Four Childhood Cartoons That Taught Me About Life

The other day, between doing important shit like fingerpainting and defending our house’s front yard from the forces of evil, my 4-year-old nephew was looking for something to watch on TV. While most days I’d just put on one of the bajillion kids channels provided for him on the idiot box, this time I turned to some illegally downloaded avi files specially-purchased nostalgia-tripping DVDs. Being a kid, he doesn’t really give a damn about things like the quality of the animation he’s watching, so given this opportunity, I decided to put on one of the shows that I grew up on. That got me thinking about the shows I loved as a kid and the huge influence they had on me (and my childhood wardrobe), which brings me to this: my list of the four cartoons that helped warp my young mind, for better or worse, and showed me how to live.

X-Men

What It Taught Me: Never to judge a book by its stiff, uncomfortable exterior because said book is prolly pretty rad on the inside.

 

Before superheroes were so frequently invading our lives in multi-million dollar 3D action extravaganzas, they were mostly relegated to comic books, really bad cartoons or the works of Tim Burton. Then there was the 90s X-Men cartoon, and just like the X-Men movies, they spawned a million copycats that burned into my retinas and made me a lifelong comics fan.

Check out that sexy 90s intro above, complete with pre-rave synth and characters who were introduced by standing beneath their own logos and using their powers or, if you’re Wolverine, shooting lightning from your metal claws! While the show had its numerous weak points, it did introduce me to the concept of an ongoing serialized story with characters who I’d come to love over the years. Even that loser Gambit.

Now, as a kid, it’s pretty easy to see who the clear frontrunner is for the role of main character. By virtue of his strict 90s adherence to the code of manly bad-assery and dry one-liners, and because he never took no crap from nobody, that’s pretty obviously Wolverine. And the guy who suffered the most at the end of Wolvie’s stubby Canadian fists was obviously Cyclops, who always seemed like a prude. Looking back on things though, it’s pretty easy to see where my interpretation went all wrong. I mean, Wolverine, whose super-power is to fucking stab things with knives that pop out of his fists, spends the whole show leaping on top of dudes, popping his claws and then just threatening to gut them instead of actually doing it. It’s more homoerotic than homicidal, but the implications are there.

Cyclops, on the other hand, is the guy who has to keep that nutcase in check. Automatically, that means he has to be about a million times more badass. Something the comics have proven time and again.

So yeah, forget the obvious metaphors about race and sexuality inherent in the X-Men concept. The X-Men cartoon taught me that behind a stodgy exterior could lie the heart of a crazed, mutant terrorist.

The Smurfs

What It Taught Me: To always ask questions.

So this is the stuff you watch when you’re really little, but almost no one can claim to have skipped the phase where the tiny blue dudes with the incredibly deterministic naming culture were on their TV screens. Every kid goes through a phase where they ask questions, but I never really grew out of that habit. The Smurfs are the reason why.

Why is Gargamel trying to eat them? How does he know they’ll taste good? Why is there only one female Smurf? Why does Papa Smurf get to wear red? Where do baby Smurfs come from? Is anyone else incredibly uncomfortable while hanging out with a bigoted stereotype of a homosexual man like Vanity?

These are just some of the things that have stuck with me since my early days of exposure to the little blue men. If it weren’t for The Smurfs, I’d have been an accountant. Instead, I’m a writer.

Spider-Man

What It Taught Me: That with great power comes hot dates.

Check out that intro, man. It’s even more 90s than the X-Men one.

This one’s what is probably my favorite cartoon ever, starring my favorite Marvel superhero: a scientist who beats up other, older scientists on camera (there’s a porn in here somewhere). The lessons we learn from Spidey are plentiful. From his classic “with great power there must also come great responsibility” to lessons about learning to live with the guilt of past mistakes. And then, of course, there’s the most important lesson this show taught me: that no matter how badly I dressed, I always stood a chance of dating the super-hot ginger with the cowboy (cowgirl?) boots on. Well, at least until my best friend’s crazy father throws her off a bridge, that is.

In all honesty, while it may seem like a mediocre lesson to derive from a show where the lead character’s wife eventually turned out to be a clone made of water and the DNA of her supervillain ex-boyfriend, I still think Spider-Man taught me that, if I was always myself in front of people, I could get the girl. Awwww…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

What It Taught Me: Zen perspective.

Now it may be difficult to imagine what sort of zen philosophy you could pick up from a show where the main characters were four walking, talking teenaged turtles with generic personalities. Especially when one of them does machines. But you must remember that, the humanoid turtles, flies, geckos, frogs, rhinos and pigs aside, there was one character in this show that always treated friend and foe alike with respect and provided words of immense wisdom: Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about Master Splinter.

Considering that the poor guy is transformed into a rat while he’s just… I actually have no idea what he was doing here. It seems like, from the intro, Splinter was maybe doing some kung-fu training in the sewers before he was transformed? Do you think maybe he was homeless? Schizophrenic? Drunk? Look, the drug problems that have just come to light aside, you’ve gotta admire a guy who gets transformed into a talking rat and saddled with not one but four babies to raise, and pretty much turns that around so he’s got a swanky underground pad and gets to walk around all day in Hugh Hefner’s silk gown while occasionally chatting to a hot reporter in a yellow jumpsuit. Splinter could’ve given in to his circumstances, but instead he turned it all around and saw the positive side to things: teenage mutant ninja turtle slaves!

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So there you have it. Some of the cartoons that shaped my formative years and ruined me for racists, conservationists, women and glass-half-emptyers everywhere.