Children's Media

Why is children's media often better than adult media? I understand that the previous statement is a loaded, biased question, but for many people, it is very accurate. Take a trip through Youtube for a while, and you will find an entire genre of people showing off their obscure toys, obscure children's animated shows, and even obscure video games. Youtube makes a killing off of adults looking at children's media. Many of these adults make fun of children's media, but many more praise it, looking at shining examples of the past.

One group I would like to point out is animation. I'm going to talk about mainstream animation since I don't know much of the animation that we watch in class. Sorry, Professor Leeper. Now, back to my point, we can see that there is a strong animation business among the three main networks Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney channel. Shows such as Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, and a very recent show Loud House are all enjoyable cartoons designed for kids that appeal to adults. 

What do we see from adult animation, though? We see a couple of shows that have had long runs such as South Park, Family Guy, and the Simpsons. These shows are more geared towards teenagers and adults. These shows have been running a long time, and I believe that their long runs belies the ability of these shows to connect with people on some level. But all of those shows are rather old now. Of the list of cartoons I made above, the earliest one was 2010. The youngest show in that list of adult shows is Family guy, which started in 1999. Since then, there have been a couple of good adult animated shows that have come and gone, but I don't see a lot of adult shows that are keeping their audiences when it comes to animation.

Why is this? I think it has to do with the fact that we can relate to a lot of these children's shows, even when they are in ridiculous settings. Many of us experienced trouble growing up with siblings (Gravity Falls), romantic feelings (Adventure Time), and living up to other's expectations (Steven Universe). We can relate to those things. But most of these adult shows, when it comes to animation, seem to be about humor or shock value. Shock value and humor can get you a large audience, but the shocking nature of a show goes away once it's established. When South Park makes fun of anything, we write it off as just South Park being South Park. South Park has managed to be progressively more shocking in their humor, but other shows haven't managed as well.

So, I guess this is more of a personal opinion than a stated fact, but I think that cartoons for kids end up being better for adults than adult cartoons. Many children's cartoons explore deep emotional issues in ways that few adult cartoons attempt. Now, I am talking from an American animation standpoint since I know that there is a larger audience for adult cartoons in Japan. Anime often explores these issues in more adult settings, but for the sake of this post, I think that American animation tends to have better children's media than adult media. What do you think?