- This video is brought
to you by Magic Spoon. (upbeat music) What's up, guys? Michael here. Given the general state of things in the live action hellscape of 2021, it makes sense that a lot of us would look to the lighter, brighter
world of animation for some wholesome escapism. However, it seems like recently, our cartoon buddies are going through it just as badly as we are. Whether they're suffering
from addiction issues, coping with toxic familial relationships, or navigating systemic
sexism, the cartoon characters in our favorite recent
adult animation shows seem to be dealing with just
about every dark subject under the sun. So, with the boundless possibilities
which animation offers, why are we gravitating towards characters who are working through real
life traumatic experiences? And in doing so, have
we actually found a way to use adult animation
as a kind of therapy? Let's talk about it in
this Wisecrack Edition on "Why Adult Animation
Feels Like Therapy." Spoilers ahead for a bunch of
sad cartoon people/animals. But before we get into it,
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you, too, so try it out. Find your favorite flavor. And now, back to the show. Now, before we can break down recent trends in adult animation, we need to take a look at its past. Contrary to popular knowledge, early animation was pretty
adulty, featuring raunchy, boozy, and sometimes
straight-up terrifying content. Note: we cover this extensively in our "Origins of Adult Animation" video, so be sure to check it out. With the rising number of
American households with TVs, animation began to be specifically
marketed towards kids, with the occasional
family-friendly exception like "The Flintstones." Of course, Fred and his prehistoric
pals were rarely dealing with anything quite as
heavy as today's characters. Well, except for that
episode about infertility, which was over my childhood head. - We're so anxious to have a baby, we take it out on Fred and Wilma. - [Michael] The show was mostly just about a simple fella
who liked to eat, bowl, and convert animals into
household appliances. - It's a living. - [Michael] A true everyman. What's more, "The Flintstones" was basically just an animated take on domestic sitcoms
like "The Honeymooners." And even when "The Simpsons" arrived to shake things up almost 30 years later, this was still the template
they were working from. Not that "The Simpsons" never got dark. ♪ Like my loafers, former gophers ♪ ♪ It was that or skin my chauffeurs ♪ ♪ But a greyhound fur
tuxedo would be best ♪ The third episode has Homer on the verge of killing himself, after all. - [Homer] By the time you read this, I will be in my watery grave. - [Michael] But the
show was more interested in the little flaws and foibles of lower-middle-class life in America than the depths of human suffering. And no matter how somber
the subject matter of any given episode might be, it still functioned in
that classic sitcom mold: you were guaranteed that
everything would be wrapped up neatly before the end credits rolled. Well, almost always. - Come on, say something conclusive! - I'm afraid this is a
very open-ended problem. - [Michael] The success of "The Simpsons" spawned a whole wave of animated shows designed to appeal to an older audience, with the likes of "South Park" and "Family Guy" making
it explicitly clear that they were not for children. And I do mean explicitly. - Peaches. Peaches, I'm sorry. - Damn it! You could've at least
given me some warning. - [Michael] But while these
shows were comfortable wading into darker waters
than "The Simpsons" with whole episodes dedicated to topics like sexual harassment,
child abuse, and racism, they largely did so in the
name of subversion and satire. This was typically hilarious
and even insightful, but which was unlikely to tell you much about what it meant to be a real person navigating any of the
subjects they discussed. They were very smart, but didn't do much for audiences looking for
sincere emotional pathos. It's the difference between watching Kenny
die for the hundredth time and watching "BoJack Horseman"
character Sarah Lynn die once, an experience from which I will probably never recover. - Right, Sarah Lynn? Sarah Lynn? - [Michael] Suffice to say,
you're likely not shooting to provoke intense emotions if, say, you're also a show that's happy to have one of your lead characters feed another kid's parents
to him via a bowl of chili. - Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh! I made you eat your parents! - The point of this
kind of adult animation was to use the looser
boundaries of the medium to go completely balls to the
wall, putting things on screen that would either be physically impossible or extremely illegal if done
by an actual human being. It was about leaning into
the chaos to mine comedy from all the darkest, most (beep)-up stuff the writers could come up with. And it was okay to
laugh at it all because, ultimately, they were
just cartoons, right? But in more recent years, we've seen more and more shows ask us to emotionally invest
in our animated friends at a much deeper level. Adult animation is still
as wild as it's ever been. One glance at "Rick and Morty's"
phone-munching chair-people or "Tuca & Bertie's"
turtle-hoarding neighbor will tell you that. But they've integrated
some of the harshest parts of our reality into their
own colorful worlds. The prime example is
"BoJack Horseman," which, despite its constant punning
and weird animal antics, is basically a whole
show about depression. It explores mental illness in a way that often veers into the
