of those shows may have made money, but do current ones sell toys? Did those shows the OP remembers sell a lot of toys?

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Also as stated....... most kids are prob just watching youtube or what ever trend is next. Video games have also become waaaayyyy more prevalent.

[Priestiality]

I don't see the issue, I watch Anime for my adult themes. Outside of Watership Down and War Dogs, I don't think I've seen many cartoons with an adult theme from the West.

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Um... Deadpool? Or any Seth McFarlane movie?

I think the online crowd's mind ghosts of SJW's is slowly turning them into the biggest SJW's...

I wonder what it's like to be so offended that someone might be offended by something you end up becoming the very thing you hate?

[Icaras]

I think it just boils down to budget, with cartoons these days just having much smaller ones (assuming they're not CGI based, which a lot of shows tend to be now days).

It's why you look at an 80s cartoon, and most human characters are designed to basically look like normal people.

But then you look at stuff made now a days and stuff is massively stylized. Super Hero cartoons are a good example, compare Robin in Teen Titans Go! (Ignoring the horrible, brain destroying content of TTG...no seriously don't watch TTG, it's bad, man, it messes you up) with how Robin looked in something like super friends. in TTG he's massively super-deformed and really doesn't have alot of detail to him, where as in superfriends he does and is drawn to look like an actual person.

Another example is the TMNT, compare the art style of the most recent nick version to the 80s TMNT.

And this is why I say the shows must have much smaller budgets (not surprising when it seems like every animated show is farmed out to south korea), so ugly super deformed characters would be cheaper to both draw and animate, they have less detail so they don't take as long to draw and as they're less detailed, I'd imagine they can take more shortcuts in the animations frames (Something it's much harder to get away with when you aim have normal looking characters. That's why Dragon Ball Super copped alot of flak at 1st)

[Djuntas]

Or even just the originale DC Justice league, or the batman animated series. Those are good, especially the Batman, even if its set in a futuristic Earth.

Fuck, every time I watched my sisters TV, I cringe. Nothing of it is any good, its pure low tier animated comedy bull shit with no plot, 100% safe and crowd pleasing.