Comment: Cartoon characters also go to Mars
PinkNews.co.uk’s Dave McElhill calls for an end to the hunt for homosexual cartoon characters.
The frenzy of concern has recently crossed the channel from the United States and taken hold of the media during the newspaper silly season.
Thanks to cigarette smoking blue cats, domestically abusive homophobic miners (Fred Flintstone, apparently), and accusations of characters being overly violent, subversive, or homosexual, the media can complain for long quiet periods about children’s television.
The recent round of whining began after cartoon cat Tom mortal enemy of Jerry was caught smoking.
This is news when the political pantomime finishes for the summer, and the newspapers and media are forced to amuse themselves.
To be fair if the politicians didn’t have the summer recess they wouldn’t be able to plan what delights we have in store for October when the silly old Punch and Judys return to the Westminster Village, on the Thames (it’s not in London, its after the first exit from the real world).
The media has provided us with something though: a character onto which we can project our fears.
The current death knell for smoking as a socially accepted habit has been heard throughout western Europe.
The European Union’s desire for control and happy, healthy, people will see to that even if the government forgets or can’t be bothered (or is more interested in terrorising Asian people).
So the generation brought up to hate smoking blames the cat.
But the cat is only doing what it was brought up to do, and it’s from a different generation whose choices should be both respected and understood.
As opposed to removed from observation, because this is what revisionists do. Revisionist historians in Japan are currently rewriting history so the Japanese Imperial empire looks relatively fluffy. And wasn’t responsible for massacres throughout China and Korea of the local populations.
Children’s characters, though, have suffered a lot recently over being “outed.”
Whether it is by far right tyrants in the US, who claimed that Twinky Winky was gay for having a handbag (‘he’ is asexual and has a TV in ‘his’ stomach, and do the Teletubbies even have romantic or reproductive feelings?), or Mojo’s “we’re bored and think these are gay” list of children’s of TV heroes, there is a hunt for “homosexual” cartoon stars.
Perhaps they should be “outed” as homophobes; projecting their intimidation onto TV cartoon characters so that they can make fun of them in order to make themselves feel secure, so that they no longer fear them.
Cartoon characters may well share beds with characters of the same ‘sex’ (their assumed, or projected sex anyway), but they also do things like go to Mars.
No, cartoon characters are not a threat to children’s development (bar making them lazy/obese and play with anvils), cartoon characters are used to project the things we want or our fears.
Groups such as The Family Research Council (FRC) in the US, who actually have a “homosexuality detection expert” (aka ‘homophobia proliferation expert’) provide ammunition for media stories by claiming that characters like Twinky Winky or Spongebob Squarepants are gay.
One of them lives in a land under a sun which is a baby’s face and has instantaneous flooding when required, and the other one is a sponge that lives under the sea in a house with fish as friends (apparently they have deeper and more meaningful topics for discussion than the FRC).
Both are asexual characters, so please stop trying to promote fear of them because you are both homophobic and intimidated by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
So what if gay people buy some Spongebob merchandise, they also buy deodorant.
Are you going to ‘out’ Right Guard, big man at the FRC?
Are you ****.
People of Britain please either a) do things which are of more interest to others, and we can report them in the media, or b) if you do already then please tell us so we can leave the blue cat, and the talking sponge, and the bizarre part bear, part TV creature to children.
