Have you ever wondered why children’s cartoons so often become the subject of deep political commentary? Surely, a ten-year-old isn’t the one writing essays about hidden ideological messages in The Amazing World of Gumball after watching a single episode. Many adults continue to enjoy watching the cartoons they grew up with—or even current ones—and often feel the need to justify this enjoyment by assigning complex political or philosophical meanings to them. While some cartoons may include subtle jokes or themes that adults recognize on rewatch, most claims about hidden political or inappropriate messages are unrecognisable to children who lack that social awareness. The religious and political theories surrounding children’s cartoons, such as The Powerpuff Girls, The Simpsons, and The Amazing World of Gumball—most of which have been debunked—support Sontag’s argument that over-interpretation distances us from the ‘sensory experience of art’. In many cases, it is adults who, still drawn to these shows, seek complex meanings to justify their continued enjoyment rather than simply appreciating the creativity and visual pleasure that make these cartoons appealing.
People often assign complex meanings to works of art—such as cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls—that were never intended to carry such interpretations. Consequently, those productions end up going out of business due to the claims made by viewers who interpret them. “It’s like every day we wake up, someone else gets canceled, and another production gets criticized for its portrayal of a particular group or situation,” says Jason Kavuma, a fan of The Powerpuff Girls(Kavuma, 1). For instance, The Powerpuff Girls is a cartoon show about three powerful sisters created by a scientist who work together to save the people of Townsville from evil villains. In Season Five, Episode 18, the girls grow tired of constantly fighting and make a deal with a wizard: in exchange for peace in Townsville, they will give up their powers to him. The episode was presented as a musical rock opera. However, it sparked controversy, as many viewers claimed it promoted a religious conspiracy due to imagery that was perceived as containing subtle religious symbolism. This claim was later debunked, and the creator explained that the episode’s actual meaning had nothing to do with those interpretations. Due to recurring accusations like this—and the resurfacing of old ones—the show experienced numerous setbacks and ultimately got canceled. This goes back to Sontag’s claim on how, “Interpretation [could be] a radical strategy for conserving an old art, which has become overlaid with theories and explanations.”(Sontag, 3) In other words, it’s a way of controlling art by imposing theories that actually do not serve as a basis of understanding, but rather restrict the art from being fully appreciated for its content.
Thus, when ideological interpretations are imposed on art, they stifle our ability to experience and appreciate it freely. That is why Sontag calls it “Revenge of intellect upon art” (Sontag, 4), due to its tendency to strip enjoyment from the art through overanalyzing it. Nevertheless, a lot of the art avoids interpretations like that by deliberately creating works that can not easily be explained or fall into interpretations. For example, unlike The Simpsons, which portrays a traditional family setting and human-like characters, The Amazing World of Gumball abandons the “basic accepted type of character design”(Cronin, 1) according to the show’s creator. Each character was a rejected prototype from different cartoon projects that the French-born British animator had worked on, and he eventually combined them all into one show, The Amazing World of Gumball. Unlike The Simpsons, which has been subject to claims and interpretations of hidden political views due to the show’s lucky prediction of a few events that happened in the real world, The Amazing World of Gumball was free from these interpretations. This was due to the complex characters and the unpredictable nature of the show. As Sontag said, “ Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling (…) In good art, there is no place for the interpretive impulse.”(Sontag, 4) Therefore, the harder it is to explain the art, the less commentary and interpretations it gets. That is why modern art, like Gumball, resists interpretation through its unexplainable dialogue that can’t be reduced to a single meaning. In contrast, ideological interpretations of less complex cartoons generally stifle our ability to appreciate and experience them freely due to the easily made interpretive impulses.
Adults should not be discouraged from watching cartoons, as these shows can serve as a relaxing and nostalgic escape. However, when adults overinterpret them through societal or political frameworks, they detract from the therapeutic and visual pleasure these cartoons offer. Sontag says, “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”(Sontag, 10) Hinting that if we fully experienced art instead of constantly trying to interpret it, we would have enjoyed the sensory experience of art rather than focusing on solving a puzzle. A mental health research article talks about how cartoons helped different individuals, such as Elisabeth Shermen and her husband, who admitted to each other, “that [they] often watch cartoons [that are] meant for children as a method of self-care (…) He confessed that he still watches Tom & Jerry in times of turmoil.”(Shermen, 2) This is a prime example of when art is experienced in a “descriptive, rather than prescriptive vocabulary”(Sontag, 8). Indicating that we should describe art from our visual lens and not through prescriptive ideological interpretations.
Overall, ideological interpretation stifles our ability and detracts from the therapeutic nature of watching cartoons, as well as the sensory experience, which is why Sontag’s claim of enjoying art from a visual lens rather than a prescriptive one is particularly relevant. Not only that, but the continuation of such interpretations would only raise the next generation of adults, completely detached from enjoying art for its visual appeal. Consequently, art would continue to adopt complex approaches to avoid such interpretations, or might even give in to them and fall into those categories. Even though most claims targeting those cartoons are debunked most of the time, the repetitiveness of those interpretations ultimately affects the art in the long run.