AnimatedFan01
Active Member
I've always wondered if violence or intense slapstick gags in children's cartoons are only permitted to certain extents with talking animal/anthropomorphic characters in ways that the bar gets set low with human characters. While violence in today's cartoons for kids certainly isn't allowed to go to the lengths of Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry anymore thanks to outraged parents causing watchdogs to maximize their censorship standards, there are still times where anthropomorphic characters in modern kid cartoons are subject to violent gags that would have fatal consequences in reality, yet aren't *too* out of line with what Boomers saw on T&J or LT. I think child characters would especially be subject to this double standard since laws protecting children make abuse towards them more serious than towards adults.
My question is, have we ever seen a human character (be them a kid or adult) be subject to the following gags:
-Being baked into certain foods
-Catching on fire
-Being diced or sliced in half
-Being skinned
-Blowing up and dissolving into ashes
If any of these have ever happened to humans in Western animation, then they would *have* to be from the pre-colorization/cel animation era, and certainly before Ren and Stimpy hit the airwaves. And they were most likely the subject of adult characters, since children (teenagers too since they're equally protected as minors, though prepubescents are especially vulnerable) are given extra protection under the FCC's censorship regulations. I've never seen any of the above gags happen on The Loud House for instance, but I've seen them several times on SpongeBob in both eras (pre- and post-2005).
Tell me, in modern kid cartoons where anthropomorphic characters coexist with humans, do you think there are some gags that would be perfectly acceptable when the animals are subject to them, but wouldn't see the light of day on national television if any of the humans, especially children, were subject to them?
My question is, have we ever seen a human character (be them a kid or adult) be subject to the following gags:
-Being baked into certain foods
-Catching on fire
-Being diced or sliced in half
-Being skinned
-Blowing up and dissolving into ashes
If any of these have ever happened to humans in Western animation, then they would *have* to be from the pre-colorization/cel animation era, and certainly before Ren and Stimpy hit the airwaves. And they were most likely the subject of adult characters, since children (teenagers too since they're equally protected as minors, though prepubescents are especially vulnerable) are given extra protection under the FCC's censorship regulations. I've never seen any of the above gags happen on The Loud House for instance, but I've seen them several times on SpongeBob in both eras (pre- and post-2005).
Tell me, in modern kid cartoons where anthropomorphic characters coexist with humans, do you think there are some gags that would be perfectly acceptable when the animals are subject to them, but wouldn't see the light of day on national television if any of the humans, especially children, were subject to them?