Rated “G” for “Globalization”

How the drive for easily marketable, mass-consumable children’s media stifles complexity and creativity

by Malcolm Rambert

Cartoon Network’s Infinity Train is a unique show. Each season of the show—which were called “Books” in production—follows a vast, extradimensional train as it picks up protagonists who are dealing with some type of personal problem or struggle, usually oriented around a central underlying theme: learning to trust others, letting go of the past, becoming your own person, and so on. Each car on the train is its own self-contained world, ranging from simplistic configurations that function like puzzles to larger-than-life landscapes with their own rules and inhabitants. (Imagine the 1997 film Cube as an anthology series aimed at teens.) 

Originally a pilot released on the network’s official YouTube channel in 2016, Infinity Train quickly gained popularity thanks to its unusual concept and distinctive tone, both of which differed from previous Cartoon Network shows. It leaned heavily on mystery and a tone that was more reminiscent of older sci-fi media like classic Doctor Who than popular anime series, and its dialog used considerably less humor than its American-made Cartoon Network contemporaries. This surge of popularity led to the show getting greenlit for a full series and airing its first episode on the network in 2019. 

The show’s premise is at once both ripe for different story possibilities and a demonstration of the opportunities for innovative storytelling in animation—it isn’t just another story about kids going to a magical school or fighting some grand villain in a foreign land, it’s a show that can explore increasingly adult themes without talking down to its audience.

Viewers responded well, too: it quickly became HBO Max’s most popular original animated series as well as the platform’s 4th most-streamed show overall. (Parrot Analytics even noted that the show was in higher demand than 96.4% of other children’s titles.) It came as something of a shock, then, when it was announced this past April that the show’s fourth season would be its last, rather than the proposed eight.

How could such a widely popular show be canceled at the apparent height of its popularity? The answer is revealing: both about the ways that we view animation as a creative medium, and the way that art is expected to function under capitalism.

It didn’t take long for fans to learn why the show had been canceled: Book 5 had been planned as a spin-off film, but the film concept was rejected by the network because it didn’t have a “child entry-point.” As Owen Dennis, the creator of Infinity Train, stated: “Unfortunately, we were told that because it was about an adult woman grieving the loss of her fiancé, they thought that kids wouldn’t understand that, so they decided to not make it. I disagree with this theory, obviously, otherwise we wouldn’t have written it.”

This line of thinking—that younger audiences should only engage with media that narrowly reflects their own experiences—is a familiar one in the business of children’s entertainment. It goes back at least as far as films produced by Don Bluth, and continues up to the present with recent films like The Mitchells VS The Machines, all of which faced similar scrutiny and skepticism for not limiting themselves to stereotypical children’s topics.

Art that is more broadly acceptable makes for a more lucrative product.

The bigger a commercial media project is—be it a book, TV show, movie, or video game—the more business people will be in a position to second-guess every creative decision being made, ostensibly in the interests of making it a more successful product. In this case, killing a successful show took little more than a few executives who felt that a story about an adult dealing with the loss of a loved one would be too heavy, or too scary, for younger viewers.

On the one hand, these decisions reflect the individual sensibilities of executives and other business decision makers. But they also reflect a harsh reality of art under capitalism: namely, that art that is more broadly acceptable—that’s less likely to rankle or challenge audiences, and more palatable to a larger number of people—makes for a more lucrative product, one that can be sold more efficiently to more people. Art that takes risks, on the other hand, also represents a business risk. There is a profit motive for bland, unchallenging art. 

This has especially unfortunate consequences for children’s media, because the inclusion of more adult topics in children’s entertainment has led in some truly unique directions and help it break out of overly familiar molds.

Consider the 2002 Disney film Lilo & Stitch. While the text of the film focuses on a cute alien learning empathy and finding a home, it also explores the difficulties of a young indigenous Hawaiian girl and her big sister dealing with the aftermath of a major family tragedy and the ignorance and apathy of tourists. Unlike most Disney films of the era, Lilo & Stitch doesn’t have a single show-stopping musical number, nor is it centered around a glamorous historical setting—in other words, it’s the kind of film the Walt Disney Corporation wouldn’t normally think of producing and distributing, either then or today.

