Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve

One of the most poignant childhood experiences of my generation that will likely never be replicated is the Saturday morning cartoon. For kids during its heyday in the 80’s and 90’s, the cartoons emanating over boxy televisions sets was a staple of home life. Its impact is clear when one sees the memorabilia and extensive nostalgic Youtube analysis of media that time has passed by.

In the 80’s, TV sets were full of testosterone laden heroes with clear delineations between good and evil. These were largely toy commercials, with characters and settings focused on getting kids to bug their parents to buy action figures. While many people still wax nostalgia for highlights like Thundercats and He-Man, it’s largely more for their impressive aesthetic qualities than the quality of plot and characterizations. The episodes were largely boilerplate, working within a basic secular moral framework that had pleasant messages about teamwork, loyalty, and compassion, but lacked deeper meanings that keep a more refined adult’s interest.

The 90’s came and kickstarted a renaissance in children’s programming. Animation became much more complex with story arcs often spanning multiple episodes. The more complex interplays of characters and their choices having an impact in later episodes added a level of depth lacking in the earlier years. While the animation was still often lackluster, the quality of writing was impressive, run by passionate all-star teams creating art that often surpassed the material they were based on.

I was a kid immersed in this landscape, glued to the television screen after school and on the weekend mornings in my earlier years. Another frustration kids today will never know is choosing between two shows you wanted to watch that were programmed at the same time. Better hope mom and dad didn’t have the VCR set to record something else. Through the years, the increased complexity and nuance of the scripts progressed. To this day I’m impressed by the passion, creativity, and contagious energy in these shows.

Time clears out the clutter from the gems of one’s youth, and the deep and profound media trickles sticks in one’s consciousness, while the others are forgotten. C.S. Lewis said that any good young literature should be enjoyed just as much by adults as by kids, and nothing exemplified this more than the animation renaissance of the 1990’s. Some aged well even by modern viewing, with such standouts as Animaniacs, Spiderman, Batman, and X-Men. Not only did they have top tier storytelling, but they also showed no hesitation to explore the world of faith.

Batman: The Animated Series had a gorgeous Art Deco aesthetic with huge, larger than life men and lithe, sensuous women roaming the crime ridden streets. It was different than the usual superhero show, where the enemies were more grounded, eschewing over-the-top battles in favor of deeper psychological probing of character motivations. In the episode “It’s Never Too Late”, it shows the poignant story of a crime boss about to get knocked off in a mob war. His priest brother, who saved his life when they were young, never gave up on him, regardless of the odious path he took. It ends in a reconciliation, and the redemption of the crime lord.

Stromwell: Michael!... Michael

Michael: I'm here, Arnie.

Stromwell: What are you doing here, Michael?

Michael: I came to help you, Arnie.

Stromwell: I don't need your help!

Michael: Is that a fact? An empire crumbling? A marriage shattered? A son lost?Sure, you're doing fine.

Stromwell: Stay away, Michael! The last time you tried to help me, it cost you your leg!

Michael: Oh, I get by... (taps his leg) Knock on wood.

Stromwell: You know I was no good, Mike. Why did you save me?

Michael: Arnie, what else could I do? Now you got a chance to save yourself. Come on, Arnie. Do the right thing. For yourself. For your son. For me your little brother.

An even more surreal example that shows that exemplifies how the Gen-X and Millennial childhood is a foreign country, we have X-Men’s conversation with the devout Catholic Nightcrawler that facilitates Wolverine’s a spiritual awakening.

Nightcrawler: Thank you, my friends. Your presence here was a great blessing.

Wolverine: What do you mean, blessing? Look at this place! We blew it!

Nightcrawler: I disagree. Brother Reinhard understands his tragic mistake and has repented. The townspeople no longer look at me with fear in their hearts. There was no loss of life. All are reasons to be thankful.

Rogue: What about the monastery?

Nightcrawler: A great tragedy. But it was only stone and mortar. The foundation God has built in our hearts can never be destroyed.

Wolverine: Man, I don't get you.

