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Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Western Animation: Difference between revisions
Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Western Animation (view source)
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Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]s in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
== ''[[King of the Hill]]'' ==
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'' has a
== ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic]]'' ==
*
** More accurately, it was about laughing at the scary things kids see in the dark.▼
== ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'' ==
* In the episode "Daisy," the title character makes up a lie to get out of doing work, and ''gets away with it''.
** "Daisy" comes as a two-parter...in the first story, she gets away with lying, but then in the very next one she gets called out on her bullsh*t and warned that she can either shape up or ship out. "Escape" is technically kinda dodgy, morals-wise...but Oliver *was* going to be scrapped if he didn't escape.▼
*
== Other works ==
* [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] has the episode abrasive side, in which the aesop is that spongebob should just let himself be pushed around.
* "Family unfriendly" aesops on ''[[The Simpsons]]'' are usually just [[Spoof Aesop|parodical]]; and the aesops they actually mean are typically more family-friendly than [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|the show itself]]; but over the long span of the show various episodes have had some rather controversial messages. Many of these are connected to the reputed liberal tone of the show, which yields messages that from time to time offend viewers of more conservative persuasions.
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** "Prick Up Your Ears" endorses pre-marital sex, asserts that vaginal sex is "just tops," pushes for schools to teach about contraceptives, and, most controversially, says that abstinence is "just wrong."
** "Seahorse Seashell Party" ends with the aesop that it's okay to be an abused (mentally and physically), depressed sack of shit living with a horrible family and taking all the blame just because if you don't, they're going to rip each other apart.
* ''[[Bucky O'Hare and the
** This could also be an [[Aesop]] for Bucky about trusting his crew and taking the advice of subordinates seriously, which may or may not qualify as a case of [[The Complainer Is Always Wrong]].
* Children's cartoons in the Eighties such as ''[[The Get Along Gang]]'' instilled a message that children should always go along with what the rest of their circle of friends thinks; if they disagree, [[The Complainer Is Always Wrong|there's obviously something wrong with them]]. Years later, the creators of the ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (animation)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' cartoon would bitch about how they had to constantly portray one of their characters as a whiner due to pressure from [[Moral Guardians|parents' groups.]] Arguably, the ''real'' lesson to be gained from ''The Get-Along Gang'' is "never associate yourself with a compulsive gambler."
** The movie was one big anti-competition message, basically stating that it's not possible to engage in competition against your friends and that anyone you compete against must be your enemy.
* One of the most ridiculous examples is the ''[[Captain Planet and the Planeteers]]'' episode "Wheeler's Ark": The Planeteers have developed a habit of picking up injured and endangered animals on their missions and bringing them back to Hope Island. Gaia, naturally, finally tells them this is impractical and orders them to take them all back. Fat
** The episode "The Numbers Game" is perplexing already (Wheeler learns a lesson that he ''already'' knew, while his friends disagree with him and learn nothing), but even that aside, it's an episode about how ''it's wrong to have more than two kids.'' Aimed at ''little kids.'' Now, imagine watching that if ''you're'' the third child in your family...
* ''[[Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!]]'' has the occasional moral that is a bit off. For example, the Aesop of ''The Grass is Always Plaider'' is supposed to be something akin to "there's no place like home," but plays out more like "places other than your hometown may seem interesting, but are actually boring once you get there."
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* ''[[Daria]]'' has a lot of these. Notable is the fifth season episode "Prize Fighters," in which Daria has to be interviewed in order to gain a scholarship. However, she learns the company offering the prize has a rather sexist and racist history, so she feels uncertain about dealing with these people. Furthermore, she doesn't want to obtain the money by acting in a false manner: acting friendly, attentive, and interesting. When she is finally interviewed, she behaves as she always does: honest, sarcastic, and clipped. One might expect her to win the scholarship based on an Aesop of being true to oneself and not putting on false pretenses. But no, the interviewer is shocked by her crass behaviour and she is refused the money after all. The real Aesop runs along the lines that in the real world, which is often unethical and imperfect, you cannot always expect to win out if you stick to your own principles.
** The entire show had a basic principle of "Everyone sucks in their own way, and adulthood is not a cure for immaturity."
▲* ''[[Thomas the Tank Engine]]'' has some pretty bad Aesops too, such as in the episode "Daisy," where the title character makes up a lie to get out of doing work, and '''gets away with it'''. Many episodes also feature lessons like "It's okay to get revenge on somebody if they annoy you" like in "Percy and the Signal." And in the episode "Escape," Douglas basically steals another engine from a different railway by deliberately fooling a signalman, and nobody seems to question the morality of it, not even the Fat Controller.
