The Subversive Agency of Children in Adult Animated Sitcoms

“KID POWER!”: THE SUBVERSIVE AGENCY OF CHILDREN IN ADULT ANIMATED SITCOMS A thesis submitted to the faculty of AS San Francisco State University 3 0 In partial fulfillment of ^0!? the requirements for U)oM5T the Degree •Tfcif Master of Arts In Women and Gender Studies by Carly Toepfer San Francisco, California May 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read “Kid Power!” The Subversive Agency of Children in Adult Animated Sitcoms by Carly Toepfer, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University. Evren Savci, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Julietta Hua, Ph. D. Associate Professor “KID POWER!’”: THE SUBVERSIVE AGENCY OF CHILDREN IN ADULT ANIMATED SITCOMS Carly Toepfer San Francisco, California 2015 In my thesis, using contemporary feminist analyses about children, obedience, the nuclear family, and media influence, I theorize the representations of children in adult animated sitcoms. I argue that these television shows are ripe with representations of children subverting adult actions and beliefs through their own agency and rebellion, which they enact in two main ways: through sibling relationships and friendship/peer groups. Using episodes of both The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers, I analyze what these shows reveal about the agency of children and argue that these characteristics are not written merely into individual characters, but are an innate part of childhood in these shows. is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my readers, Evren Savci and Julietta Hua, for pushing me to do this work and to constantly improve on it. I would also like to thank my fiance, Grant Gaver, as well as my friend Sebastian Ochoa-Kaup, because I couldn't have gotten through this program without them. Thanks also to my parents for their unconditional love and support. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction...................................................................................................1 The Child as Historical............................................................................................2 The Child as Contextual..........................................................................................4 Children and Obedience..........................................................................................6 Gendered Childhood................................................................................................9 Why Popular Culture?............................................................................................10 Methods..................................................................................................................14 Chapter Two: Familial Bonds...........................................................................................19 Chapter Three: Kids Versus Adults....................................................................................36 Chapter Four: Animated Futures........................................................................................53 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................70 Episodes Cited................................................................................................ 76 References..........................................................................................................................78 vi 1 “I can't believe it, but it looks as though television has betrayed me.” - Bart Simpson “Cartoons don't have any deep meaning, Marge. They're Just stupid drawings that give you a cheap laugh.” - Homer Simpson Introduction As a child, I was a member of one of many families who came together around the television on Sunday nights to watch The Simpsons. As a person who is younger than the show itself (I was bom in 1992, the show began in 1989), this was a family tradition that I was bom into, as my parents and older brother had watched the show together for years previously - mirroring, in many ways, the Simpson family as they came together on their couch in the opening of every episode. Recently, thinking back on The Simpsons and other adult-oriented animated sitcoms, the episodes that stuck most in my memory were those regarding children subverting parental roles and actions, and I was reminded that many children my age were forbidden from watching the show. This led me to my research questions, as I wondered if this was a common trope in these shows, how these portrayals functioned within them, and what that could mean on a larger scale in “real life”. What do the actions of these children actually subvert, and in what ways? How is the idea of the nuclear family tied to the roles of obedient children? How are these roles gendered? What is the importance of popular culture, specifically in portraying children and nuclear families? Are these subversive attitudes tied to the characters themselves, or 2 something written into childhood in these shows? As I set out to answer these questions, I sought ideas from sociologists, anthropologists, scholars of popular culture, and other feminist scholars. In the following pages of this introduction, I will lay out scholarship that has inspired my approach to representations of childhood disobedience in animated sitcoms. I will argue that these subversive acts with inclinations toward Justice are inherently written into childhood in many of these shows, and are not merely characteristics of the individual children themselves. The Child as Historical In order to properly understand the social stratification in which children are currently located within, we must examine the histories of both the nuclear family and childhood. The stereotypical modem nuclear family consists of a mother, father, and children; in the United States, they are often idealized to be located within white, middle- class suburbs. The creation of the nuclear family came from religious ideologies as well as the industrial revolution, as smaller, more individualized homes were created closer to large cities, and large families were needed less with the decrease in agricultural work. This allowed for more children to attend school and receive educations, changing the ideas of stages of development. Further, religious ideas, specifically Protestant/Christian morals, played a large role in hiding the sexuality of children and therefore creating a separation between them and adults ( Aries 128). Historian Phillipe Aries writes in his book, Centuries of Childhood, that the idea 3 of the child as something separate from an adult did not occur until the 15th century, as there was not an “awareness of the particular nature of childhood, that particular nature which distinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult” (128) before this period. However, the creation of the “child-centered family,” also known as the nuclear family, in the 19th and 20th centuries became the culmination of the idea of the child and the adult being two separate stages in life, and thus two different components to the family, working as a classic binary. In fact, “family,” in English, currently implies the presence of children, such as in descriptors of “family-friendly” films (Montgomery 63). During this period, as with now, the child was viewed as “not ready for life and... had to be subjected to a special treatment, a sort of quarantine, before he was allowed to Join the adults” (Aries 412). We see this today with the rights that children do and do not have in their daily lives, such as the requirement to go to school and inability to sign legal documents, and thus represent themselves under the law or as legal subjects. Historically, one of the major ways that children started being separated from adults was through the creation of individual bedrooms for children and adults (Foucault 46). This created an idea of distinction-induced privacy between children and adults, and was a main factor contributing to the sudden fear of childhood sexuality - as a result, sexuality is seen in many modem societies to be a key distinction between childhood and adulthood. This makes childhood sexuality a taboo topic, one that many people deny even exists. Montgomery writes, “[t]he image of the sexually innocent child lies at the heart of Western constructions of childhood” (181). Children are often protected from sexual 4 imagery, “the 'wrong' sort of sexual experience in childhood is thought to damage children so fundamentally they can never recover,” (184). Of course, one of the most famous examples of theorists who discuss child sexuality is Sigmund Freud, who argued that, from birth, humans are driven by sexual or bodily pleasure. However, Montgomery summarizes, “the instinctual efforts of infants and young children to gain pleasure [a]re frequently punished and thwarted by parental and social control” (185). When an adult sees their child putting his or her hand down their pants, they generally make them stop - especially when they are in public. They teach children that sexuality is something to be ashamed of, and that when it must be practiced, it has to be at home, behind closed doors. The Child as Contextual The idea of who, exactly, constitutes a “child” changes depending on context. Anthropologist Heather Montgomery writes in her book, An Introduction to Childhood: Anthropological Perspectives

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