America Needs Cartoon Heroes

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Somewhere, America has lost its way.

Somewhere between the 1980s and today, we lost our cartoon heroes. Some of them became unpopular, or were cancelled. Others transformed into heroes we would have hardly recognized back in the day.

Somewhere along the line, Batman became goth, Vampires became sexy teens, and any sort of team vehicle just became environmentally unsustainable.

We lost the mythic urge to have timely, yet futuristic heroes that would help the us common, poorly animated regular folks in the background.

Now the cartoon urge is lost somewhere in the realm between Sponge Bob and Glenn Beck, and I say America is worse off.

I'm not saying we have been de-heroified, any more than we have been de-sexualized. But I think there is a certain sublimation in play in these sorts of cartoons. They are images of certain ways of being, certain ways of thinking about the challenge of evil to good. This lesson has fallen to either dadaist silliness, or biblical/fascist hate. These are not the only lessons children receive in their youth, but it is a powerful hole, left filled by horrendous replacements.

Maybe what America needs now is a race-gender-and-age-mixed team of cowboys to ride a robot horses into space to get into intergalactic fighter planes to fly off to blast humanoid dinosaurs driving hybridized construction vehicles with pink lasers.

Or do you think we should just leave the future of America's youth to Blues Clues and Dora the Explorer?

Just sayin'.