by Vince Capece

Created on: April 29, 2008

Cartoons are nearly as old as motion pictures themselves. Since the 1950s, many children have grown up watching cartoons before school, after school, and especially on weekend mornings. And while we may think of cartoons as primarily a genre for kids, that twist has been a relatively new phenomenon.

There have been "G" rated cartoons just as there have been "G" rated features for the entire history of these films. But that's not to say that they were aimed toward children.

Early cartoons like the 1914 short "Gertie the Dinosaur" and the Koko the Clown series were clean by today's standards and, therefore, accessible to children. But the films themselves were aimed at older crowds.

As these shorts were developed by people like Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and Popeye) and Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse), the anthropomorphic characters may seem to have been tailored to children but the storylines were more often written for adults. This is especially obvious when pre-Hays Code versions are shown.

The Hays Code of 1930, known more officially as the United States Motion Picture Production Code, controlled the content of films in the United States. Enforcement began in 1934 and limited "morally acceptable" films to a specific list of dos and don'ts. This prevented characters from taking off their clothes or drinking or doing illegal drugs, among many other things. Prior to this, Betty Boop, for example, was a far more sexual being.

Cartoons, by default, were much more family friendly after this point. The jokes, however, remained adult in nature. To get many of the punchlines from the "golden era" of Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes films, some basic knowledge of literature or pop culture was necessary and, therefore, many of the jokes went over the heads of the younger viewers.

With the emergence of television, cartoons found a new home with children. No longer did the audience have to pay admission to a theatre to see these shorts. And still the jokes were usually not at the pre-teen level. Jay Ward's "Rocky and Bullwinkle" shows had many pratfalls that would appeal to kids but many of the spoken jokes were obviously not geared to the younger viewers.

Animators throughout the years have found cartoons to be an excellent media for older audiences. After the MPAA rating system was introduced in 1968 and many of the Hays Code limits removed, the final barrier to making adult-only cartoons was gone.

In 1972, Ralph Bakshi brought R. Crumb's "Fritz the Cat" to the big screen. Garnering an "X" rating, "Fritz" was unabashedly for adults even though visually the characters could have easily appeared in Looney Tunes cartoons two decades earlier. Like Bakshi, other filmmakers such as Don Bluth and Hayao Miyazaki explored this new territory of non-family friendly animation. While Americans may continue to think of cartoons as being for kids, Europeans and, especially, Japanese audiences treat animation on a different level.

In Japan, feature films and TV shows have long been animated just for adults. These Anime movies are very popular as dramas and have found cult followings in other countries around the world.

Back in the United States, proof of the adult nature of cartoons has been easy to find. In addition to modern adult-themed mainstream cartoons such as "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy," there have always been adult themes of nudity, sexuality, drug use, and violence, even in the shorts that are rerun in front of our children. The youth audience for cartoons is a relatively new find.

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