The History of Made-for-Adults Animated Films

With the recent swarm of adult animated, stop-motion, and illustrated adult cartoon films, it feels like there are more animated films made for adults than children. Recent films in this genre include “Hell and Back,” about a young boy being saved from the throes of Hell by his friends, and the unreal parody “Sausage Party,” which released its trailer recently. Other adult oriented films without the crude humor and bombastic language have tackled impossibly real issues, like Charlie Kauffman’s “Anomalisa,” which is a film that is so close to real it could have been made with actual human beings instead of clay figures. Though adult themed cartoon movies seem like a new trend it’s anything but.

The boom in animation began with the arms race between Disney and Warner Bros. Disney was more interested in making cartoons for children, which played in theaters before movies. Though many of their shorts were innocent in nature, certain shorts with characters like Goofy were extremely adult in their themes, unlike the affable dork we now know today. In his original shorts Goofy was violent, corrosive, caustic, mean-spirited, and to some extent homicidal. At the same time Warner’s had the corner marketed on edgy, adult humor thanks to its principle character Bugs Bunny. While the humor may have been similar, it was the sarcastic, spoiled, sophisticated Bugs that adults really connected with. For thirty odd years these titans battled it out, but the prominence of cartoons died down with the advent of television.

Cartoons lived on in television shows like “Sealab 2020,” “Super Friends,” “Fat Albert,” and many more. Adult cartoons weren’t really a thing before the seventies. Most studios that worked on cartoons only made them for children, because they were the ones who would want to go see them. Leading the charge for more mature animated content was Ralph Bakshi, who gave us the film “Fritz the Cat.” You could say Bakshi is a forefather of the entire adult cartoon movement. While there are adult themes in that era’s graphic novels and comic books, fully animated films were not given the same credence as today. Bakshi’s first film at his own studio, “Fritz the Cat” was also the first animated feature film to get an X-rating in the United States. Themes included free love, race relations, left and right wing politics, and college life in the seventies amid Vietnam. He made nine films through the seventies and eighties, establishing his oeuvre as an independent and yet mainstream animation director. Other films of his include “Wizards,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “American Pop,” and “Fire and Ice.”

While adult cartoons were wildly popular at their advent, they were also demonized by many critics. While “Fritz the Cat,” was amazingly controversial and lewd, it was a great satire on the youth culture of the seventies, and spoke on explosive themes. Veering into the eighties, films with these adult themes were more often than not gratuitous with their violence, sex, and trippy visuals, but waylaid by a lack of substance. This can be said for “Heavy Metal,” which includes a series of vignettes with sci-fi themes. There are beautiful naked women, robots, aliens, and outlandish worlds. There’s a lot of violence, like the magazine the stories are based from. Other ridiculously mature films in the cartoon realm included “The Big Bang,” “Rock & Rule,” and “Pink Floyd the Wall” (partially).

The nineties were more concerned with continuing television franchises i.e. “Beavis and Butt-head Do America,” or “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” While these films were inflammatory and used adult humor, they weren't as needless with their sex and violence. Films that were adult and yet mature included “Felidae” and the Japanese anime “Princess Mononoke.” The one biggest misstep in this decade was Ralph Bakshi’s “Cool World,” which tried to rip off the immensely popular “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” It incorporated live action with animated scenes, but it was far too crude and vile to be anything comparable to its predecessor. Bakshi originally had written a great script about an underground cartoonist who fathers an illegitimate half-human/half-cartoon daughter, who hates herself for what she is and tries to kill him. They heavily rewrote the script and it was such a bomb that Bakshi didn’t make another film for twenty-three years.

A scene from "Cool World."       Paramount Pictures — A scene from "Cool World." Paramount Pictures

Most of our adult animated films have been pretty serious in recent years. Between “Waltz with Bashir,” “Persepolis,” “$9.99” and “Tengers,” there’s very little room for adult content that’s anything but thought provoking drama. There’s always going to be animated entertainment, but whether it can solely be for children or adults is yet to be seen. Sometimes it’s shocking to see animated, parodic characters saying very mature things, but it can also inspire a dialogue that’s very different than if it were a live action film. A recently made documentary about Vincent van Gogh looks animated, but in actuality every frame is an entire oil painting, something that truly inspires a dialogue about his life. Again looking at “Anomalisa,” this film could have used real living actors, but the style in which it’s made inspires discussion about the inner dialogue and outward appearance of each of us in daily life. While I am excited to see more animated adult films with immature themes, the medium will always be used for various reasons, and for many different audiences.