Cartoon Network – Bitch Flicks

Robin and Patriarchy in ‘Teen Titans’

However, not all of its episodes are comedic, and the show contains a number of adult themes, addressing serious issues both directly and metaphorically. Villains Slade, Brother Blood, and Trigon are patriarchal figures who physically, psychologically, and often (metaphorically) sexually attack, abuse, and assault the Teen Titans, causing them severe and often long-lasting psychological trauma.

Trigger warning for physical abuse and sexual assault.

DC’s comic book superhero team Teen Titans has been adapted and readapted as an animated series in recent years, and has a live action TV pilot in the making. The team gained newfound popularity due to Cartoon Network’s animated series Teen Titans (2003-2007), created by Glen Murakami. The show is rated TV-Y7 (for children aged 7 and up), and contains a lot of silly and, well, cartoonish humor. However, not all of its episodes are comedic, and the show contains a number of adult themes, addressing serious issues both directly and metaphorically. Villains Slade, Brother Blood, and Trigon are patriarchal figures who physically, psychologically, and often (metaphorically) sexually attack, abuse, and assault the Teen Titans, causing them severe and often long-lasting psychological trauma.

(Left to right) Beast Boy, Starfire, Robin, Cyborg, and Raven

The protagonists often internalize this trauma, thereby hurting themselves, and externalize this trauma by lashing out at and causing harm to each other. An example of this is in the episode “Haunted” in which Robin, metaphorically suffering from PTSD and having hallucinations of the villain Slade, yells at his love interest Starfire and hurts her arm. Trauma due to patriarchal figures is also experienced by the villainess Blackfire and anti-heroine Terra, who internalize the abuse, and try to find stability, success, and happiness by taking on patriarchal roles themselves. Blackfire, as queen of a planet and people looked down upon and, as evidenced in “Troq,” called racial slurs by the rest of the galaxy, attempts to force her sister into an arranged marriage for political reasons in “Betrothed.” When Starfire refuses to go along with the marriage, Blackfire physically attacks her. Starfire, and other female characters, realistically face abuse and oppression from male characters, whether strangers, enemies, friends, family, or love interests, as well as abuse and oppression from fellow female characters. It is then no wonder that this abuse is often internalized, such as when Starfire needlessly apologizes to Robin at the end of the first season for having “doubted” him.

Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy struggle to define their own masculinity after experiencing patriarchal abuse for themselves, but particularly upon witnessing patriarchal abuse of their female teammates. This is especially true of Robin and Beast Boy after recognizing their own abusive behavior toward Starfire and Raven, respectively, and apologizing for it. As Robin is the team’s leader and is arguably the main character, his character arc is one of the most developed, and much of the show’s commentary on patriarchy is done through Robin’s storylines, which most often put him in opposition to Slade, especially in the first season.

Before Slade, Brother Blood, and Trigon, another patriarchal figure affected the five Teen Titans, due to having trained their leader. Batman is often alluded to in the story, though never mentioned by name. Robin, who is White, male, and able-bodied, has privilege over the other superheroes in the show due to Batman having taken him under his (bat)wing. Though Robin would still have been talented without Batman’s help, Batman provided him with a level of intense training and real world experience in crime fighting that his other teammates lack. This extra training and experience made Robin the most qualified of the team to be its leader, and he becomes a patriarch due to the privilege afforded him by a patriarch.

Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven dressed up as Robin.

Robin struggles with this patriarchal identity, and as the team becomes more experienced and Robin learns to deal with his control issues, the team becomes more of an ensemble with less of a hierarchy. This change in Robin’s leadership role and his relationship to the rest of the team is particularly examined in the episode “The Quest,” in which Robin feels confident enough in the team’s abilities to leave them for a time while he goes on a personal mission. While he is gone, all four remaining team members dress up in Robin’s extra uniforms and act out their envy of Robin’s “cool” position as their leader, taking turns on his motorcycle and referring to each other as “Robin.” When Robin returns and catches them in the act, they at first fear punishment, but Robin instead sits down and joins them in eating pizza together, which greatly surprises them.