And there are other aspects of the film that run counter to conventional Disney wisdom and house style. The main character, Lilo, has a constant need to lash out violently at both her sister and classmates. While this is a relatable depiction of childhood for many children and adults alike, it’s a character touch that gels awkwardly or not at all with modern Disney films, which typically focus on presenting characters as ideal role models for the target audience (maybe with one or two key teachable moments), rather than on telling compelling or complex stores.

Lilo & Stitch’s departure from the typical look and aesthetics of Disney is best epitomized by a scene in which Lilo and her new best friend—a genetically engineered agent of chaos from outer space—wreak havoc at a tourist-friendly luau. Lilo’s older sister, Nani, is fired on the spot, leading her to reply, “Well, who wants to work at this stupid fakey luau anyway?” 

It’s a small moment, but it’s an unusual one to see in a Disney film. While it can be seen as Nani just getting in one last dig at her now-former employer, it’s also an honest observation that accurately calls out the faux authenticity of an event performed for tourists. In Hawaiian culture, a luau is a sacred practice—it was Western imperialists who transformed it into a tropical-style buffet for tourists, in the process simultaneously excluding indigenous Hawaiians from their own culture and exploiting them as a source of readily available labor to perform for (and clean up after) tourists.

Disney itself operates a Hawaiian resort that prominently boasts of its connection to “local culture.“

This type of westernization and disregard for life on the island continues to this day—and it should be no surprise that Disney itself operates a Hawaiian resort that prominently boasts of its connection to “local culture.“ The people behind Lilo & Stitch were fully aware of this tradition of exploitation and went out of their way to include it (one deleted scene goes even further with lambasting tourists). Ultimately, the inclusion of these themes not only provides an opportunity for serious topics to be broached to younger audiences, but also a more realistic and engaging story.

More recently, the inclusion of adult themes in children’s entertainment has also led some critics to argue that particular children’s films are actually for adults. When the 2020 Pixar film Soul landed on Disney Plus, for instance, it was the simultaneous recipient of widespread critical acclaim and curious claims that the film was not actually “for” kids—this despite its G rating and McDonald’s Happy Meal tie-in—because it focuses on a middle-aged man and deals with questions about the purpose of life, rather than more traditional children’s media topics. While this may seem like a compliment to the film, it’s also a rather insulting view of the intellectual and emotional capacities of youth.

It also goes hand-in-hand with a growing tendency to insist that shows and movies targeted at children are so sophisticated that they transcend the realm of children’s media and “become” entertainment for adults. But while it’s true that many pieces of children’s media are more complex than appearances would initially suggest, these arguments are almost always a case of confusing the joy of discovery for maturity—in other words, confusing a little bit of unexpected complexity for limitless complexity.

In recent years, shows like Adventure Time and its spiritual descendants have been applauded for having more complex and profound narratives than the average children’s show of yesteryear. This unexpected depth was a major part of their appeal, so much so that Adventure Time became a worldwide phenomenon. But even a comparatively complex children’s show will have a limitation on that nuance and depth that will leave them rather straightforward compared to most adult media—they are, after all, meant to be understood by children. 

The limitations that Americans perceive in children’s and teen media can have strange and startling consequences when it comes to media produced beyond our shores. Compared to the United States, countries like France have a much more flexible (and reasonable) view of what is appropriate for children’s and family media. Many films rated R in the U.S., for instance, are given the French equivalent of a PG or even G rating in France. It’s clear from the way France rates films and the types of children’s books they write that the French believe children are capable of processing more mature topics. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that when a French-born director made a film like Cuties (Mignonettes in French), a French film that was rated R by Netflix but rated U (suitable for all audiences) in France, it received an enormous backlash when its trailer hit U.S. audiences ahead of its Netflix release—with many claiming, despite having not yet seen the film, that both Netflix and the director were in support of pedophilia. 

