Values Dissonance/Western Animation

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• Values Dissonance from one era to another is the reason we have to endure being lectured by Whoopi Goldberg on the third volume of The Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (the first two volumes didn't have any warnings since most of the cartoons shown were the ones people remembered from childhood [i.e., One Froggy Evening, the Rabbit Season/Duck Season cartoons, etc] that had little to no politically incorrect content) from volumes 4-6 and the Looney Tunes Superstars collection, there's a title card that warns viewers that some of the content may not be suitable due to values shifts). Thank goodness for fast forward.
  • The Disney Wartime Cartoon DVD collection has unskippable, un-fast-forwardable intros by Leonard Maltin, with the same message before each of "times were different then but we know better now". Since the collection was released at the height of the early 2000s post-9/11 hysteria, it may be Harsher in Hindsight.
  • For years (when they were still showing Looney Tunes), Cartoon Network wouldn't show any Speedy Gonzales cartoons, fearing a backlash from Hispanic viewers over the airing of "negative Mexican stereotypes". The network later relented when they received petitions signed by thousands of Hispanic people who saw Speedy as a positive role model; an intelligent, athletic hero who always comes to the rescue of his fellow Mexican mice, always gets the best of the "gringo cat" and always gets the girl. There were other stereotypical Mexican mice, mind -- but of all the Mexican stereotype cartoons, there were none more heroic than Speedy.
  • The Pepe Le Pew cartoons -- all 17 of them (15, if you discount "Odor of the Day" and the cameo appearance at the end of "Dog Pounded") teach impressionable, screwed-up kids that masculine persistence in the face of manifest resistance, even outright revulsion, on the part of the female target, is a virtue worthy of reward . Doesn't help that Pepe's cartoons generally make clear that it's his smell and his enthusiasm that makes him repellant to women -- and it really doesn't help that there are three Pepe shorts (1949's "For Scentimental Reasons" -- which won an Oscar, 1952's "Little Beau Pepe," and 1959's "Really Scent") that show that he freaks when his female target goes after him.
• Most Disney Princesses have no specified age, but Aurora and Ariel were both explicitly said to be 16, and at least Ariel married at the end of the movie. This would be legal in Europe, where most Disney Princesses live, down to the present day, but even though it's legal within 60% of the United States (depending on state), it's generally frowned upon.
  • A straight example would be Snow White. In the original story she was seven when she was married, and in the Disney movie she can't be much older than 14.
• After two generations of increasingly extreme paranoia over the sexual exploitation of children, the song "If You Sit On My Lap Today" from the classic 1970 Christmas Special Santa Claus is Comin' to Town can sound positively creepy. If Kris were to walk into J. Random American Town today and make that offer, he'd be dogpiled by tonfa-swinging cops and branded a pedophile before he could blink.
  • It's actually not unheard of for the idea of aspects of the Santa Claus myth coming across unfortunatly to be played for comedy, for example: The song Things are Looking Bad for Santa by The Arrogant Worms
• Speaking of old cartoons coming off as having pedophilic undertones due to paranoia over children being abducted and/or molested, the public service announcements from the 1985 version of G.I. Joe (the ones that Fensler Films redubbed) have become hard to look at through the Nostalgia Filter these days because all people keep asking about is, "How do these GI Joes know where the children are all the time?", "Where are the kids' parents in all of this?", "Why is this GI Joe standing outside a bathroom window/running through the house without knocking/etc," and, in a specific example, "What is Deep Six doing underwater spying on little boys in a lake?" The original PSAs are on the "G.I. Joe" animated movie DVD as a special feature. Watch them and see for yourself.
• Where does a European viewer begin with The Simpsons:
  • Homer being called a bad parent (never mind that he strangles his only son and doesn't realize that his youngest daughter exists) because he gave permission for Lisa to use public transport on her own, at aged eight.

Helen Lovejoy: "Will someone please think of the children?"

• • In "$pringfield": Was Homer teaching Maggie to gamble supposed to come as a shock? If so it'd be lost on a British audience. (British gambling laws allow minors to gamble, albeit on arcade games that dispense tokens and/or tickets to the winners, kind of like what America has with Chuck E. Cheese).
    • Casinos (in Las Vegas, at least) prohibit children from standing still on the casino floor; if you're taking the kids to dinner and have to walk through the casino (and you always do), you have to keep moving.
  • In fact any time Helen Lovejoy and/or Marge Simpson claim gambling is a social ill.

Marge: But gambling is illegal! Homer: Only in 48 states.

• • • Many people in Britain do consider gambling a social ill or at best, a guilty pleasure. [1] [2] ^{[dead link]}
      • The objections to "super-casinos" wasn't to gambling per-se, but to it being an American-Las Vegas style of gambling which is unfamiliar in the UK where it would be possible to lose massive amounts of money. Most UK people will gamble casually in Bingo-Halls (the Mecca Bingo chain being the most common), Horse Racing, Dog Racing, Card Games (in pubs), the list is extensive, but consider almost every-town and village in the UK will have its own bookmakers and/or an arcade with one arm bandit machines.
  • Of course, Marge is, among other things, in part a parody of so-old-fashioned-they're-not-even-quaint-but-just-weird American values, which isn't as much of a value dissonance as a case of cultural difference causing missed jokes.

Rev. Lovejoy: Thanks a lot Marge. That was our only burlesque house.

• • In the episode "Team Homer", the plot involving the school dress code change causes some confusion for those of us who wore uniforms all through school. Sure, uniforms suck, but it's not that big a deal.
  • Australian shows can say shit freely, too. There's also a strange tendency that Americans can say faggot, but not the hole in asshole.
  • An in-universe example occured when Krusty tried in one episode to go back to stand-up, only to discover the audience found his routine dated and uncomfortable, especially the embarrassing Asian stereotype.
• As noted in the anime section, many Americans seem to read perverse subtext into non-sexual Panty Shots. But this also is true for older western cartoons such as Little Lulu and Little Audrey (their entries in the Panty Shot article are referred to as "disturbing"). Let's look at context here, people: These are characters who originated in the 1930s and 1940s respectively, when pedophilia was't even talked about, and they were supposed to be just cute (but mischevious) little girls wearing dresses. And, well, when you're a kid and you wear a dress, sometimes your underwear shows. It was supposed to be realism, people, not fanservice. The fact that there are people out there reading sexual undertones into something meant to be totally innocent would mean...
• How about the ever-lovable Disney? At least two examples from older films are pretty much banned from being shown in this day and age, one being Song of the South, the other being a short segment from the original Fantasia. Both for major issues with racism. Song of the South is pretty obvious in how it violates modern values, but in Fantasia, it's the character Sunflower of the Pastoral Symphony. Looking at her, you can probably figure out why. She's been completely cut from the movie since 1969.
  • At least four episodes of Disney's Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers had jokes that played off Chinese stereotypes. One of these that is particularly remembered poorly was a subpolt in the series' pilot which involved series Big Bad Fat Cat sought aid from a rival feline mob. Said mob was run by a pair of Siamese cats, out of a dry-cleaning shop in Chinatown in which crowds of cats bet on cockfighting fish, everyone dressed in stereotypical silk clothes right out of Yellow Peril media, and involved a lot of Asian Speekee Engrish. This was the late '80s and early '90s, pretty much the last time you could actually get away with this.
• Daria has more than a few examples where the show's original target audience (loner/"outsider" teens) will likely agree with the Aesop but adults and other teens may find it rather ridiculous. The show often portrayed participating in extracurricular activities as inherently negative and the adults as fools for encouraging participation in them. While anti-social teens would overwhelmingly agree with that, most parents probably would see the adults as not all that unreasonable and some may even be offended by the portrayal of jocks and cheerleaders as always incredibly stupid. The show also took vicious jabs at school field trips to places like the mall or playing paintball--which most high schoolers would consider a far more fun time than at typical day at school.
  • Another example is in "The New Kid" where Daria while working on the yearbook reluctantly manages to get the pages for sports and clubs pulled. The teacher in charge of the yearbook agrees to put them back in only after a harsh beating. While most wouldn't agree with this means of it, removing the pages is something that most people probably would find unreasonable and unfair to those who worked hard on such clubs and on the sports teams.
• Jonny Quest. The depiction of non-European characters in the original series was fairly common in style for its time, but now is embarrassingly colonialist in tone. By contrast, there is real diversity in the depiction of Indians, not just with Hadji, but with his guardian the Pasha Peddler, who may be a rather mercenary trader, but also gives lifesavingly good value for the money.
  • To see how things have changed, look at some of the edits that were made for the DVD release. A line was removed from "Curse of Anubis" relating to the Egyptians as camel-worshippers. Removed lines by Race Bannon referring to the Po-Ho as "savages" and "heathen monkeys" in "Pursuit of the Po-Ho." The removal of Jonny's comment: "Here comes the Oriental Express" in "Monster in the Monastery." All of these were done to address "modern" sensibilities, but were deemed perfectly fine for family viewing during the original broadcast.
  • In-Universe example: The Po-Ho do a ritual that one scientist regards as barbaric, and Dr. Quest comments that it is, but by their standards, not the Po-Ho's.
• Scooby Doo Where Are You had a rather embarrassing example of this in the episode "Mystery Mask Mix-Up", where Scooby and Shaggy dress in Chinese garb and both don bad Chinese accents (real bad). This scene ends with a scene of Shaggy randomly gaining squinty eyes and buck teeth.
• Non-negative, possibly deliberate example in the Kung Fu Panda movies: Both Big Bads, who are villainous by at least Western standards as being mass murderers, are even worse morally from a Confucian perspective, which makes sense given these are movies about China. Tai Lung is pretty guilty of familial impiety (turning on one's mentor), which is a major sin in the value system (as in "actively counter to the philosophy"), while Lord Shen is more-or-less a living blasphemy against it's moral code (cruel, disloyal, and again, filial impiety).
• Schoolhouse Rock devotes two segments to Manifest Destiny and assimilation, both of which are rather more controversial and/or out of favor than they were in 1976.
• The entire Four-Fingered Hands trope is this to Japan, as the Yakuza used to chop the fingers off of those unable to pay debts.
  • The Yakuza typically cut off fingers from each other as punishment for failure. In Japan missing fingers are seen as a sign of being a Yakuza, not being a victim of Yakuza.
• Occurs in-Universe in Young Justice: in the beginning of the episode "Image" Black Canary is shown a video of herself kissing Superboy, to her astonishment. The woman in the video is actually Miss Martian, playing a game common on Mars (where everyone can shapeshift and read minds). The real Black Canary is not pleased.
• Due to changing attitudes towards violence in media, what was acceptable for children in The Eighties gets very different treatment today. The TV ratings system did not exist then, so a show like Thundercats generally would have been a TV-Y7 if it had. The show got bumped up to a TV-PG when it was rerun on Toonami. The 2011 reboot also got slapped with a TV-PG. Similarly, reruns of G.I. Joe and Transformers Generation 1 on The Hub are now rated TVPG due to greater concern about violence on TV. This doesn't always work, as both shows are rated TV-Y7 on iTunes and Netflix, but that's another trope entirely.
• Drug use in many early animated programs and films could also fall under this category since it’s now a factor in rating system
  • Pinocchio had the sentient puppet smoking cigar with Lampwick as the boys play a game of pool. Pinocchio wasn't a human yet, but this kind of action wouldn’t settle well today due to the risks in tobacco products. The Motion Pictures Association of America would’ve given the film a PG-13 or PG rating due to this.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures, “One Beer” had Plucky, Buster, and Hampton displaying the dangers of abusing alcoholic beverages. Despite the message, it was banned for obvious reasons.