1990s+ – Animation, Race and Progress

Adult animations, following Ralph Bakshi’s example, continued to include sex, violence, and racist imagery from the 90s onwards. While, for the most part, racism has been toned down in animation, several prominent shows continue with it for satiric purposes, such as South Park. South Park is a commentary on modern life which deliberately uses grotesque imagery to get across messages about race, gender, and religion. It’s ‘hyper-irony’ undercuts social issues and bigoted attitudes by portraying it all as ridiculous, outrageous and fruitless. Using such sharp ethnic derisions can make audience members question their own beliefs, especially if one of the characters espouses those beliefs through South Park’s absurd ways. Thus, it’s a mistake to take South Park at face value.

For example, Eric Cartman’s constant ridicule of Jews to the point of endorsing genocide is not funny because Jews are bad, but because anti-Semitism is ridiculous and showing those attitudes through the twisted ideological rudeness of a nine-year-old boy helps exemplify how ridiculous those attitudes are. Another example is the black character that reappears throughout the show – one of the only black characters – whose name is, aptly, “Token”. In universe as well, racist and sexist comments do not go uncriticised by the rest of the cast. For example, Kyle Broflovski, Cartman’s Jewish friend, never lets Cartman’s anti-Semitic comments go by without a retaliation of his own. The show remains consistently topical as well, putting out weekly episodes that continue to satirise the vices of modernity, such as drone technology, Kickstarter, transphobia and Islamophobia.

South Park ultimately demonstrates how animation has gone from using race as a punchline, to using stereotypes satirically to comment upon why they are bad. Now, animation presents race in predominantly positive ways, with minorities finally being depicted as fully-capable humans. My hope for the future is that this trend will continue, and perhaps help loosen the ideology of ‘colour-blindness’ by making people more aware of the continued influences of racism and sexism in the modern world.

Society, in the past thirty years, has altogether moved towards an ideology of colour-blindness. Both in animation and American society, it is the dominant racial ideology in the US and justifies continued white advantage by stating simply that race no longer ‘matters’ as now we have a black middle class which [does not] mean that minorities are no longer oppressed. Any attempt to point out that race does indeed matter is seen as an attempt to dismantle ‘how far we’ve come’. Any economic or social problem had by an ethnic minority is now simply surmised as being ‘their fault’, not America’s. However, this completely ignores the fact that the non-white middle class is still disadvantaged, and there continue to be persistent social and economic problems for minorities.

I believe that this post-racial lens is very much present in the fact that much animation since while it includes more racial and ethnic diversity, it rarely focuses on race as a topic. While of course there are certain shows and episodes of shows that do, it’s not common. Positively, race in the 2000s is no longer something to be addressed purely in front of adult audiences – it was appropriate for all ages and is now addressed in significantly less harmful ways . However diversity is still often shown through ‘token’ minority characters or in multi-ethnic casts with white protagonists, which still fail to fully address cultural diversity and show minorities as leaders.

The 2000s cartoon *Codename: Kids Next Door* depicts a typical multi-ethnic cast with a token black, and token Asian character

The internet, however, is anything but post-racial. In fact, it became the new home for racism as it became increasingly unacceptable to espouse racist ideologies in the real world. The internet allows people to maintain duplicitous personalities: in public, they would maintain political correctness, whereas on the internet they would reveal themselves as racists, protected by the internet’s anonymity and lack of consequences. It is for this reason that the internet has been characterised as a ‘safe haven’ for all ideas and opinions. The online environment consolidates racist communities and pits them against other, racially liberal groups, creating an online culture war.

The internet is also a place for sharing and hosting animation, and animation software. Now, anyone can get their hands on some animation software, make something, and share it – including racist animation. For example, in early 2019 a children’s animation was taken down from YouTube due to its message that dark skin is ugly. Animation hosted on the internet allows for communities to form around both old and new animation, including the racist kind such as Song of the South, who fiercely defend it.

*Dina and the Prince* – a white angel is ‘cursed’ black

Subscription services have begun to emerge as animation platforms in the past decade, providing some cartoons with a chance that network television would not have given them which may have an impact on racial representation in the future. As the internet is still new, I am eager to see just how racial representation changes under its continued influence.

Category: 1990s+

Race in Modern Adult Animation: South Park’s Hyper-Irony

The Move from Television to Internet: Post-race Ideologies in Animation