Trending: Cartoon Network's New Anti-Bullying Ad

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

It used to be that cartoons were expected to teach moral lessons to kids on the down low.  They'd dazzle them with punches, kicks and explosions, but always bring things back around to serious issues by the end of its run time.  Who could forget Roadblock's warnings to not give strangers your address, He-Man telling kids to stay away from drugs and Sailor Moon reminding her viewers to stay true to themselves?

Children's programming in recent years have generally distanced themselves from the preachy moralizing of generations past.  I have to imagine that part of this has to do with cartoons' perceived demographic expanding beyond the very young.  Both Adventure Time and My Little Pony have devoted adult followings and teenagers are generally tuning in as frequently to animated programs as their younger brothers and sisters are.

I get it.  Nobody likes being lectured to, especially when they think that they've gotten it all figured out.  The problem is, though, that man of the kids that think that they understand the way things work are missing out on lessons that would have been a given ten, twenty and even thirty years ago.

This is why Toonami's recent anti-bullying ad has gotten such wide-spread attention.  It hearkens back to a bygone age of proselytizing animation: where kids are educated by their favorite TV characters about real-world problems that too often get swept under the rug.  Check it out here.

I'd go so far as to argue that this latest revival of the generally defunct PSA ad is more powerful than the ones of the old Saturday morning cartoons.  It's not something that's tagged at the end of an episode in order to contextualize what kids just got through seeing (most of which just changed the channel or turned the TV off before in the middle of it).  This was an introduction to a programming block: something that kids had to sit through in order to see what they came for.

Furthermore, it didn't just limit itself to one particular series.  This wasn't He-Man's take on bullying, or Roadblock's, or Sailor Moon's or Lion-O's.  It didn't just draw on the events of any one show.  It was a pastiche of the entire programming block: a single message supported by a myriad of clips that anybody tuning into could find something to connect with.  Whether it was humanity's fear and hatred of Erin Yaeger or Vegeta putting Gohan down into the dirt, there was something for everybody.

And in the end, this wasn't some preachy message spoken from on high.  It felt earnest: life advice from somebody who seemingly went through the exact same thing in his robo-youth.  Tom tells kids not just to stand up to their bullies, but to enact the greatest revenge of all: refusing to believe them and living well.

The biggest shock for me was when Tom spoke about how bullies often do so because they are insecure and bullied in their own lives behind the scenes.  And while, yes, this is something that I was already aware of, it was the specific show that he paired it with that took the wind out of me: Dragonball Z.

While the Saiyan Prince always had the most dynamic and emotional character arc of anybody on the show, I never quite made the connection with his interactions as a member of Frieza's army and bullying before.  Mocked, harassed and living with the very real threat of extermination on a daily basis, Vegeta is the very model of victim cum oppressor.

This is the exact kind of thing that children's TV needs to bring back on a more wide-spread scale.  Regardless of whether it's viewers even want it, they often need it, and that's justification enough for me.  I also love this new model that Cartoon Network developed: broad, inter-series appeal, prefacing - rather than chasing - the shows that they center around.  Other networks owe it to their viewers to follow this example and bring back these cartoon-based PSAs.

So what do you think of Cartoon Network's anti-bullyin ad?  Do you believe that they should be brought back by other networks as well?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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