Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett looks at animated shows that chase away girls.
 
So, I saw Frozen last weekend.  I enjoyed seeing the new Mickey Mouse short, "Get a Horse," but what did my heart the most good was hearing the small boy behind me call out "Mickey!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!" the moment the Mouse appeared on the screen.  And as for the feature presentation; I had enjoyed both Meet the Robinsons and Tangled well enough but with Frozen the CGI animation has finally gotten to the point where it's become easy to become emotionally invested in human characters.  As funny as he frequently was I found the antics of Olaf the Snowman to be both jarring and distracting as well as ultimately unnecessary--the reindeer provided more than enough comic relief.  But then Olaf was intended for the kids who seemed to like him just fine.   I know because afterwards on the way to my car I heard a kid excitedly recounting the events of the movie in detail to his father--who had just watched it with him.
 
Speaking of Disney, last week they announced a live-action Disney Channel movie coming in 2015, Descendants, which features the sons and daughters of their signature villains  (Cruella De Vil, Maleficent, Jafar, etc.) getting scholarships to attend the same prep school as the sons and daughters of the heroes (Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Mulan, etc.).  Which seems an obvious way to mine the studio's mythology, so obvious someone else got there first:  Ever After High from Mattel, a doll franchise from the people who gave us the Monster High line.  It likewise features the sons and daughters of fairy tale figures attending high school.
 
I've written repeatedly about how women are desperately under-represented in comics due to the prevalent belief, in the face of plenty of evidence otherwise, that "girls don't read comics"--at least in numbers that make any discernable difference to the publisher's bottom line.  Well, that sad situation also exists in animation.  Up on the io9 website there's a piece called "Paul Dini: Superhero cartoons execs don’t want large female audience."  It features quotes from a conversation that took place between filmmaker Kevin and writer/producer Dini on an episode of Smith's Fat Man on Batman podcast.  There Dini expressed his belief that the reason Cartoon Network has consistently cancelled his shows (Young Justice, Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Tower Prep). is because they're only interested in younger male viewers.  Or in Dini's own words, "boys who are into goofy humor, goofy random humor."  Dini also quotes executives who have told him, "We don't want girls watching this show," because girls don't buy the toys.
 
But here's an interesting quote from the podcast which isn't included in that piece:
 
"...[T]here's been this weird...sudden trend in animation, with superheroes.  Like, 'it's too old, it's too old for our audience, and it has to be younger.  It has to be funnier.'  And that's when I watch the first couple of episodes of Teen Titans Go!, it's like those are the wacky moments in the Teen Titan cartoon, without any of the serious moments.  'Let's just do them all fighting over pizza, or running around crazy and everything, 'cause our audience--the audience we want to go after, is not the Young Justice audience anymore."
 
Which, if true (and I have no reason to doubt him) helps explain why I find so many contemporary cartoons so fundamentally unsatisfying.  As well as why there are so few animated adventure shows for older kids and why the few that do air (Secret Saturdays, Generator Rex) don't last all that long.  Or why on shows like Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. and Disney's Avengers Assemble supposedly adult superheroes are so often shown acting like misbehaving little kids.  I saw an episode where the Avengers were squabbling not over clashing personalities or philosophies but who ate the cookies.
 
I honestly don't think this sad state of affairs has as much to do with active misogyny as it does with the increasing narrowcasting of the entertainment industry.  Truly mass audiences are increasingly difficult to draw so it's entirely understandable if executives glom onto any niche they can find.  The real trouble with these shows being made and marketed exclusively for that niche isn't that it alienates all other potential viewers, though it does, girls included.  Girls who make up 50% of the population, who want and need to see themselves represented.  But by pandering to them so desperately those executives aren't exactly doing those young boys any favors.  I believe by feeding them a steady diet of what they think they want those boys may be missing out on what they actually need: role models, heroes.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.