Cartoons aim for grown-up boys Cable inks in sex, swearing
By Bill Keveney USA TODAYBy Bill USA TODAY When it comes to cartoons, it's no longer Saturday morning in America. On The Strip, TNN's new, no-kids-allowed animated block, Gary the Rat tosses off a euphemism for rodent droppings that would make Mickey Mouse blush. A Stripperella character performs an animated lap dance. And Ren and Stimpy aren't talking baseball when they argue about pitching and catching. A nasty rodent lawyer, a sex kitten superhero and a dog and cat awash in a spray of bodily waste in Ren & Stimpy's Adult Party Cartoon are definitely not for the Rugrats set -- save perhaps for the latter's familiarity with bodily functions. The Strip, which premieres tonight (10 ET/PT), offers the newest of a growing number of late-night cable cartoons aimed at an adult audience, which shouldn't automatically be confused with a mature one. The reconstituted TNN, which would have been virile Spike TV by now if not for a lawsuit, is throwing the cartoon kitchen sink at the young men it hopes to attract. ''Men like sexy, funny, gross-out, clever, dark humor,'' TNN executive vice president Kevin Kay says. Later hours allow more freedom to push the envelope, without forfeiting the chance to snag a sizable cable audience. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim (Sunday-Thursday, 11 p.m. ET/PT), a three-hour mix of comedy and Japanese adventure animé, has scored big teen and young-adult ratings, especially with young men. In the May sweeps, it drew more men 18 to 34 than David Letterman. Other cable competitors are coming, threatening to turn late night into the new Saturday morning of TV animation, albeit for much older ''kids'': * MTV kicks off a new animated Spider-Man on July 11 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. This webslinger is in college and episodes will touch on drinking, hazing and unrequited love.
* Showtime kicks in an hour later (July 11, 11 p.m. ET/PT) with Free for All, based on Brett Merhar's comic strip about two dysfunctional guys (part of the target audience, too, perhaps?) * TNN has more animation in August with John Leguizamo's Zilch & Zero, a special that could become a series. And The Immigrants, from Rugrats creator Klasky Csupo, is due in January. * Comedy Central, whose South Park is a cable pioneer, turns movie producer Robert Evans into a cartoon with Kid Notorious in October. * Sci-Fi Channel in January will premiere its first animated series, Tripping the Rift, which got its start in Internet ''Webisodes.'' After the 1960s, when networks saw the opportunity to attract children with cheaply produced cartoons, animation was long confined to the ''Saturday morning kids ghetto,'' says Sarah Baisley, editor of Animation World Magazine and awn.com. In the past decade, such cartoons as The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Beavis & Butthead and South Park have dispelled much of that age-old condescension, raising animation's stature and making networks realize young adults, TV's prize advertising group, will watch cartoons. ''Animation has a tremendous amount of appeal to adults,'' says Baisley, adding that cartoons stack up well in quality against live-action shows. The current cable cartoon onslaught comes just a couple of years after a largely failed animation influx on broadcast networks, including Sammy, David Spade's animated reminder that Just Shoot Me was a great gig, and Mission Hill, a tale of urban slackers from Simpsons alums. Cartoon Network's Mike Lazzo believes many of those shows, which often resurface on cable, didn't get enough time or nurturing. Adult Swim's Family Guy topped 1 million adults 18 to 34 last week, which would have been no big deal during its fitful tenure on Fox but was a first-time achievement for Cartoon Network -- at 11:30 at night. The niche audience, in this case young men, that can't sustain a broadcast series can make a show a cable success. ''You sense there was a pent-up demand for animation, good animation,'' Lazzo says of the stronger-than-expected Adult Swim ratings. Cartoons may get more attention from their cable networks, too. Futurama creator Matt Groening has praised the Adult Swim promotional push, an effort he felt was lacking at Fox. Cable also has more leeway with language, sexual situations and violence, especially later at night.