In the first episodes of the series, Robin doesn’t give the team enough leeway or support, sometimes treating them more as tools or his own personal soldiers, as opposed to individual people. The team needs Robin’s leadership, due to his training and experience, as evidenced in “Final Exam,” when the team thinks they have lost him. However, it is Robin’s over-controlling personality and his emotional distance that almost leads members of his team to quit. In order to keep Cyborg, his second-in-command, from leaving the team in “Divide and Conquer,” Robin has to apologize for his actions and relinquish some of his patriarchal (and White supremacist, as Cyborg is Black/Biracial Black and White) control. In the next episode, entitled “Sisters,” Robin has to show respect for Starfire, an orange-skinned immigrant from the planet Tamaran, in order to keep her on the team, connecting with her on an emotional and personal level. Due to these changes in Robin’s leadership style, the team becomes more cohesive and functional in their crime fighting, and more supportive of each other as friends. The show continues to promote integrationist values throughout the rest of its run, sometimes challenging White supremacist capitalist patriarchy, but often supporting heteronormativity.

Later in the first season, particularly in the episodes “Masks,” “Apprentice Part 1,” and “Apprentice Part 2,” it is clear that Robin still struggles with arrogance and a lust for power, control, and independence, often feeling that the team holds him back from reaching his full potential. The villain Slade taps into these desires and weaknesses for his own gain. Slade, an adult man with an army of robots, immense resources, and incredible influence and privilege, tells Robin that he sees his “potential,” and offers Robin the position of his “apprentice,” claiming he will be “like a father” to him. Robin responds that he’s “not interested,” as it would mean betraying his friends and siding with a known villain. However, when Slade threatens to kill Robin’s friends/teammates by putting his destructive “probes inside their bodies,” Robin is forced to accept Slade’s offer.

Many of the scenes between Slade and Robin have a distinctly sexual and predatory vibe, with Robin being metaphorically raped by Slade and then internalizing the trauma due to Slade insisting that Robin “enjoy[s]” the abuse. In battle, Robin lowers his stun gun when Starfire confronts him. This angers Slade, who tortures her and the rest of the team with his “probes inside their bodies” until Robin physically harms her himself. Thus, a patriarchal figure forces a patriarch-in-training to enact violence against a young woman, who is arguably coded as a Woman of Color. Enacting this violence shows Robin’s loyalty to Slade/patriarchy, and Starfire becomes “the ball” in what media critic Anita Sarkeesian has said is “the game of patriarchy.”

In order to defeat Slade, Robin claims he will find a way to “get [the] controller” of the “probes” away from Slade. This shows Robin’s desire to have control and power, as he does not want to destroy the controller, but to own it himself. Much to Robin’s chagrin, Slade notices this, and points out his and Robin’s patriarchal similarities. Robin eventually realizes that the only way to save his teammates from torture and eventual death is to give up the protection, privilege, and power over others that he has under Slade. Robin puts the same torture devices that are inside the rest of the team inside himself, and Slade is forced to stop the torturing of everyone in order to spare Robin, whom he calls “ungrateful.” The Teen Titans then, for the most part, defeat Slade as a team. The episode ends with Robin admitting that he and Slade are “a lot alike,” though, unlike Slade, who is “alone,” Robin is happy and thankful that he has friends. Though this arc reinforces heteronormativity, often through Robin’s budding relationship with Starfire, it also addresses capitalist patriarchy and its view of people as obstacles, tools, and possessions, a subject which the rest of the show’s seasons continue to address.

While Robin, a White male character, was offered a position of power and privilege by Slade, Slade does not show the same respect to other characters, even including his second apprentice, Terra. Terra, who debuts in the second season in the episode aptly titled “Terra,” is a skinny White girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. While Slade referred to Robin by name, he often addresses Terra by her position of “Apprentice,” especially in “Aftershock Part 2.” This shows how Slade ignores her identity and personhood, even though he empathized with Robin’s. The episode also creates an even clearer metaphor for sexual assault than the show did earlier with Robin. When Terra learns that the uniform Slade gave her allows him to control her body with his own body, causing her pain and controlling her movements, she tries to rip it off, and starts to cry when she can’t. When Beast Boy finds her like this, he asks Slade what he did to Terra, and Slade claims that he didn’t do anything to her that she didn’t “want [him] to.” In a particularly disturbing moment, Slade lifts a seemingly unconscious Terra by her breastplate.

