I was watching this video online talking about how there aren't many proper male role models in children's cartoons. It was all about what kind of TV you'd let your young son watch, and arguing that many of the male characters in the cartoons my generation grew up with were crazy, egotistical, trite, self-obsessed and downright mean, and how you shouldn't let your kids watch that.
Much as I love the creator of the video, I found this a bit far-fetched. It got me thinking about our earliest models.
Do we grow up to become our cartoon models?
While media is no doubt a powerful tool of mass control and shapes the way we think and dream to a great extent, it seems to me to be far more damaging for adults than it is for children. Looking at the male characters in the cartoons I watched as a kid, I see that yeah, a lot of them were kooky and not really what you'd want your kids to grow up to be. Many were violent and mean and silly. Yet I don't know a single guy who grew up in my generation to emulate that. And if they did, I don't think the cartoons were to blame.
The video mentioned Johnny Bravo, a character who (for those who might not know) was a blonde, very muscly womanizer whose sole purpose in the show was to get laid. It was intensely funny and kids loved it, even if we had no idea what "getting laid" was.
It's the sort of thing that, as a grown-up, makes you go "how the hell did they get away with that?". But not as a kid. As a kid, you overlook all those "bad" lessons that the adult is so keen to pick up on, you know?
Interestingly, my generation, and people a bit older (30-ish) do seem to be quite intent on womanizing today. This is the age of the fuck boy, after all. Guilt-free, string-free sex that you can dial from your couch is just around the corner, and young men seem to think they can get their cake and eat it too, without having to shill out the flowers or the candle-lit dinner or whatever.
Is Johnny Bravo to blame?!
Or could it be the fault of the porn industry, of a culture that devalues not only women but inter-personal relationships? The destruction of the family as a social unit, the obsessive development of new digital toys to keep us away from the "real world" and from interacting with other people -- could those be to blame?
Googling "toxic male cartoon characters", the number one result is The Beast from Disney's The Beauty and the Beast. Presumably because he imprisons a girl and is quite grouchy. Huh. I'm wondering how many boys actually thought "yeah I'm gonna grow up and imprison some chick and be an asshole until she falls for me"?
Obviously, there's much to be said about the girl "awaiting her prince" trope here, which could be harmful, but overall, I fail to see how that's "toxic".
If anything, Beauty and the Beast tells boys to stop being jerks and not go live alone in their own fortress of solitude. Again, there is a rise in solitude and anti-social behavior in our generation, but could that be explained by the increasingly demanding technology that surrounds us? The absurd economy that forces us to slave the day away at jobs we hate?
Or is that just me seeing that?
Who did I try to be, growing up?
Although the question revolved around boys' role models, I inevitably looked back on my own life. When I was a kid, there was no cooler game than Totally Spies. None. I always, always wanted to be Clover cause she was blonde and stylish and had a lot of boys who liked her.
I don't think I turned out like that. If I did, I don't think Clover was particularly to blame.
If I try to identify television characters I wanted to emulate, I inevitably turn to somewhat older role models. I wanted to emulate pretty much all the girls in Sex and the City when I was a teen. I wanted to be Rory Gilmore. All the female characters that somehow got to shape my behavior were slightly older and all belonged to an age where I was consciously trying to decide who I was going to be.
Obviously, unconsciously, that's being decided at a very young age, though it seems to me that young kids are far more likely to emulate the real-life role models around them -- their teachers, their parents, their relatives, etc. -- not someone in a cartoon, much as they might identify with said cartoon character.
Looking at the boys in my generation, while I'm sure they all went through the Ninja Turtles and Transformers phases of playground fun, now they're all trying to emulate people like Andrew Tate or other real-life characters they perceive as successful and inspiring in some way.
It seems to me kids would be fine growing up with "toxic" characters in cartoons like Johnny Bravo and the Beast if they then arrived at an adolescence and youth formed by positive, healthy role models. But they don't. If anything, they're thrown into a confusing empty abyss of meaningless sex, disconnection, and trite measures of success.
And then we wonder why so many men are "toxic".
