A blog for writers writing everything from history to suspense. Wife, blogger, writer.
Censorship in Cartoons and Comics
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How much of your cartoons and comics are censored? How much can content creators get away with and publishers let pass to the public? Today we're finding out.
Courtesy of animatedtimes.com
Comic books have been legitimately censored for a long time. While there is a Marvel Knights category for only adults, the majority of it has to be acceptable to the public to be sold. Horror comics had a real heck of a time due to extensive censoring and not being able to use specific words. Even then, you can open a Green Arrow comic and find a bit more of Black Canary than you bargained for. It almost depends on the artist who made the book, if we're truly honest. Yet, I know that comics have been under specific standards for years. There are R-rated comic books (Deadpool and many more) out there. Some of them are not mainstream.
As for cartoons, the 1980s and 1990s got a lot past the censors that kids wouldn't have even recognized. Adults, however, can immediately recognize it. I watched a Scooby Doo movie that literally explained Wicca. If you don't know Wicca you'd never have noticed (which none of my family did, so none of us did). Long story short, a lot can get inserted into kids' movies and cartoons that quite possibly shouldn't be there. Like comics, you can also get more than you bargained for. The difference in kids' movies is that it just happens to fly miles over a young child's head and land in the face of the parents. Comics are generally picked up by junior high age and up, making the content less likely to fly over their heads.
I will say this now and be done with it. Yes, pornography has made it into nearly every media form, including cartoons and comics. I will not be focusing on that aspect, but do want to acknowledge that it does exist and needs to be dealt with.
Comics
Comic books land all over the board on ratings. There are indeed genres (Marvel Knights, for example) that come with the expectation of less censorship. Moon Knight and Morbius are two examples of Marvel Knights characters, which were marketed to adults so they had to deal with less censoring. Forums online will tell you that plenty of nudity made it into comic books. Test that theory at your own risk. Dark plotlines in Batman tend to show up because of the Joker and several other violent criminals. Green Arrow can't keep his hands off Black Canary - or even finish dinner without losing self-control. There are adults who actually do want to see nude characters (hardly shocking after the pornography business has been so successful) and have talked about this on forums online, though they do think that those comic books should have a marked rating or some way of showing it contains adult content.
Courtesy of centralrecorder.com
With all that, how can the comics possibly be censored? Well, it depends on what time your comic book was written. There was a time period of moral panic over comic books. McCarthyism (cold war panic) hit comic artists hard. Comics Code said what you could and couldn't put in your book after that point. Good had to win, the government was respected, and no divorce was allowed. Basically, it tied up comic artists and threw some of their creative ideas into the garbage can. It made it so that only kids could enjoy comics (which isn't true anymore). The 1930s to 1950s was a time of war and the cold war, making any comic entertainment that could distract the public a booming business. Look at Captain America and Wonder Woman, who both debuted in 1941. At that point, comics took off, but horror comics were extremely restricted for a long time due to pressure from church groups because parents thought they caused juvenile delinquency. People like Fredric Wertham made comics seem like they were sexually aggressive (though he was misguided) and people followed him. This was about the time Comics Code came about, cutting off the creativity of many artists for years to come. TV trying to take the place of comics didn't help.
Here is a list of what the Comics Code said:
- a clear line between bad and good (good had to win) - no sexy or nude images
- no torture - no werewolves, vampires, zombies, ghouls - no slang or vulgar language
- no dealing with race or religious prejudice
Courtesy of getwallpapers.com
In short, only superheroes really made it through this filter and that is why we see so much of it, instead of romance and western storylines. Batman was changed into the campy, kid-friendly character that inspired the old TV show, instead of the gritty character he'd been and is now. Underground comics came into being as a result of this code. The code's grip loosened as time marched on, but the code truly died when comic artists' publishers decided to sell to comic book stores themselves, dropping distributors and dropping the code on the way. In this way, it does depend on when the book was written, so today you'll see less filtering than you did in 1950. Frankly, you see less censoring as time marches on, anyway.
Cartoons
There have been many content creators who constantly push the envelope on what they can slip past censors. What you also have to take into account is that adults have to watch movies with their kids. In short, you have to also entertain adults. Animaniacs, Spongebob, Rocko's Modern Life, Victorious, Fairly Odd Parents, Looney Tunes, Icarly, Hey Arnold, Rugrats, Johnny Bravo, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Powerpuff Girls..... All these shows got adult jokes through the censors - and some did habitually. Rocko's Modern Life was a bunch of adult jokes crammed in with the hope that the censors wouldn't catch it. Half the time, they didn't. You'll notice that the cartoons aimed at adults are not listed here, because adults don't need as much censoring as kids' cartoons do. Go watch some of those shows and count how many times that innuendos made it in. Another notable one is Totally Spies, which I grew up on and own DVDs of. It has been called fetish fuel before (though a kid would never have noticed). I'll let Saberspark explain in the video below.
Many cartoons have to get past censors to get released. Yes, cartoons got away with a lot (Looney Tunes especially), but there are some cartoons that Disney locked in a vault and you have to sign a paper to watch. Some are kept for historical purposes only, never to be released for public viewing again. The rating system is part of this system, ensuring you know what you are getting into when you put in that movie or turn on your TV. War cartoons got less censoring and it is not consistent, sometimes even hypocritical. War cartoons can sometimes make you cringe a bit. The military got training videos that show nude depictions of women. The thing is that censoring can happen post-production now, as opposed to prior permission after looking at the script. Creators lose some of their content without their permission. Kids' cartoons get this treatment most often. For the most part, we do rely on self-censoring (as parents and adults). What our society censors depends entirely on what our society finds appropriate, which explains why media doesn't always age gracefully. Censoring is also not catching everything, as proven by Rocko's Modern Life.
Conclusions
What it all boils down to is this; what our society deems appropriate gets broadcasted or published more easily. I have always suspected that the 1950s cold war damaged our society by creating unnecessary rules. I keep finding proof of this in many ways, from gender rules that put us in boxes to rules that keep artists from releasing unique creations. It seems like cartoons didn't suffer as much as comics did.
It is great advice to watch everything and read everything with your brain turned on. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy it; it simply means that you should know what messages are being broadcasted through your TV and any forms of media. Kids don't do this naturally, so do this for them as a parent. I don't advocate censorship that severely restricted comics into practically one genre, but I do believe there are some things kids shouldn't see. Be aware that censors don't catch everything in your kids' cartoons. Censorship will change with our society's whims.
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