Slade only respecting fellow White men is a trait he shares with other villains. In the third season, Cyborg, who is Black/Biracial, is seen as a “machine” and not a “man” by the villain Brother Blood, who is White. In the fourth season, the demon Trigon sees his daughter Raven as a “vessel” and not a human being. In the fifth and final season, the team faces the villain The Brain and his Brotherhood of Evil, who see everyone as tools, or pieces in a game of chess. Robin learns to respect and support his teammates throughout these storylines, and develops an especially close friendship with Raven, who can arguably be interpreted as being coded as a Woman of Color. The series’ strongest metaphor for sexual assault occurs in the fourth season in the episode “Birthmark,” in which Slade, who is revealed to be working for Trigon, rips off Raven’s cloak and much of her clothing. Robin, a fellow survivor of assault from Slade, supports Raven, and keeps the rest of the team from asking her invasive questions.

This storyline breaks down many barriers in media. Two fellow survivors of rape and assault support each other. A male rape survivor is shown and not shamed. A close platonic friendship between a young man and woman is also incredibly rare. A White young man is also being respectful of a (coded) Woman of Color, supporting her on her own terms, allowing her agency in what she feels she does and does not want to tell him and the rest of the team. Whiteness, maleness, and heteronormativity are still praised and privileged in Teen Titans, but hopefully future media, especially the coming pilot of the live action Teen Titans, continue to address patriarchy and the issues that the animated Teen Titans addressed.

The Revolutionary Fatness of ‘Steven Universe’

It does my heart a lot of good to watch this show and imagine a world where no one gives two craps about my weight. But I can only dream of how much this must mean to the little kids watching it. I mean, bear in mind, this is a children’s show. It is meant to be consumed by children. And those children will be watching the wacky adventures, thinking to themselves, “These heroes look like me. That means I could be a hero too!”

Garnet, Amethyst, Steven, and Pearl in the first episode.

This guest post by Deborah Pless appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

I’ve never really been comfortable cosplaying. First and foremost, because it’s always seemed like a lot of effort, but I will admit that a huge part of my hesitance has always come down to one thing: I am way too big to cosplay as any of my favorite characters.

And I know that’s self-defeating and I’m not really because who cares about body type? But I still think that. I think that I could cosplay as Peggy Carter or Xena or Veronica Mars or Lagertha or Maleficent, but I wouldn’t really look like them. And there are loads of people who will do those cosplays so much better than I could. Why bother?

It’s taken me years to break this down and analyze it for what it truly is, because I don’t really like thinking of myself as being insecure about my weight. Well, my weight and my height. I’m a fat, tall person, and frankly, I’ve never really seen a character I wanted to cosplay badly enough to make me want to put my body on display like that. Until I finally watched Steven Universe and saw something amazing: bodies. All different kinds of bodies. Some of which actually look like mine!

Steven loves food and is never shamed for it.

See, what slowly dawned on me as I started watching Steven Universe in earnest is that this show is doing something genuinely revolutionary in children’s animation. Not only is it a really interesting show about space and fighting monsters and being a hero, but it’s also a show that takes representative diversity very seriously. It’s a show that has clearly been designed intentionally, with awareness of the fact that their audience is made up of little kids longing to see themselves as the heroes on screen. And that seeing those heroes look like them would change these kids’ lives.

So for those of you who haven’t yet made Steven Universe appointment television, it goes like this. Steven Universe (Zach Callison) is a little boy who lives with his three mothers (or two mothers and pseudo-sister, if you want to be more specific) in a temple by the sea. He lives with them because he and they are Crystal Gems, a sort of alien superhero species tasked with protecting the Earth from monsters that keep trying to attack it.