Nightcrawler: [hands Logan a Bible] Here, I've marked a few passages you may find rewarding. Remember, Herr Logan, "Different eyes."

The early 2000’s kept the trend going. Samurai Jack’s eastern spirituality was as much a story of Jack’s struggles with his personal demons as it was about destroying killer robots in a wild dystopian world. The aesthetic was stunning, the creators seamlessly merging the characters with the background, shifting from industrious ugliness to serene woodland glades. The larger environment was as much a character as Jack, emphasizing his Shinto-like interior world as well as his meshing with the wholeness of nature. The show had a jarring habit of going from goofy comedy to rapid action to meditative introspection. Ther formula had no right to work, but it did, creating several interplaying layers of meaning to contemplate.

When the series finally finished up after a decade-long hiatus, Jack confronts his inner turmoil. The rage filled, contorted version of himself rages, full of fury at all the obstacles he’s forced to face, all the failures he’s forced to endure, and demanding that his sacrifices be recognized. What’s amazing about this scene is how real this demon is, as everyone can relate to the evil voices in their own heads, shouting the same destructive poison. Only when Jack faces the demon head-on, after fifty years, does he have the capability of returning to his family in a bittersweet finale.

Christian Entertainment

During my childhood I was also subjected to more lackluster entertainment. A very devout family loaned us a set of VHS tapes containing cartoons of an explicitly Christian bent. We had shows about St. Nicholas, Christopher Columbus, and others. As far as animation quality goes, they weren’t bad, but where they faltered was the plot and dialogue, taking extreme liberties with historic facts I knew were incorrect as a ten-year-old and littering it with nonstop religious pieties.

In the Christopher Columbus show, he is trying to keep his crew from mutinying, as most believed they were going to sail off the end of the Earth. He gives devout praise to God every other minute, and is shown as an even-handed, compassionate man through the voyage. The Columbus of this show had no foibles, no doubts, and no troubling decisions where the right answer wasn’t clean. He was a cardboard cutout that bore no resemblance to the real man. Now, kid’s shows should not get into some of his worse transgressions, and there are ways of telling the story of the man to both kids and adults that show his weaknesses as well as his bravery. Somehow, it made the idea of voyaging across the world outright boring. The creators of that episode did a disservice to the material, as well as would create disillusionment for children who learn Columbus was a very different man than the cartoon their parents showed them.

The St. Nicholas story was more of the same, but at least this was more pertaining to reality, as he really was a loving, deeply pious man. Still the bad guys have no ambiguities, simply wanting to kill Christians because, well, reasons. The lack of coherent motivations gave it an unreal quality, like there was no human being behind the words on the script.

And those were one of the higher quality ones. The Simpsons ruthlessly parodied these types of T.V. shows with the Flanders kids.

Elder Sheep: What's wrong, Jeremiah?

Jeremiah: It's not fair. My brother Joseph has a sin to confess. I wish I had one too.

Elder Sheep: Oh, don't you see? You do have a sin to confess. The sin of envy.

Todd Flanders: That's all well and good for sheep, but what are we to do?

These shows were mocked for a reason, and it was deserved. Even with the low budget, everything about them was lazy, more concerned with spouting platitudes than imagining something with more depth and engagement. It’s a massive failure when largely secular shows are capable of a more endearing expression of faith than materials written explicitly written for that purpose, yet that’s what happened.

Whenever someone wants to write art with a clear moral framework, the first thought that enters his mind are those cheap religious shows and their heavy-handed messaging. The urge to avoid the pitfalls of the creatively bankrupt, milquetoast, media of Conservative Christian productions of old has led to a mindset that it’s bad art to be explicit about your moral values, that is has to be hidden in several layers of nuance because otherwise the audience will be revolted by the lack of discipline in sending a message instead of telling a story. While there is some merit to this, it forgets the core reasons those old religious shows failed. One was simply the lack of good artistic chops in the form of narrative and character construction, the other is a total lack of sincerity. In cases of the reverse, when these two ingredients are in abundance, incredible things happen.

