Adult animation in the United States
In the United States, before the enforcement of the Hays Code, some cartoon shorts contained humor that was aimed at adult audience members rather than children.
Most animation produced during the silent film era was not intended to be shown to any specific age group, but occasionally contained humor that was directed at adult audience members.
[2] Until the Hays Code was enforced, many animated shorts featured suggestive content, including sexual innuendo, references to alcohol and drug use, and mild profanity.
[7] This morphed into the U.S. Army's First Motion Picture Unit, which existed from 1942 to 1945, located at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California.
"[7][8][9][10] Animation was integral in these films, helping pilots fly airplanes,[11] soldiers learn the fine points of military camouflage,[9] or train others how to correctly use hand-held weapons.
[12] In addition, the Betty Boop series was known for its use of jokes that would eventually be considered taboo following the enforcement of the Hays Code, including the use of nudity.
[5] This included the short Bamboo Isle,[13] which contains a sequence in which Betty dances the hula topless, wearing only a lei over her breasts and a grass skirt.
[14][15][16] Following the enforcement of the Hays Code, Betty's clothing was redesigned, and all future shorts portrayed her with a longer dress which did not emphasize her physique and sexuality.
[18] Some underground cartoon features from the late 1960s were also aimed at an adult audience, such as Bambi Meets Godzilla (1968), and the anti-war films Escalation (1968), and Mickey Mouse in Vietnam (1969).
Film producer John Magnuson completed an animated short based upon an audio recording of a comedy routine by Lenny Bruce titled Thank You Mask Man (1971), in which The Lone Ranger shocks the residents of the town he saves when he tells them that he wants to have sex with Tonto.
[19] The short was made by San Francisco-based company Imagination, Inc. and directed by Jeff Hale, a former member of the National Film Board of Canada.
Liana Satenstein called it "cutting edge, bizarrely sexy, and certainly not for daytime television," which has a cult-following, while Peter Chung, the director of the animated show, stated he was inspired by the "very naked images of the late Helmut Newton.
[52][53][54][55] Some depictions of LGBTQ people were criticized, like those in Family Guy and Bob's Burgers, as stereotypical, when it came to trans people[56][57][58] In the case of Bob's Burgers, in June 2020, series creator Loren Bouchard committed to recasting a trans female sex worker character so it is voiced by a Black actor rather than a White male actor, currently David Herman.
[99][100] In addition, Final Space, which aired on Adult Swim and HBO Max, included bisexual,[101][102] genderless,[103][104] and lesbian characters.
[107][108] Some critics have argued that the streaming platforms are in a "war" with one another, during which adult animation is growing, as the genre changes, demand increases, and companies participate in production of these series.
[128] In later July, the HAHA winners were announced, with characters from Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, Futurama, American Dad!, Archer, Cake, and Solar Opposites winning awards.
He said in 1971 that the idea of "grown men sitting in cubicles drawing butterflies floating over a field of flowers, while American planes are dropping bombs in Vietnam and kids are marching in the streets, is ludicrous.
[135] While browsing the East Side Book Store on St. Mark's Place, Bakshi came across a copy of Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat.
Thanks to Heavy Traffic, Bakshi became the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films released back-to-back.
[143] Charles Swenson developed Down and Dirty Duck as a project for Flo and Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, formerly of The Turtles and The Mothers of Invention) under the title Cheap!
[137] Persepolis, a 2007 adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel, won the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival,[147] and was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Animation president Sam Register explaining, "From the start of production, we encouraged producer Bruce Timm and our team at Warner Bros.
San Francisco Chronicle writer Mick LaSalle hated almost everything screened at the festival, with the exception of Bill Plympton's One of Those Days.
In The San Francisco Examiner, David Armstrong gave the show a three-star review and described the films screened as having "some of the rude vitality of the great old Warner Bros. cartoons —and a good deal of the sexual explicitness denied those old favorites from a more cautious age.
"[156] In 1990, Mellow Manor Productions began screening films under the title Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.
In 1991, Decker and Gribble screened their first "All Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation", promising "wild and zany films that could never be shown to our 'normal audience'".
Although the festival promoted works by animators who would later gain mainstream success, such as Bill Plympton, Mike Judge, Trey Parker and Don Hertzfeldt, many reviewers dismissed the bulk of the programming as shock value.
[166][167] 2020 was the first year that NATAS gave a Daytime Emmy for young adult programs, which includes shows "targeting a tween and teen audience.
[177] In July 2022, Hamish Steele, creator of Dead End: Paranormal Park, agreed with an interviewer from The Hollywood Reporter and called the series a young adult animation.
[189][190] In December 2020, it was reported that a new series by Disney/Pixar, Light Year will focus on Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story but have a "more adult sci-fi imprint".