Steven’s parents, Greg Universe and Rose Quartz.

Steven is only half-Gem, however. His other half is that of his human father, Greg Universe (Tom Scharpling). Steven’s biological mother was a Gem named Rose Quartz (Susan Egan). Rose tragically died in giving birth to Steven (more or less) – a plot point that becomes more important as the show goes on – and now Steven is raised by Rose’s fellow Gems. The Gems, Garnet (Estelle), Amethyst (Michaela Dietz), and Pearl (Deedee Magno) adore Steven as their own son, even if his human ways confuse them sometimes.

The bulk of the show is your standard Cartoon Network kids’ fare, albeit much more imaginative than anything I remember from my childhood. In any given episode we might see Steven and the Gems fight a horde of centipede monsters or we might just see a whole episode of Steven trying to get his action figure back from another little kid. It’s not the action and storylines that are revolutionary here – well, they are but not in terms of body size and representation – it’s the way the universe is built.

See, in the world of Steven Universe, all sorts of people get to be heroes. All sorts of people who look all sorts of different ways. Steven himself is a chubby little kid with big bushy hair, and no one ever comments on this, says that Steven is fat and should lose weight, or in any way even acknowledges it. Steven is pudgy. So what?

In fact, there is an entire episode devoted to Steven’s desire to start working out and “get beefy” as he puts it – “Coach Steven” – never once mentions Steven getting thin. That’s not one of his stated intentions or even a side effect. Steven doesn’t want to be skinny or lose weight, he just wants to put on muscle so that he can be a better fighter. And though he does corral a group of friends to work out with him, none of them say they want to lose weight either. They’re there to get strong, which is a great message.

The humans of Beach City, where most of the action of the show takes place, are a pleasing mix of races and body types. And it’s clear this is not an accident. The animators have very definitely made a choice here to include body diversity. We can see this most clearly when a close-up shot of a secondary character, Sadie (Kate Micucci) shows her to have leg hairs. That means the animators and artists specifically drew leg hairs onto Sadie’s legs because they wanted kids to see that body hair is normal and okay.

Steven tries to teach the Gems about birthday parties.

But what really gets me is the Gems. Because while the show is unclear on how much control the Gems have over their base appearances, they have the power to shapeshift and can look like whatever they want. So this makes it really interesting that a lot of the Gems we meet are what we would call “plus-sized.”

I’ve already mentioned Rose, who is characterized at one point by Greg as a “giant woman” – she is apparently over eight feet tall and very heavy – but there’s also Amethyst, who although being a very talented shapeshifter (she appears as various animals and at one point a male pro-wrestler), chooses to stick to her main form as a short, heavy-set woman. Garnet is a tower of muscles and black skin, and while Pearl is the most “conventionally attractive” of them all, being tall and thin, that seems more likely to be because that’s an efficient bodytype when your preferred weapon is a fencing foil.

The Gems have complete control over how they look, and they choose to look, well, normal. Frequently plus-sized. Non-white in some cases. They don’t look like glamorous superheroes torn from the centerfold, but like actual people you could meet on the street. If you can get past Amethyst’s skin being purple, that is.

Clearly the Gems have no internalized crap about body image or weight, but what’s super cool is that in this universe, it kind of seems like no one does. No one tells the Gems they’re ugly. A recent episode revealed that one of the recurring characters had a big crush on Garnet and thought she was incredibly beautiful. Which is good, because she is. Rose is established as having been gorgeous and beloved, and no one ever says that she was too fat to fight.

Stevonnie – a fusion of Steven and Connie – overwhelms Sadie and Lars with attractiveness.

And it’s made perfectly clear that the Gems live in a world that doesn’t acknowledge body shaming. At one point Steven and his friend Connie “fuse” into one person, fondly known as “Stevonnie.” Stevonnie is about six feet tall, genderless, and not-white, and the general reaction in town isn’t “Ah, what the hell is that thing and where did it come from!” it’s one of jaw-dropping attraction and general appreciation.