VeggieTales

The genesis of VeggieTales has all the elements of bad Christian entertainment. First, the low budget was far too meagre for the ascendant 3d animation they wanted to use. When experimenting with the technology, it seemed impossible to create scenes that didn’t look like something out of the PlayStation One. Originally, the creators Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki experimented with simple shapes to work around the lack of processing power. They tried candy bars until someone wisely said that parents likely wouldn’t like that, so they tried vegetables instead. It worked.

The adventures of Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato, and their extensive supporting cast completely remade the landscape of Christian entertainment. There is no set environment for the cast of characters, who find themselves in places as far away as ancient Egypt to as close as modern American cities as they learn the Christian ethics, either first-hand through Bible stories or through the hard-knocks of day-to-day life. Given the meager budget even after they became explosively popular, heavy reliance is put on the strength of the writing and voice acting before the action on screen. Each episode has a theme for its young audience, such as helping others, telling the truth, and thankfulness for what you have. It’s not deep, profound stuff, but the execution keeps it from being annoying. At the end of the episode, they read some letters sent from fans and send themselves off with the simple message" “Remember! God made you special, and he loves you very much!”

Veggietales’ popular appeal spread far beyond the strict evangelical families and churches of other media to break containment into much of the secular world, becoming a sensation. Veggietales movies played in theatres, their merchandise sat in toy stores, a stage play was performed across the country, videogames got made, and it even got a couple seasons on Netflix.

I didn’t know of its immense popularity back in the day until a time when I volunteered for ministry in a Juvenile Detention facility. I had some games, DVDs, and prayer items in a bag that I was rummaging through for the day’s session.

“Hey, you brought Veggietales.” One exclaimed. He was about 13 years old, a nice guy who joined a gang to avoid constant beatings in his dilapidated hellscape of a school that would make Lord of the Flies sound civilized.

I replied. “Yeah. I wasn’t planning on showing that, I think you guys are a little old.”

“Nah, nah. We love Veggietales.” Another exclaimed.

Befuddled, I shrugged my shoulders and the adolescent criminals and I watched an episode.

Its success isn’t from subduing its Christian message. In fact, much of it can be attributed to its unapologetic emphasis on virtue. There’s a contagious joy in the warm color palette, the bouncy and zany animation, the larger-than-life stories, and sheer lunacy of the whole premise. Yet never does it wink at the camera at how silly everything is. Never does it become self-conscious. For all their goofy antics, these Vegetables are deathly serious about their holy mission.

A lot of the success of VeggieTales stems from how unconstricted their world is as well as the varied and believable actors. Every actor has a clear, distinct personality, and they never seem to act out of character just to move the story along. The joyful but dunderheaded Larry gets into trouble by not thinking things through, the cerebral and low-key Bob sometimes lets pride get the best of him, Junior gets tripped up with misunderstanding and jumping to conclusions.

The writers also show a wide swath of cultural knowledge, both popular and classical. The anarchic Silly Songs is a prime example of their vast world model. Even after having kids who listen to them incessantly, they’re still tolerable. They poke fun at the tropes of Broadway Musicals, 50’s Rock, and, my personal favorite, Rhythm and Blues. Seriously, listen to this, it cracks me up every time.

And while fun is made at the tropes, there’s a deep love resonating in the banter, and a serene joy permeating in the stories of struggle, redemption, and the triumph of the ultimate Good. It’s there in every line of dialogue, every lovingly crafted background, every facial expression, and every whimsical musical note.

Sincerity

So no, there’s no need to water down your moral pretenses, nor is there a need to mask it under several layers of subtlety. If you can’t write a good story in your own moral universe, it points to either needing more skill to home your craft or your spiritual life not being as deep and all-encompassing as you think. Anyone can quote scripture, but it takes an artist to wrap scripture into their story’s universe and make it the essence of the show.

In our irony-poisoned mass culture, the perfect antidote is the creator who puts all his cards on the table. It’s the man who is willing to walk out and skillfully display what he really believes. It’s the type of mindset that sees talking and dancing vegetables and saying, “I can make this work.” It’s the type who can wear his heart on his sleeve and devote himself to creating something truly wonderful.

Art is Hard

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