▲** "Daisy" comes as a two-parter...in the first story, she gets away with lying, but then in the very next one she gets called out on her bullsh*t and warned that she can either shape up or ship out. "Escape" is technically kinda dodgy, morals-wise...but Oliver *was* going to be scrapped if he didn't escape.
▲*** In their backstory, the Scottish Twins had resorted to the same kind of trickery to keep ''themselves'' from being scrapped. "Escape" is more about the situation with Oliver pressing their [[Berserk Button]] trigger than actual mischief-making.
▲*** Older Thomas stories do require historical context. At the time the book was written, British Railways (Britain's rail system was nationalized in 1948) was having to scrap engines they couldn't use and move to lower-maintenance diesel locomotives. Sodor's main railway, the fictional North Western region of BR, maintained operating independence and continues to use steam traction. It would have been the work of a phone call to arrange for Oliver to be officially transferred to the region. British Railways was ''glad'' of circumstances like this. They didn't want to scrap so much of their massive steam engine fleet, it was a [[Shoot the Dog]] situation.
▲*** Plus, given the "revenge on the annoying one" aesop used in "Percy and the Signal", it's pointed out toward the end that Percy thought the big engines were being silly on the subject of signals, quite possibly implying that Percy could somehow tell that they were teaching him a lesson the wrong way. Furthermore, though the same kind of aesop was used in the very first episode of the series, the US version of the episode more or less makes Gordon's motives for getting even with Thomas even less justifiable by having Thomas say "Maybe I don't have to tease Gordon to feel important", which may imply that he didn't even know that Gordon was trying to teach him a lesson and probably wasn't even listening when Gordon said "Now you know what hard work means, don't you?"
▲** "Breakvan." The Scottish Twins confronted and then (accidentally)destroyed a piece of rolling stock that kept mouthing off. The other engines ''thanked'' them. The Breakvan really was a [[Jerkass]], but the moral of this story appeared to be, if someone's bullying you, just beat the crap out of them!
▲** "Calling All Engines": People will force you to cooperate with those who are different from you, just remember that they're evil and would kill you at the first chance they had.
* ''[[Bob the Builder]]'' had a scarecrow trickster as a main character, which is fine on its own, but he is always [[Karma Houdini|"forgiven"]] and never even has to say he's sorry. Not a great character for a show for young children.
* The ''[[Thundercats]]'' episode "Pumm-Ra" ends with the arguably true but surprisingly cynical moral "If someone says they want to be your friend, you shouldn't automatically trust them." Especially if their name is [[Paper-Thin Disguise|only one letter different]] from your [[Big Bad|arch-enemy]].
▲* ''[[King of the Hill]]'' has a JARRING Family Unfriendly Aesop in season 2's "Husky Bobby." Bobby becomes a male model for a husky boys' clothing store and loves it. Hank is horrified at his son's newfound hobby and wants to him quit so he wouldn't be humiliated. Hank and Bobby actually get into a argument right before Bobby takes the runway to a husky boy fashion show, with Bobby finally confronted his dad about him not being supportive to which Hank simply dismisses. In the end, Hank succeeds in pulling Bobby out the show... right before hooligans start pelting the husky boy male models with donuts. And Bobby thanks his father for pulling him out the show and keeping him from being embarrassed. The moral? "It's not worth doing what you like or being different if you're subject to humiliation." This is especially jarring considering all the difficulties Hank and Bobby have building a relationship and Hank's disapproval of almost all of Bobby's activities.
▲** The episode where Bobby becomes the school mascot certainly applies. Basically, in the episode, Bobby becomes terrified and wishes to quit when he finds out that it's a tradition for the mascot to be beaten up by the other team. So, how do the other characters react? They verbally harass him and call him a coward, up to and including the teachers at his school. So the moral is "Tradition and commitment are more important than the physical and mental well-being of a child." The hell?
▲*** Tellingly the next time we see Bobby as the school mascot getting 'beaten' it's all just a bunch of kids PRETENDING to beat him! Even the show's own staff refuse to recognize the episode as canon!
▲**** [[Fridge Brilliance|The writers should've stuck with their guns, because the incident sounds like hazing]], and what Bobby's going through [https://web.archive.org/web/20131208224214/http://stophazing.org/definition.html hits a little too close to home for hazing victims]. [[Harsher in Hindsight|Even more so in October 2011]], when a [http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/south/view/20120524thousands_of_pages_of_evidence_detail_the_killing_of_famu_drum_major/ Florida AMU band member died from hazing, for the sake of social acceptance.]{{Dead link}} Given how football is idolized in the series, it's no surprise they saw Bobby's potential physical abuse as a rite of passage.