No one in this world seems to care what anyone else in this world looks like, at least not any of the characters we’re meant to like. At one point another Gem seems on the verge of pointing out that Steven is the only boy Gem, but then doesn’t. In fact, it’s never really mentioned. That fact, like the fact of Rose’s fatness or Garnet’s blackness, is never relevant to the story.

I cannot emphasize enough how important that is to a little kid. But I probably don’t have to. Chances are, you remember what it was like to want someone who looked like you in a leading role. You wanted to be able to imagine yourself as the hero, and it’s always been easier if you can look at the screen and see someone up there who looks as fat, as Black, as hairy, as short, as ridiculously tall, as whatever as you do.

The Gems are also presented as historically having these same body types.

It would be massively overstating it to say that Steven Universe has solved all of our representation problems forever. It hasn’t. Representation is still an issue that needs to be addressed. But this show is a massive step in the right direction. Fat characters whose weight is never the punchline or even the storyline. Black characters who have natural hair and are called beautiful. Women with leg hair. Women with big butts. Little boys who cry and talk about their feelings a lot. It’s all there, and it’s all really important.

In a world where the most common representation of fat women is as a problem to be fixed, where we are generally considered sexually undesirable, and where our bodies are viewed as public property to be commented and acted on at will, Steven Universe is, well, revolutionary. It gives me hope. It shows me that I can be fat and beautiful and loved, and it makes me think that just maybe there’s a little kid out there who is going to see this show and never think that being fat means they can’t be everything good too.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and sandwiches. Also, she’s totally going to cosplay as Rose Quartz this year at GeekGirlCon.

Exploring Imagination and Feminine Effacement in Cartoon Network’s ‘Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends’

Why examine this offbeat show through a feminist or ethical lens? Because ‘Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends’ (Craig McCracken, 2004-2009) is wildly inventive and subversive. Its plot, which explains that children’s imaginary friends must eventually go live at Madame Foster’s zany orphanage after he or she has outgrown their friend, insists that a child’s imagination has the power to make something real, whether adults believe it or not. At this home, young children are welcome to come and “adopt” one of the friends who is housed there. In this way, the friends are concepts that are “recycled” in order to accommodate children as they grow up.

Written by Jenny Lapekas as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Why examine this offbeat show through a feminist or ethical lens? Because Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (Craig McCracken, 2004-2009) is wildly inventive and subversive. Its plot, which explains that children’s imaginary friends must eventually go live at Madame Foster’s zany orphanage after he or she has outgrown their friend, insists that a child’s imagination has the power to make something real, whether adults believe it or not. At this home, young children are welcome to come and “adopt” one of the friends who is housed there. In this way, the friends are concepts that are “recycled” in order to accommodate children as they grow up.

It’s interesting that Wilt is created with physical defects (his eye and his arm), pointing up the fact that these are not considered flaws by his young creator, but rather just part of who he is, like a hairstyle or shoe size.

There’s a certain level of manic energy present in some of today’s children’s cartoons (see SpongeBob SquarePants), and Foster’s is no exception. It seems as if so much is taking place all at once–most of which is pure nonsense–that we must comb through a cartoon’s goofy dialogue and fast-paced antics to discover central themes of kindness, friendship, and teamwork. I grew up watching David the Gnome, Eureeka’s Castle, Will Quack Quack, Noozles, and Faerie Tale Theatre, all shows that were modest and plodding, patient in their moral messages for kids watching at home. Although Foster’s can be grouped with other kids’ shows that consistently feature a great deal of commotion, this Cartoon Network show boasts some of the most creative characters and engaging plots, even for adults who are fans of clever cartoons with positive messages for everyone. I never had an imaginary friend growing up, and this show is a reminder of that for me.

The commercial for Foster’s states that it’s a place “where good ideas aren’t forgotten.” — The commercial for *Foster’s* states that it’s a place “where good ideas aren’t forgotten.”