But far from being pedophile apologia, Cuties centers around a group of young girls from conservative immigrant households in the banlieues (French suburbs which, unlike the U.S., are generally where the poor live, while the rich live in the inner cities). The girls get together and decide to rebel against their upbringings, which leads to the climax of the film where all the girls are twerking on stage—a scene American media interpreted as utter depravity. The film, though, presents these as children acting out against their sheltered lives and conservative families, and pushing back against traditional gender roles in spite (or perhaps because) of their innocence and very limited knowledge of what they had seen in popular culture.

We are increasingly shielding kids from ideas and issues that they should be learning about.

The extreme reaction to the film can partly be explained by a seemingly intentional decision on Netflix’s part to aggressively advertise it to the English-speaking world, knowing full well the reaction it would get. Unsurprisingly, many in the French press and public were confused by the reactionary response the American public gave to the film.

As more and more visual media becomes streamlined and focus-grouped to the point of parody, we are increasingly shielding kids from ideas and issues that they should be learning about: death, grief, personal failure—and, yes, even sexuality—are facts of life that children should be exposed to before adulthood. But the creation of a largely arbitrary divide between “adult topics” and “children’s topics” has led corporate media to implement an ethos of across-the-board censorship and impose standardized, sanitized, and idealized norms on audiences.

The practical embodiment of this can be seen in Standards & Practices, an internal group to most media companies that reviews finished television episodes before release, making demands and suggestions intended to keep the media “appropriate” for its target audience. One Twitter thread started by storyboard artist and revisionist Chelsea Woolman called on fellow animation industry insiders to share the most ridiculous feedback notes they had ever received from Standards & Practices:

It’s easy to laugh these interactions off as humorous absurdities. But for a show like Infinity Train, the ability to push its themes and content beyond what is comfortable for viewers is part of what makes it special.

As Owen Dennis stated in an interview with Gizmodo: “If you’re showing things that are scary to kids—obviously within reason—but if you’re showing things that are scary to kids, what’s going to happen is it’s going to start to train up their brain to be like ‘Hey you feel scared right now. Why do you feel scared? What do you do when you’re scared? When you’re afraid of something, what’s your reaction going to be?’ And what it’ll do is make them talk to their parents who will make the kid feel that fear without the actual danger of what could happen if you were actually in a real moment of fear. No one’s actually going to come out of the TV and murder you.” 

And would it really be so bad for a show like Infinity Train to target teenagers, even if it came at the expense of wider (and younger) audience? One of the main appeals of Infinity Train was that it didn’t feel like it was trying to appeal to everyone. Instead, it was made with care for a particular demographic in mind, with more mature, thought provoking, and relatable themes and ideas. Not every show aimed at people under 18 needs to appeal to everyone. Insisting on content purity—again, to improve it as a product, to make it more palatable to more people—means that most shows will wind up being made simultaneously for everyone and for no one in particular.

At the time of writing, the only areas outside of the U.S. with legal access to Infinity Train are Latin America and Brazil—something one wouldn’t know if they saw the variety of analysis videos and video reviews from countries like France or Russia. And it’s here that the censorious treatment of children’s and teen media ignores even the materialist concerns of capitalism. There is clearly an audience for a show like Infinity Train, and yet Warner Bros. and Cartoon Network have both shown only the barest interest in promoting it to new audiences or continuing to develop it for current ones. 

(Then again, perhaps the hand of the market is not so absent after all. Simplistic media, without nuance or complication, means easier distribution. Executives don’t have to worry about cultural differences. Complexity and risk-taking requires more than the most straightforward, bare minimum of effort.)

Ultimately, this presents a problem not only for culture and the arts, but also for the psychological development of children. The type of media children see in those first 18 years of development are the stories that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. They are the basis for how they will go on to make sense of the complex, sometimes harsh world we live in.

It would be unwise to stunt the development of those ideas and perspectives based purely on the idea of “kid-appropriateness”—after all, one of the defining characteristics of childhood is that it ends. If we don’t prepare children for the adult world, who do we expect will?

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Attributed Reading:

Baron, Reuben. “What Infinity Train’s Cancellation Means for the Future of Cartoon Network.” Comic Book Resources (CBR), Valnet Inc., 3 May 2021, www.cbr.com/infinity-train-cancellation-cartoon-network-future/.