territory of addiction- - Is this, like, an AA thing? - No, I don't need AA. - [Michael] childhood trauma- (Harper grunts)
(others laughing) - [Michael] PTSD-
- Oh. (ominous music) - [Michael] and a host of other places where unhappiness can take root. Similarly, "Big Mouth's"
animated middle school hijinks allow it to dig into the
messy parts of adolescence, as well as the psychological toll that divorce can take on a kid. And Rick and Morty might go on adventures through a multiverse full of giant butts and greasy grandmas, but the heart of their story
is usually about self-hatred, despair, and broken relationships. And even a show as visually delightful and formally playful as "Tuca
& Bertie" still finds a way to deal with painful
subjects like sexual assault. - Tuca, I have to tell you something. - So whichever present-day
adult animated series you're into, it's safe to say
that we've come a long way from the gentle rhythms
and easy resolutions of Bedrock and Springfield and that where we are now
is a hell of a lot darker. So the big question is, why? Why would we look towards places full of talking animals and Shame Wizards to explore the harsher parts
of the human experience? Part of the appeal might have to do with the medium of animation. Animated characters have an inherent sort of universality about them. In "Animation: Genre and Authorship," scholar and artist Paul Wells summarizes psychoanalyst Martin Grotjahn, writing that "the animated
figure works as a symbol that transcends materiality,
but makes material impact." Essentially, cartoons
can actually be easier for us to project ourselves
onto because they're not real. I mean, have you ever felt more seen by a flesh-and-blood human being than you have looking at
the "this is fine" dog? Similarly, animation expert
Professor Paul Wells has said that animation itself creates
"a space for characters, or phenomena, to operate on more symbolic or metaphoric terms and conditions," which "invites a greater degree of possibly highly charged emotive or abstract interpretation." Animation is by nature a bunch of symbols that we've created to represent reality, so it kinda makes sense
that we'd be inclined to engage with them on
a metaphorical level, even if some of those symbols are things like sperm monsters and centaurs. Animation is also far
less beholden to logic than most other mainstream entertainment. We'll gladly accept characters surviving things that should kill them or entire cities being flattened
and then instantly rebuilt, just so long as everyone
involved is made of ink. And on a different level,
it's also less beholden to the dominant logic of our societies, so "Rick and Morty" can point
out economic exploitation in a way that would make
a live action comedy feel like a huge bummer. - Does he like it? - It's a metaphor for capitalism, Morty. What do you think? - What's more, being less tethered to reality often allows animated shows to evoke their characters' feelings and mental states much more directly, something which "BoJack Horseman" was always uncomfortably great at. Think about the opening credits, where we watch him float through scenes from his life in an
emotionally detached haze. Later, we come to understand it's his primary defense mechanism. Or consider the incredible, almost wordless underwater episode, where BoJack is forced to navigate a world he doesn't understand
without being able to talk, emphasizing his emotional isolation. Or think about the
increasingly abstracted visuals used to portray his emotional
breakdown in season 5, allowing us to experience
the disintegration of reality right alongside him. In one such episode, the full immersive capacity
of animation allows for his costar and girlfriend
Gina's cliche showtune song to read as dark and menacing, complete with dancing popsicles. Part of the reason we were able to get such a rich understanding
of BoJack as a character was because the entire
show could be warped to reflect his interior life and make it visible to the viewer. - Has anyone ever come
back from this place? (Herb sighs) - BJ, there is no place. It's just your brain going through what it feels like it has to go through. - And this is true whether he's running through the washed-out
imagery of his youth or watching Diane, the only person to ever effectively call
him out on his bull(beep), turn into a terrifying monster. Of course, it goes without saying that adult animation's
introspective possibilities for achieving subjectivity
also makes it very good at depicting drug experiences. Similar tactics have been employed by a host of other adult
animated shows, too. "Big Mouth" was able to make
a full-blown musical spectacle out of a young woman's first period. This reflects how, from
Jessie's point of view, having everyone know she was on her period felt about as seismic and humiliating as being followed by a
giant, singing tampon. In "Tuca & Bertie," quote-unquote "reality"
is similarly malleable. When gentrification
threatens their neighborhood, it's symbolized by a pervasive moss that creeps into the
birds' apartment building. When Tuca brushes fingers with her crush, she's so excited that her
bones literally fall out and Bertie has to pick them
up, which is what a brush with a crush truly feels like, isn't it? And, of course, there's
the show's deft handling of Bertie's sexual
assault when she was 12. The show's normally chaotic
animation style falls away in favor of a pared-down color
palette and faceless figures. And it's the magic of animation that lets us truly see the experience from the victim's perspective. There's also the various outlandish ways "The Boondocks" found to
use Japanese anime style to explore Black American trauma. Sometimes that means bringing
Martin Luther King Jr. back to life to comment on
contemporary Black culture, something that might border on sacrilege if employed in live action. And frequently, that means
empowering its central character, Huey, to engage in
gravity-defying fight scenes that, in their outlandishness,
paradoxically manage to accurately reflect the full scope of his inner power and rage. When you take a look around, the anything-goes nature of
animation actually allows it to aim directly at the
stuff that's the most real. Okay, so that might explain
why animation is so effective at exploring the inner
lives of its characters. But that still leaves the
bigger question: why do we care? Why do we seem to get so much value out of watching animated
characters process their pain? If you were to ask Ancient Greece's biggest intellectual show-off, Aristotle, he might tell you that
it's all about catharsis, that watching characters
undergo tragedy provides us with a vital release for our own feelings of sadness, fear, and anger. And while many parts of
these shows may be symbolic, they tend to get very literal when it comes to darker issues. We might not know what it's like to have our fiance stolen by a cyborg or our wife killed by a version of ourselves from another dimension, but we've got plenty of experience with the other issues which
affect these characters. Rick, Archer, and BoJack all
struggle with alcohol issues, as do about 6% of American adults. And one out of every nine
Americans over the age of 65 suffers from the sort of dementia that's so brutally portrayed in BoJack. And over 400,000 more Americans each year will sadly be able to
relate far too easily to the experience of sexual
assault in "Tuca & Bertie." In their journey through the
darker corners of existence, these shows will almost certainly bump up on something that either the viewer or someone in their life has dealt with, making it all powerfully, painfully real. But what really makes these animated shows hit quite so hard? It's probably all the
hours we spent staring square-eyed at cartoons
while we were children. And it turns out our parents were right that all that TV time would mess us up. My bad, Dad. Although they probably just thought it would ruin our eyes
and attention spans, not that we would one
day be emotionally ruined by watching a horse-man accidentally seducing a teenage deer. So actually, never mind, Dad. I take it back. Animated shows carry
an even greater pathos for those of us who grew up watching them because they present what Wells describes as the "fictionalized
notion of consciousness, which, if imagined real, both recalls the playful and
liberal apparatus of childhood and makes concrete the
irony and contradiction of the adult sensibility." What that means is that adult
animation occupies a sort of liminal space that splits
the difference between the fond childhood memories
which the medium recalls and the brutal adult realities
which modern shows portray. So we come to these shows with
all the emotional openness of a sweet summer child, only to be met with the wall-to-wall adult
misery that's on display. And it might even be more than that, because in our softened,
cartoon-watching state, we aren't braced for an emotional
gut punch the way we are checking out a prestige live
action series over on HBO. So when we watch BoJack
strangling his costar while in the midst of a
drug-addled nervous breakdown or come face-to-face
with the crushing sadness of Woodhouse's death in "Archer," it can catch us completely off guard. - And he had a good, long life. - He did, for a heroin addict. - The anything-goes,
consequence-free antics of our "Looney Tunes"
days suddenly gives way to the absolute reality
of what's happening to the characters on screen, and we're forced to accept
that the wounds being made won't just be erased and
replaced for the next frame. They're here to stay, every bit as permanent as the
marks we make in real life. Of course, you can always
just pull a Rick Sanchez and reject this sort of therapeutic
value right out of hand. - I don't think going to a
rented office in a strip mall to listen to some agent of averageness explain which words mean which feelings has ever helped anyone do anything. I think it's helped a lot of people get comfortable and stop panicking, which is a state of mind we
value in the animals we eat, but not something I want for myself. - But to do so would surely
be missing a large part of what these shows have to offer. We're in the midst of a
golden age of adult animation, thanks to a bunch of shows
with a lot on their minds. And it seems like it's the same stuff that a lot of us are going through, too. So maybe we can work through life's more
painful aspects together with a few badass action sequences, bizarre musical numbers, and outlandish sight gags thrown in to let us have some fun along the way. But what do you guys think? Why do shows like "BoJack
Horseman" seem to (beep) us up so much more than shows which
don't include asexual axolotls and strip-dancing orcas? Feel free to play armchair psychologist down in the comments. Thanks as always to our
Patrons for all your support, and remember to check out our podcast. Hit that subscribe button like you're Bertie punching pastry dough, and don't forget to ring that bell. And as always, thanks for watching. Later. (buoyant music)