We have an eclectic mix of primary characters who we follow throughout the series. The atmosphere at Foster’s rests somewhere between a low level psych ward and a daycare full of rambunctious trouble-makers. Although female-gendered “friends” are largely underrepresented on the show, the lessons Foster’s has to offer to child viewers are healthy and powerful, as they promote building friendships, using your imagination to have fun, and exploring the world around you.

After a fight with his brother, Terrence, which leaves the apartment in disarray, Mac’s mother tells him that at eight years old, he should have outgrown his imaginary friend, Bloo, by now. The fact that after Mac is forced to surrender his kind imaginary friend, yet continues to visit him every day, is evidence that Mac is not quite ready to grow up yet, and perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. We’re never too old to dream, imagine, and tell stories. This pressure to “grow up” translates to a sort of censorship, which inhibits our creative impulses as adults. We can’t be afraid to embrace nonsense; it can always be the root of something spectacular.

We can assume that Mac creates Bloo to cope with the bullying he receives from his obnoxious older brother on a daily basis.

Since the inhabitants of Foster’s are the products of children’s imaginations, it may make more sense to focus on these characters, rather than the humans who help to run the institution. If we simply take a look at the appearance of many imaginary friends, we may surmise that this show is the ultimate lesson in diversity for children viewers. Wilt is very tall with some bodily “deformities,” Eduardo is a Latino creature resembling a bull, and Coco is a bird-like friend whose vocabulary stops at her own name. By observing many of the friends, we get a sense of the psychology behind each creature’s origin. Coco, for example, was dreamed up by a little girl who survives a plane crash and becomes stranded on a desert island; if we look closely, the bird’s head and hair mimic a palm tree, and her body looks like a crashed airplane. In this way, Foster’s can be seen as literally fostering childhood stressors, including the confusion many of us can remember from our early years; the home we find in this cartoon works to make sense of that uncertainty.

Coco’s image is a direct reflection of her little girl’s trauma after a near-death experience.

Because Coco is the only female character within our primary group of imaginary friends, I think it makes sense to focus on her presence in the home. Foster’s houses dozens of more friends, a few of them female, and many of them become entangled in the lives of the main characters. One secondary female character we meet right away is the insufferable Duchess, who believes that she is the best idea anyone’s ever come up with. This leaves Coco as the only primary character who is an imaginary friend in Foster’s (excluding, of course, the humans who help to run the home). What luck that Coco, in spite of her limited vocabulary (or perhaps because of), is simply delightful.

Because Coco is only able to say her own name, she must alter her tone to let her friends know if she’s happy or upset, or if she’s asking a question or giving a direction, etc. This communication has its own set of rules in relation to the other characters (see Stewie from Family Guy). When Bloo first meets her, he repeatedly says “Yes” because he thinks she’s asking if he’d like some cocoa. However, Wilt understands her and explains that she was offering Bloo some juice.

In the first episode of the series, Coco repeatedly squawks “Coco!” at Eduardo as he rescues Mac from a vicious monster created by a “jerky teenage boy,” and Eduardo eventually says in Spanish, “Yes, thanks, Coco, you have a way with words,” clearly an ironic joke that Coco is adept at resolving tense situations, despite the fact that we can’t understand her on some level. It’s also made clear that when we make friends, we eventually begin to speak the same language, even if outsiders are unable to translate it. The show’s inclusion of a Latino character also exposes children to the Spanish language, which can only be a good thing. This scene also solidifies Eduardo as a character we cannot and should not judge based on appearances alone. Despite his large stature and booming voice (not to mention that he’s a bull!), he’s the gentlest friend at Foster’s and is often terrified of children, another example of comical irony in the cartoon.

In season three, Mac responds to Coco’s “gibberish” with an ominous, “Coco, I think if we did that, we’d go to jail,” alerting us to a darker side of Foster’s and its whimsical friends. Like everything else on the show, her thought is left to our own imaginations. What’s convenient and exciting about having Coco around is that she can lay eggs that contain fun prizes. She’s so excited when Bloo arrives at Foster’s that she lays an egg filled with a Ming vase, in addition to a bundle of other mysterious items that Mac carries off when he leaves. Coco also proves her kindness on Bloo’s first night at Foster’s when she gives him an egg with Mac’s photo inside.

Mac is delighted to gather the plastic eggs Coco has laid.

Coco is important not only because she’s one of the only female characters in the house, but because her presence is a mark of understanding: that childhood is its own language, and that play and learning are interconnected and necessary for growth. What children can take away from Foster’s is the understanding that imagination is not synonymous with foolishness, and that it is a muscle to be flexed as often as possible. If this key lesson is instilled in children at a young age, we can expect them to become more creative and tolerant adults who in turn raise their own children to view the world as being full of possibilities, as opposed to the frightening monsters we carry with us from childhood. We may find that those monsters hiding in our closets when we’re kids become the unrealized ideas we hide from as adults. Foster’s materializes this concept beautifully and offers adult viewers the opportunity to live vicariously through each imaginary friend we meet.

Foster’s appeals to kids as it depicts authority figures in a patronizing light, such as the uptight Mr. Herriman, who happens to be a huge rabbit (and also reminds me of the androgynous and high-strung Rabbit of Winnie the Pooh). And yes, most of the friends we follow on the show are males. However, these are forgivable offenses considering the lightheartedness the show promotes, not to mention its celebration of childhood and the endless possibilities of the imagination. Madame Foster’s home offers childhood friends a second chance, proving that imaginary friends don’t die or disappear but are lovingly passed on to the next child who is in need of a wacky companion. Child viewers who actually entertain imaginary friends can easily find some validation in this show’s exploration of that thin line that separates reality from make-believe. Foster’s is a fantastic wonderland for young viewers and a gentle push to adults to pay attention to their child’s imaginary friend, who is always very real for the child.

Note: Season one of Foster’s is currently available on Netflix.

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Jenny holds a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.

‘Adventure Time’ vs. ‘Regular Show’

There is one thing that, for me, gives ‘Adventure Time’ a bit of an edge over ‘Regular Show’, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, ‘Regular Show’ is pretty much a bro-zone while ‘Adventure Time’ has a bit more room for the ladies.

This cross-post by Amanda Lyons appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

I probably wouldn’t know anything about either Adventure Time or Regular Show, both awesome cartoons, if I didn’t have a young niece and nephew. Happily, I do, and they have brought these shows into my life. That’s one of the things that’s so great about having children around; they keep you young.

And I don’t think there has to be a winner and a loser – there’s room for more than one at the top, y’know? It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Besides, both of these shows are awesome. They’re funny, hip, contemporary, relevant; great for kids but stuffed with adult references and jokes as well, and the animation is really great.

(Also, as an aside, Mr. Meows and young nephew Meows both insisted, before I had seen Regular Show, that I am just like Pops. This troubled me; was this a good thing or a bad thing? Were they making fun of me? When I finally saw it, I still wasn’t sure, but I can tell you one thing: they are right! BTW Pops on sugar is analogous to me on coffee)

BUT. There is one thing that, for me, gives Adventure Time a bit of an edge over Regular Show, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, RS is pretty much a bro-zone while AT has a bit more room for the ladies.

Don’t get me wrong – RS is great, and I do love it. It’s apparently PG-rated and is often required by the Cartoon Network to be toned down. As far as cartoons go, it’s edgy for sure, definitely the hipster older brother of cartoon shows. It’s packed with knowing references to the 80’s and popular culture that may fly over the heads of my niece and nephew (while still making them laugh) but hit my sense of humor square on the target.

But over an hour of watching RS, though I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot, I also felt more and more left out. RS is hip, magical and weird, but all of this comes from men only. Women are marginal and disappointingly, exist only as glorifed T&A with typical cartoon long lashes. Bros get all the funny lines and all the adventures. Women are passive, side-line decoration.

