Bullying in cartoons

And then they had to create Marvin the Martian when it turned out Bugs looked too smug against Yosemite, so I've read.

"Heroes becoming bullies" only really happens when you don't set up that the character they torment is unlikable, or a jerk, or did something bad. (See the Animaniacs episode "Anchors A-Warners.")

I dunno, you can make a Villainy-Free Villain after all. A Card-Carrying Villain might still not pay off if they aren't really doing anything to technically provoke the hero. