Why a Cartoon is The Longest Running Series in Syndication

When did cartoon animation become a mainstream form of entertainment for adults?

Animated series were great entertainment in movie houses back before television became popular. Before television, adults were the main demographic attending movie theaters so it stands to reason that any popular animated series in movie theaters would be automatically created for adults.

When television took over the living rooms, adults started staying home instead of heading out to the movies but it still took a while for animated television series to become prime time material. Even to this day most adults that claim cartoon shows are for children will quickly agree that shows such as The Simpsons, The Family Guy, Futurama and a small handful of others are more targeted for adult audiences.

To be considered an adult targeted animated series, does not mean that the material is necessarily bad for children. Take the hit animated series from the 1960’s, The Flintstones. ABC aired that cartoon show in prime time because the main characters were people that adults could relate to. Fred Flintstone had a difficult job with a cruel boss. His wife stayed home and raised the child and maintained the house. Many of the scenarios of that animated series were designed to look at the humorous side of the “modern” American lifestyle. So it became an immediate hit. The fact that it was animated made it easier for the writers to take situations to their ridiculous extremes.

The Simpsons is the current version of that same scenario. Only in this animated series, the writers go to the outrageous extremes very quickly. They also include many spoofs and references to movies and modern culture which keeps it interesting for adults. The fact that they can always add in a spoof that is relevant to current events or celebrities keeps the show fresh even though the main characters have not aged or changed position in life in over 17 years.

By presenting this show as an animated series, the writers have the freedom to create new sets that would not be possible with a live action series. For instance, if the writers decide that part of the show will take place on a different continent, then they just draw a few different background scenes and presto, the whole cast and crew are in Australia or London, England.

The other advantage as mentioned before is that since some of the main characters are children, the writers of an animated series do not have to worry about changing or replacing the main characters as the actors grow older. Compare this to television series like “Saved By The Bell” The writers had to come up with ways to move the main characters into different situations as they aged well beyond the age of high school children. New actors had to be brought in and whole new characters created in order to keep the series going. Of course, they could have done like “90210″ and just allowed 30 year old actors to pretend to be high school students.

All in all though, this kind of flexibility is best left to the animated series.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 9:46 am and is filed under Animated Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.