This is thrown into stark relief when you look at the cast of characters. There’s only one (kind of) significant female, Margaret the red-breasted (huh, huh) robin. She’s a secondary character, and pretty much solely exists as a babe that Mordecai has a crush on. They take this pretty far sometimes – check out this clip – fairly hot and heavy for what is, at the end of the day, a kid’s show. (Update: in the newer episodes, Margaret features more and gets to do more stuff so she seems more rounded. They have also added in her utterly adorable friend Eileen and Muscle Man’s girlfriend Starla who’s pretty bitchin’, although she conforms to that weird cartoon law that boyfriend/girlfriend characters have to look more like brother/sister. At the end of the day though, these females are all secondary and important more for how they relate to the main male characters as girlfriends/love objects rather than characters in their own right.)

I’ve addressed this kind of thing before, in my post about The Hunger Games. Maybe some of you will think I’m being whiny and nit-picky. But I find it really disappointing because I want young girls today to have a different experience from the one I had – in which the world reflected back to me was for men only; where they had all the main roles, made all the jokes, solved all the problems, went on all the adventures, while women/girls just looked on adoringly and batted their eyelashes. And it’s not only girls who are affected by this – think of all the debates recently over whether women can be funny, whether they can possibly be authentic participators in geek culture, whether they can be effective leaders in the business world, blah blah blah ad infinitum. Why is this (still) happening? Because both men and women are affected by a severe lack of positive female role models in our culture – or should I say, exposure of said role models, because they’re there, they just don’t get the air time. As documentary Miss Representation states, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” These cartoon representations may be fictional, but they affect us in our real lives, how we act and how we perceive other people – both boys and girls.

Watching RS I’m taken back to my childhood, to pretend play, and how I would always have to ‘be’ the male characters because they were the ones who were active and funny, they were the ones I admired. RS is the same – I mean, who would want to ‘be’ Margaret?? Sure, she’s cool and all, but she doesn’t do anything except get her norks out!! It worries me the kind of takeaway that kids are going to get from that, and it worries me that kids may already be encouraged to view females as sexualized bodies – it’s all around them already, do we have to put it in cartoons as well?

Oh yeah, there’s also this little gem, from an episode in which Mordecai goes on a series of bad dates. It’s your typical montage of bad date situations, but buried in there is a humorless-looking, unsmiling woman who aggressively asserts, “Oh, so you agree that women are misrepresented in most forms of popular media?” I get that the joke is about people who press their political views on you at inappropriate times, but I feel it’s telling that the writers chose to use a feminist viewpoint, and one that I would consider fairly uncontroversial at that. (Especially as this is a complaint I feel RS could do with taking under consideration – is someone feeling a little defensive? Or worse, do they consider this question annoying or irrelevant?) I also felt like it was a “joke” which had been discarded as passe by 1988, and it was perplexing and disappointing to see it come up in a kid’s cartoon. Do we want to train a new generation of kids to laugh off legitimate feminist concerns as a joke? One wonders how this would come across if they were to replace this “uptight” woman with like, a humorless civil rights activist. Not gonna lie, that did really annoy me (just call me a feminist killjoy) and RS definitely loses a few points for that one.

Princesses: Gotta Catch 'Em All — Princesses: Gotta catch ’em all

Conversely, Adventure Time is much more female-inclusive. The main two characters are still guys, but at least in their land there are a whole lot of females that get to be a significant part of the story – there are heeeeaps and heeeeaps of Princesses with a range of looks and voices. They are rulers and they have far more characteristics than their physical appearance. There’s also a parallel-universe episode where the main characters swap genders – only a one-shot (well, several-shot) but a fascinating idea, and not just done in the name of cheap gender-jokes, but executed in a way that makes it clear the opposite-gender versions of the characters are every bit the equal of the originals – althoooough the Fionna and Cake stories I’ve seen so far have tended to have a bias towards more romantic story lines, but then Finn isn’t without this either – it’s just that because he’s the main man, he gets more variation, as well.

AT is perhaps not as hip as RS, but it is just as magical – perhaps slightly more so. It’s definitely just as weird, existing in a deliciously surreal and at times kind of disturbing universe.

So, at the end of the day, while I raucously enjoy Regular Show (and identify to a worrying degree with Pops) it’s Adventure Time that really has my heart. Keep representing and taking us on your quests, Adventure Time! I love you for it.