Maher, John. “Infinity Train Outgrew Its Audience – and Grew Better for It.” Vulture, Vulture, 25 June 2021, www.vulture.com/article/infinity-train-cancellation-all-ages-animation.html.

Norris, Van. British Television Animation 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Sechrist, Rad; Braly, Matt; Dennis, Owen; Donoghue, Ryan (30 October 2020). “Creators discuss YA animation”. Twitter, 30 Oct. 2020. https://twitter.com/i/events/1322264091394744320.

Smith, Sarah. “Disney Canceled Owl House Because It Didn’t Fit The Brand Says Creator.” ScreenRant, 6 Oct. 2021, https://screenrant.com/owl-house-show-cancellation-disney-why-explained/.

Stabile, Carol A. Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture. Routledge, 2003.

Thomas, Paul A. EXPLORING THE LAND OF OOO: An Unofficial Overview and Production History of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time. University of Kansas Libraries, 2020.

Volpe, Giancarlo. “A little behind the scenes look of the early stages of Green Lantern the Animated Series.” Tumblr, 14 Apr. 2014, https://giancarlovolpe.tumblr.com/post/82641459722/a-little-behind-the-scenes-look-of-the-early.

Attributed/Recommended Viewing:

Films – This Film is Not Yet Rated. Directed by Kirby Dick, Candid Camera, BBC Films, 2006.

Videos – Calderon, Cristal Marie. “Why Anime in Latin America Was… Different (and Better) – As Told By Cristal | Get In The Robot.” YouTube, Get In the Robot, 20 Sept. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vev5Gp2skhI. 

Cellspex. “My Weird Beef with Soul Criticism.” Youtube, 21 Jan. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88tGutHv8c.

Dijkhuizen, Cornelis van. “Insight: Brad Bird on Animation.” Vimeo, 1 Nov. 2016, vimeo.com/189791698.

Gisriel, Jim. “Infinity Train Book 2 Review || The Reflection of Identity?” YouTube, 18 Jan. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGaFy6are3E.

Gisriel, Jim. “Infinity Train Book 3 Review || Grace’s Responsibility?” YouTube, 28 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2wZltd3kJs.

Klassen, Cassidy. “Double Layer Review: Kaijudo and the State of Children’s Media.” YouTube, 1 Apr. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLMzIRNa5a0.

MelonTeee. “4Kids Kinda Sucked – Localisation and Censorship.” YouTube, 3 Sept. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ce_ReE0cQE. 

Melina Pendulum. “Empire and Imperialism in Children’s Cartoons—A Super Light Topic.” YouTube, 22 June. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ3CcbDMtO4

Rocco, Chad. “Familiar Faces: Ms. Bellum.” YouTube, FamiliarFacesChannel, 24 Nov. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRnAt8DjO4.

Woodall, James. “The Most Interesting Scene In Steven Universe.” YouTube, 11 Dec. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLLABUPdPug.

Attributed Listening (Podcast Episodes):

Benedict, Raquel S. Keeley, Matt. “Writing for Young Audiences with Celine Kiernan.” Kittysneezes, 27 May 2021, kittysneezes.com/writing-for-young-audiences-with-celine-kiernan/.

Blacker, Ben. “Infinity Train (Owen Dennis, Madeline Queripel, Alex Horab, Lindsay Katai, Justin Michael).” The Writers Panel with Ben Blacker, Forever Dog Podcast Network, 27 Aug. 2020, foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/the-writers-panel/.

H., Dawn. “Ep 105: The World of Future Boy Conan with Dave Merrill.” The Anime Nostalgia Podcast. 14 Nov. 2021. animenostalgia.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-anime-nostalgia-podcast-ep-105_01885521854.html

MacDonald, Evan, and Laura Kruse. “93 – Cuties and #CancelNetflix with Laura Kruse.” Kino Lefter, Harbinger Media Network, 22 Sept. 2020, harbingermedianetwork.com/show/kino-lefter/.

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