''These are people who grew up with animation, with South Park and The Simpsons. They're looking for something a little edgier, a little more irreverent,'' says Comedy Central senior vice president Lauren Corrao. They certainly get that from The Strip. Gary the Rat (Kelsey Grammer) drops an epithet, but the real assault on TV convention is that this rodent lawyer is thoroughly unlikable. Stripperella (with Pamela Anderson's voice and famed physical likeness) features lap dances and runway prancing, but the nudity is pixilated -- a rare case where The Strip doesn't. ''We put Stripperella in the news half-hour (11 p.m. ET/PT). It's the sexiest of the three shows and an alternative to local news,'' says TNN executive vice president Kevin Kay. Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee says he created Stripperella expressly for Anderson. ''I try to make everything I do different in some way. And I haven't done anything featuring a double-identity topless dancer who's also a heroine,'' says Lee, who dismisses talk that some might see the cartoon as sexist. ''The only boundary I have is that it's got to be in good taste.'' Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi doesn't feel a similar burden. A new Ren & Stimpy episode featured the f-word (to be bleeped for TV), excrement, vomit and mucus, lots of mucus. There's a sex scene -- under the covers -- between the two male leads, who ''are sometimes gay and sometimes straight,'' their creator explains. TNN, which is looking for edge, nevertheless wants to warn viewers that The Strip is for adults. ''It's definitely not for kids. We're still trying to write the disclaimer,'' TNN's Kay says. But telling children to stay away doesn't mean they will, especially when it comes to a cartoon's kid-friendly visuals. Some tykes watch Adult Swim. Comedy Central's Corrao acknowledges that even with late time slots and ample warnings, South Park's audience includes children. ''If you color it pretty, children will follow,'' Animation World's Baisley says. ''There's the color, the movement, the sound effects and the music. Like with The Simpsons -- the kids are watching something colorful, and the jokes go right over their heads.'' Despite its title and late hour, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, which includes prime-time veterans Futurama and Family Guy, is rated TV-14, has high teen ratings and isn't out of bounds for children, save for some violence and naughty banter in its Japanese animé cartoons, which include Kikaider, Lupin the Third, Inuyasha and Cowboy Bebop.
Adult Swim's all-comic Sunday includes affectionate, funny swipes at the shabby, Saturday-morning years, with Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, a takeoff on a secondtier superhero, and The Brak Show, a spinoff of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. ''We only made (Space Ghost) because they didn't give us money for originals'' in 1994, Lazzo says. ''It immediately started tracking an older demo'' than the kids fare. With Adult Swim's ratings success, Lazzo expects the five-night franchise to expand, with the eventual goal of becoming its own network. During May sweeps, Adult Swim attracted more men 18 to 24 than all late-night talk hosts except NBC's Conan O'Brien. An NBC executive acknowledged Adult Swim's success, but says it hasn't taken viewers away from the talk shows. Unlike their broadcast counterparts, the animation-friendly cable networks -- TNN, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central and Sci-Fi Channel -- can afford to focus on men, who are more likely than women to watch cartoons. That gender divide remains. Armond Aserinsky, a Philadelphia clinical psychologist, says it may have to do with men's greater response to visual stimuli and women's attraction to real people in real-life situations. The nerd factor also tilts toward males, Aserinsky says. Boys and men seem more interested in compatible interests, such as collecting comic books, playing fantasy and video games. A bigger reason for greater male interest may be a historical loop: Cartoons have been and continue to be made by men for men, or boys in the case of Saturday fare. ''Guys grew up on animation. Until recently, there were not a lot of cartoons aimed at girls,'' says Kay, although Daria, as Told By Ginger and other cartoons have helped broaden appeal. For now, though, late-night animation is a boys club. Ren & Stimpy fans include males, females, ''all ages, all ethnic groups, all sexual preferences, all religious groups,'' Kricfalusi says. ''I make the cartoons for me and my friends. (And we) are pretty immature, like 90% of humanity.''