▲** Another one that should have taught Hank religious tolerance: "Won't You Pimai Neighbor?" Hank, who continually says he's not a redneck, refuses to allow any religious freedom in his house when Bobby is thought to be the reincarnation of lama Sanglug, and tries to force the Buddhists to stop making him a religious figure. This is made all the more upsetting by the revelation that Bobby may actually ''have'' been the re-incarnation of the lama.
▲*** It was actually BOBBY who forced them to stop treating him as a religious figure, essentially by [[Loophole Abuse|cheating on their final test]]. The senior monk clearly saw through it (and was even questioned on it by one of his subordinates who did as well) and simply passed it off with "It was my call, and I made it."
▲** In "Business Is Picking Up," Bobby is late to sign up to job-shadow program, and ends up being left with the one local business person no other kid signed up to work with: a man named Peter Sterling (played by guest star Johnny Knoxville) who owns his own waste removal service, cleaning up dog droppings and similar. Hank is horrified when Bobby takes to the apparently very profitable work and even has plans to start his own business based around vomit removal that seems to have promise. He convinces Sterling to help dissuade Bobby because he doesn't have Sterling's charisma and might be ridiculed for it.
▲** In yet another episode Bobby starts reading tarot cards and hanging around some people who did the same. Hank is horrified and tries to get Bobby to stop because he thinks people will laugh at him for having such an unusual interest. So the moral is "If other people disapprove of something you do, you MUST give it up no matter how much you enjoy it."
▲*** It also provides the family-unfriendly aesop of "If someone likes something unusual, it means they're freaky cultists that engage in creepy activities".
▲** In one episode, Hank is upset that Bobby and his teammates leave the football team which has a blantantly abusive coach to join the soccer team. By the end of the episode, Bobby realizes how wimpy soccer is and says, "C'mon guys, let's play some football!" The only apparent moral is that football is better than soccer.
▲** To be honest, somewhere between one and three quarters of all the Aesops shown in [[Kot H]] fall somewhere between Broken, Family Unfriendly and Spoof. In fact, a lot of the time that it would seem to be actually promoting something, it's laden with the subtext of "This is the way a well-meaning but somewhat ignorant person thinks." Thus perfectly in synch with the "everyday average person" schtick of the entire show...
▲** As a counterpoint, most of the ones based on Hank can be chalked up to [[Values Dissonance]]. If you are a strongly Christian man, then your son converting to Buddhism and saying that he's a reincarnation of Buddha is as dangerous to his soul as playing with dynamite is to his body. Same goes for tarot cards.
▲** In the series finale, Hank and Bobby finally bond when Bobby finds out he has a knack for testing meat for flaws to near perfection, despite it all, the only thing Hank openly felt proud about his son doing [["Well Done, Son" Guy|was something he thinks is perfection]], the fact that Bobby enjoyed it is a sweet bonus footnote, but still doesn't mesh well with all the other stuff he shot down.
* The 1934 [[Disney]] short film ''The Flying Mouse'' has a plot similar to ''The Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings'' above plus an extra dose of [[What Measure Is a Non-Cute?]]: the birds fly away from him (one baby bird who sticks around is quickly dragged off by its mother), his family runs terrified into their house and barricade it against him... only the creepy-looking bats call the bat-winged mouse "Brother" and he whimpers, "I'm not your brother!" (the insulted bats mock him with the song [[Villain Song|"You're Nothing But a Nothing"]])-- further, when he looks in a puddle, he sees his reflection change to that of a bat, causing him to try to pull the wings off, and telling the fairy who granted his wish that he wants to die!
* [[The Critic]] has a hot actress (with an upcoming movie) crushing on Jay which he and the rest of the cast see as blatant pandering for a good review... at first. She ignores Jeremy (a [[Mel Gibson]] Expy) and seems to genuinely endear herself to everyone, steering the episode to being [[Stock Aesops|"Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover"]] while Jay procrastinates about seeing her movie. He finally does, realizes she's ''god-awful'' and puts his integrity as a critic above romance... and she immediately turns nasty. [[Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat|Ironically]], if she put that much effort into her movies, she'd have more Oscars than [[Tom Hanks]].
* The ''[[Adventure Time]]'' episode "His Hero" applies. Finn and Jake are convinced to practice nonviolence by their hero Billy. After a while they realize that violence is necessary sometimes and use force to rescue an old lady that's in peril. They go back and explain that to Billy and we all learn a valuable lesson.
** Also counts as a [[Spoof Aesop]], since the actual lesson they learned was "Don't listen to old people." [[Hypocritical Humor|The old lady told them so]].
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* ''[[The Proud Family]]'' had a fairly standard episode where Penny got bullied, right up to the last minute. She eventually got the bullies to leave her alone by becoming their money manager and ends the episode happily waving her cut of the stolen money. "If you can't beat them, join them" is a fairly standard Aesop, but usually isn't applied to criminal behavior.
