When I was a kid, I spent my Saturdays like many my age: cooped up in bed blasting Cartoon Network on my TV. Reflecting on those days, though, always brings me back to two shows in particular: “Adventure Time” and “Regular Show.”
I spent hours watching these shows. I still remember the cute indie outro song to “Adventure Time” which sang softly about butterflies and bees, and it still makes me feel like it did then: blissful, full of youth, amazed at the surrealist adventures undertaken by a human and a dog (or a songbird and a racoon, respectively).
You can imagine my excitement, then, when I heard HBO would be reviving “Adventure Time” in a new four-episode long series back in October. “Regular Show,” however, ended in an epic two-part finale that had us casual cartoon watchers actually on the edge of our seats (please don’t touch it, CN).
Upon learning the great news about Ooo, the mystical world of Adventure time, I found myself stuck on Hulu, streaming the show for hours all over again. Those old shows – those crazy adventures, the silly, childish jokes – brought me back to those old, lazy glory days, full of innocence and pleasure.
The most unfortunate thing about being an adult, though, is coming to know the world outside of its inceptual magic. From sexual assault scandals at Cartoon Network headquarters, to coming to know the canon of “Adventure Time” – particularly its roots in describing a post-nuclear wasteland where even the silly villians were once full of valor and humanity – those old, bumbling episodes about silly and surreal adventures are now masked in a stoic skepticism
Indeed, these seemingly unserious kids’ shows were not in any way conceived in innocence. “Regular Show” started as an adult short cartoon depicting two convenience store workers enduring an insane psychedelic experience. “Adventure Time’s” lore was even more transparent in its adult themes, with regular mentions of the “Great Mushroom War,” and the great toil of death and evil it brought to Ooo. In both shows, villians often triumphed. Romances failed. Sometimes, at the end of episodes, all Finn and Jake, or Moredecai and Rigby, had was each other. The shows were superficially silly cartoons, but reading them just a bit closer, the intended narratives of suffering, heartbreak, and apocalypse become clear.
But none of that mattered at the time. I woke up on Saturdays with bowls of sugary cereal and watched not to question the status quo or evaluate art. I woke up to giggle at Jake’s silly jokes, Mordecai’s social awkwardness, to feel happy. And those shows did the job: I would always be able to turn the TV off and move to the next thing that seemed interesting, always in a good mood. But, in my re-watching, I didn’t laugh, nor giggle, at all. I chuckled in anticipation of old jokes, but never really felt that joy. In fact, I cried. A lot.
Young adults like myself find themselves at a cross-road as we enter our twenties. The evidence is clear: young adults are experiencing depression at higher rates than ever before. Income inequality, a lack of opportunity, and an increasingly divided culture is resulting in despair deaths, self-ostracism, and deep, insurmountable societal grief. I cannot say I am independent of these trends. It is hard not to feel lost as we navigate our increasingly complex world. So when one taps back into sources of ancient joy, seeking to once again feel childish bliss, they often find what I found: a changed narrative, the devastation of what was once our naive innocence.
But, in rewatching, I noticed that the story mattered a lot more than it did in my childhood. I found myself listening to dialogue, connecting plot points to old episodes I remembered, and noticing subtle flourishes in the script. This would’ve never been a Saturday-morning experience for my 11-year-old self. I just watched the characters I love do silly things and got to sing along to that awesome outro at the end of every episode.
This left me with questions: did I just notice more, paying attention closely to those plot details? Do I just idealize a past which seems comparably simpler (as an 11-year-old, I didn’t pay taxes or have to write 15-page History & Literature papers)? Does my grief stem from a recognition of my past failure to really pay attention?
I found my answers in questioning my original ideas about my favorite cartoons. The innocence I perceived was merely a self-invention. Like I’ve discussed, the shows weren’t made to be innocent. Not only were their plots adult and complicated, but they came from adults, full of experiences with the real world – experiences they vented through their ridiculous, animated characters. It wasn’t there to not be seen, I just didn’t see it. I focused on my sugary cereal, and my comfy bed, on the simple stressors of the time: crushes, small homework assignments, puberty.
Moreover, adulthood made me really watch them. I knew their creative roots, their stories, and learned to care. I cried not at the thought of my dead childhood, but instead at how overwhelmingly beautiful my past experiences were. I was once young, and full of life, but stilted in my understanding of what the shows’ creators were really trying to say.
This is perhaps why I have mixed feelings about a new attempt at “Adventure Time.” It was a beautifully complex show, and if it could go on forever, I would love to watch every episode like those nostalgic Saturdays of old: comfy, vivacious, and happy. But it, as my childhood, ended. It had a finale. Ends were tied and the animators, storyboarders and writers have all since departed. So did we. And that’s really not so bad.
All stories must end. Magic dies out. Kids become adults. But shows like “Adventure Time” and “Regular Show” left us to think about them, reflect on why we were so happy, and remember the lessons the characters learned. And really, so has childhood. The real world was around us the entire time – we just had to grow up to see it.
So, I think I am comfortable crying if I ever decide to watch these shows again. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed by our experiences, especially as we compare the bliss of our childish innocence to the real and structural challenges of our modern world. Such a comparison may very well sadden us. After all, we may never feel such bliss again. But it is in this moment we must realize two major things: one, our “innocent” shows were never so innocent at all, and two, that our childhood innocence was a relic of childhood: a naive and unaware impulse to see what often wasn’t there. Now, as we watch, reflect, or cry, we should remember our laughter at those old, silly episodes but realize that they were never avoiding real life. Because sometimes, real life hurts, just like our silly, boastful characters hurt and grieved. And, just like the shows’ bittersweet endings and our own, personal roads to maturity, sometimes it hurts to let go – but when we do, we learn what we were really supposed to be seeing.
Image Credit: “Hot to the Touch Backgrounds” by Fred Seibert is licensed under CC BY 2.0.