A subversive trend: In defense of "trippy" animated comedies

I have this debate with my dad almost every time he stumbles upon a show I like. With the younger adult demographic being fed things like Black Jesus: loud, rutterless and only funny if you’re willing to sacrifice a bit of intelligence, a lot of fiction is becoming less and less inclusive. It started with Adult Swim, sure, but this trend of weird, almost always animated shows has spread to almost every major station. I’ve never met someone from an older generation that enjoyed the stupidity of something like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or John Benjamin Has a Van (Whose titular character and real life human has lent at least his voice to a staggering number of the programs in this genre.) Looking at these shows logically, which is something these shows count on you not doing, I can totally see where older folks are coming from.

One fact brought to light by these trippy, animated comedies, and live-action shows in the same style, is that something doesn’t have to be good to be enjoyable. Everyone is aware of this to some degree. That’s why, when a Dolph Lundgren action flick comes on our television screens at 2 o clock in the afternoon, we don’t angrily press our red off button with enough force to dislodge it from its little socket. A lot of those old action movies are bad on purpose too, but the trippy comedies of today actually take that intentional suck a step farther.

Series with a lot of action will feature rough looking, overly badass leads that give off a vibe best described as “faux-grit”. The voice-actors, or real actors, will put on an overly dark, raspy voice like Rorschach in Watchmen (Only that guy was being serious) and will have certain aspects of their character type played up where appropriate: air-headedness, bloodlust, the fact that their tough exterior is compensating for some hilarious character flaw. Where this varies from traditional satire is that the joke goes on for so long, and the characters are put up against so much real action, that series like Venture Bros. and Metalocalypse only seem like half-satires.

Action series will sometimes have episodes where very few, if any jokes are told. Family Guy actually does this, but with more of an emphasis on melodrama and adventure when they decide to have a serious episode. This constant experimentation with different genres definitely draws in viewers with a different kind of thinking pattern, and establishes a different set of rules for kids hoping to make their own shows one day.

Perhaps the reason my dad, along with a good chunk of america, get tired of these shows is that they rely on writing tools that are generally regarded as lazy and lowbrow: repetition, gross-out gags, etc. This has caused a lot of outcry from the "cultured" critics of Fancyville, who give no merit to a program that would stoop that low. The belief is that stupid humor makes for a stupid show, and that's something this genre loves to challenge. In the same breath that someone makes a poop joke, they may also reference some obscure historical figure. Adventure Time in particular features almost as many references to nuclear war and emotional bonds as it does nonsense jokes and funny noises.

It's interesting, too, that these shows manage to appeal to both stoners and the sober, without a lot being lost on either audience. Adult Swim launched when I was in elementary school, so perhaps growing up with these shows has given us a different kind of brain, one that can switch between the logic of more conventional shows while also appreciating the absurdity of these strange programs. There's no doubt that subversive writing is becoming more and more mainstream, though the actual effect this will have on programming in the future is hard to decipher. Right now it's a rather large niche for a rather specific age demographic, I'd like to get a better idea of what kinds of parents have come out of being raised on this stuff --- hopefully not ones that do a lot of drugs.