* Though this probably wasn't intentional, the first episode of ''[[Justice League]]'' can fairly easily be seen as having a ''pro-nuclear weapons'' slant.
* In an episode of ''[[Yogi Bear]]'', Yogi and another bear begin fighting over Cindy, and she tells them that whoever brings her the best present gets to be with her. Yogi and the other bear proceed to steal not only food but TV's and radios, Yogi eventually wins by bringing her a freaking car. Ranger Smith finds out but see's he stole it for Cindy, and decides not to turn him in because "it's spring." So the moral? "Stealing is okay if it could get you laid."▼
▲* In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', the Giggle at the Ghosties song has [[An Aesop]] about how you're supposed to laugh at your fears... So if a scary looking guy comes up to you [[Sarcasm Mode|you should laugh at him]].
▲** More accurately, it was about laughing at the scary things kids see in the dark.
▲** More recently, ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E04 Luna Eclipsed|Luna Eclipsed]],'' for which Luna spent most of the episode trying to win over the population that was irrationally afraid of her, ends with her instead deciding to instead go along with it and be the pony who scares other ponies to entertain them. A lot of viewers compare this to the concept of a deformed character joining a freak show just to try to get more approval from society.
▲** Even more recently, ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E15 The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000|The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000]]'' has the moral of "Sometimes it turns out that you were right all along and the other guys were wrong." Which is entirely true, but also entirely atypical for for a kids' show.
▲*** The whole episode is somewhere between Broken aesop, Space Whale aesop and idiot plot since the only reason the Apple family could beat the Flim-Flam brother's machine was because they got help from another 5 ponies who worked to exhaustion, the machine would have eventually defeated them if there was no time limit, and the whole town was going to let a couple of strangers to take over the city's main food supply. Not to mention that the whole conflict could have been evaded if someone had the insane idea of negotiating a fair price for both sides.
▲** The episode ''Dragon Quest'' has one at the end. At the end of the episode, Spike adopts a phoenix he names "Peewee" after refusing to smash the egg when Teenage Bully Dragons make him go on a raid. This is supposed to parallel how Spike was adopted as an egg and raised by something outside his species (IE: Ponies). One tiny little problem. No one knew who Spike's parents were and it's explicitly stated that they just found him as an egg implying his parents either died or abandoned him long before Princess Celestia found him an gave him to Twilight Sparkle. Spike, on the other hand, is '''well-aware''' who Peewee's parents are and knows where they live (IE: The Everfree Forest). Plus, he had plenty of time to go after the Phoenixes and return their egg to them. So, erm, [[Unfortunate Implications|kidnapping is fine as long as you intend to raise the child as your own?]]
▲* In an episode of [[Yogi Bear]] Yogi and another bear begin fighting over Cindy, and she tells them that whoever brings her the best present gets to be with her. Yogi and the other bear proceed to steal not only food but TV's and radios, Yogi eventually wins by bringing her a freaking car. Ranger Smith finds out but see's he stole it for Cindy, and decides not to turn him in because "it's spring." So the moral? "Stealing is okay if it could get you laid."
** Also, material possessions buy love.
* In ''[[Winx Club]]'', there's the [[Official Couple]] of Bloom and Sky. Sky has been courting Bloom for most of Season 1. But then, wait! Sky was already engaged to Princess Diaspro! Thus he would be cheating on both girls at the same time. But no one ever points this out as a bad thing. [[Sarcasm Mode|Kids, when you grow up and get a significant other, it's okay to cheat!]]
** Not only that, but Bloom sneaks into Red Fountain and attacks Diaspro, believing her to be one of [[Big Bad|the Trix]]! While it's understandable that Bloom would be hurt, Diaspro didn't even have any idea that she existed! [[Sarcasm Mode|Because it's always the other person's fault if YOUR significant other cheats on you...]]
*** [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] in that after Bloom finds out the truth, she decides that she doesn't want to be a fairy anymore and leaves Alfea. Let me restate that: She decides to give up all her dreams just because she got her heart broken! [[Sarcasm Mode|Yeah, because your dreams are totally worth giving up over a broken heart.]] And when her friends attempt to talk her out of it, she barely even considers what they're saying. Really, Bloom? That's how you treat the people who have been your friends ''since day 1''?!
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** In the second season, [[The Wasp]] tries to urge Hank ([[That Man Is Dead|Ant-Man only goes by his civilian name now.]]) not to give up trying to help the Avengers find a better way to resolve conflicts, though she might just do this because she doesn't want Hank's depression to interfere with their love.
* ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]'' had the intended Aesop of "we all have our own talents, which we should be proud of." It can also, however, be fairly easily read as "never try anything new; you'll just fail miserably."
* [[The
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