Maniacal cracked-out sponges tend to scare me – especially when they’re wearing square pants. But this very characteristic has made Spongebob famous. Mr. Squarepants is a cartoon sponge who currently enjoys huge popularity on daytime cartoons. He has wildly dilated pupils and looks like he’s on the up side of a three-day drug orgy. The only sensible thing about Spongebob is his square pants, a wise choice considering his anatomy. I think if I had encountered a raving marine sponge wearing quadrilateral pants when I was a kid I would have needed counseling way sooner.
When I was a kid we had simple heroes - like the innocuous Porky Pig. He wore a regular looking jacket, a semi-formal red bow tie, and required no pants at all. What made Porky funny? He stuttered. Porky would never be on TV today, not even in adult cartoons. Those popular characters wallow in smut, violence, and suggestive oddball sexuality. They are okay for network TV, but a character who stutters? The hammer of political correctness would come smashing down. Porky would never fly today - even if he could be persuaded to put his pants back on.
Thanks to the movies, Spiderman is more popular now that he ever was in his comic book heyday. That’s kind of strange since he’s based on an arachnid, one of those black too-many-legged beasts that escape by zigzagging all over your walls. On one hand we’re deploying flyswatters, rolled-up newspapers, and Raid to control the beasts, and on the other, we’re idolizing them in films where they put the rest of us to shame by heroically avenging personal tragedy and kissing people upside down. What’s next? Mosquito Man? A crime fighting bomb-spitting cockroach? Super ants that hold a congress and figure out how to stop climate change, then wipe us out for being too stupid to solve the problem ourselves?
Right now the X-Men are pretty popular. They’re from a brotherhood of mutants. Remember how we used to be afraid of mutants? We figured that they would hurt us, since that’s the preferred strategy people use if they’re different from each other. Each of these mutants has a special power. For example, Cyclops has the ability to give an optic blast. Unless he’s a qualified ophthalmologist, that doesn’t sound very safe to me. Magneto is even scarier. He can manipulate electromagnetic fields, allowing him to generate force fields, levitate submarines, and reprogram your coffee pot. In the right mood, he can wipe your iPod cleaner than a Swiffered floor, and strip your computer naked. And your chromosomes.
Sadly, many of our childhood heroes have been dethroned. They’re too feeble, too ordinary or even too politically incorrect. Remember The Near-Sighted Mr. Magoo? He couldn’t see too well, but gosh, he knew how to have fun. No optic blasts from him! Mr. Magoo’s poor eyesight had him falling in to, or out of, every imaginable object. Today he would not be considered not funny, just disabled. We would give him a Seeing Eye dog, a cane, a pension, and a talking computer. But a shot at cartoon fame? Never! Instead of hilariously mistaking cushions for cats, he would be parking in the handicapped spot and spending most of his time seeking solace at the optometrist’s.
Richie Rich is another character who could never be a comic book hero today. Remember him? He was blond and cute and had a swimming pool and his own outrageously expensive car. He lived in a really really big house. He had two of everything that it was possible to own. Today he would hold zero interest for the reader. Why? He's no longer different than the rest of us sailing along on middle-class credit. He would be banned along with Little Dot, the girl whose every story depended on her obsession with dots. She would be referred to the school psychologist. Little Lotta, the obese victim of an eating disorder that gave her super human strength would be banned. The best she could hope for today would be a spot on The Biggest Loser.
Some of our heroes have fallen to changes in political climate. Speedy Gonzales, despite his legendary speed and wit, ceased to be aired on cartoon networks because he was fingered as a racial stereotype. He went from being cute and sassy to embarrassing. Oddly, he is still popular in Mexico. They don’t mind that his lazy buddies portray Mexicans in an unflattering way. They think it’s funny. It’s an old story - it’s okay to make jokes about your own racial group, but don't point your snickering finger at other groups. You can’t make cartoons about them either. So outside of Mexico, Speedy is banned. If you see Mexico on TV today it’s not about Speedy Gonzales, it’s usually about the drug lords, crime, and violence. So much for stereotypes.
Friendliness was highly valued when I was a kid. An abundance of this characteristic alone could make you a fantasy hero, like Casper the Friendly Ghost. He seemed to be a good idea at the time. He kept kids from being afraid of ghosts, since we could see how syrupy nice they actually were. There was nothing to fear there, so maybe those monsters hiding under the bed were friendly too. All in all, he was a terrific role model, nice in spite of his malevolent guardians, coping graciously with an abusive home situation. But Casper would be too simple today. He has no super powers, no weapons, just his friendliness. We’re more sophisticated now, so we know that anything too friendly is suspicious.
There was also The Friendly Giant, if you were lucky enough to have a mother that would let you turn on the TV at ten o’clock on a week day morning. He was an actual human being, except that he was a giant. He hung out with Rusty, a hard-headed, soft-brained chicken, and a talking somewhat cross-eyed giraffe named Jerome. Rusty was some sort of chicken and lived in a cloth bag hung way up high on a castle wall. Clearly a situation of abuse. Jerome, who consisted only of a neck and a head, didn’t seem to live anywhere at all. I suspect they were both just hand puppets, but I can’t prove it. Imagine producing a TV show today where kids would be entertained by mere hand puppets? Impossible. Even the Friendly Giant’s miniature “two chairs to curl up in” would bore kids silly, since they lacked lights, sound, movement, and schlock. But I still want those chairs.
So we can’t deny that childhood heroes have changed. We’ve exchanged hand puppets for mentally unbalanced sponges, friendly ghosts and myopic seniors for characters who emulate spiders or can kill with their eyes. The rich kids, fat kids, dot-loving kids, and superfast mice are out. But a few things are the still in. Tweety is still eluding Sylvester on a daily basis. Bugs Bunny is still a charming smart ass. And I’m still waiting for the borrower of my cardboard box full of comic books to bring my heroes back!
