Flash, and by extension Newgrounds, let young people create their own art and publish it en masse.
I don’t know about you, but from my experience a lot of young adults find a lot of humor/intrigue in adding adult themes to media primarily for children. You see this in all the “cursed video game” creepypastas, too. Similarly, I know we all know the song about fucking shooting that bastard Barney dead where he stands.
Children’s media is intentionally sanitized, and teenagers are intentionally rebellious. They’re going to think it’s hilarious if Dora the Explorer says, “Fuck.”
My main problem I have is with the people who never let that trend die. I saw people making edgy content like that well into the 2010s. The only one I really cared for from that era was Sonic for Hire.
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Because it’s mildly transgressive to a certain demographic, and tools and internet speeds of the day allowed for visuals that were close enough to the inspirations for people to find them interesting. Subverting “innocent” characters has been a trope since at least Tijuana bibles of the 1920s and I assume much longer. Specifically portraying beloved animated characters as adult and jaded would also have been directly evocative of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
Eventually, most of that demographic comes to realize that the transgressiveness itself is only so interesting and there is usually something of value in the interesting property that distance lets them appreciate, so a spoof needs to have other things going for it to hold an audience’s interest (e.g. Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which is still brilliant). That said, there is a certain durability to the low-hanging fruit when the subjects of the satire remain popular to continually cycling cohorts of kids who have the unmitigated gall to begin growing up. :-)
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 1 day ago
Have you ever read "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?"? It's a very different work from the movie, but also gets into the dark cartoon tone. And I think it's very well done.
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I haven’t, but it looks interesting and even more bonkers than the movie.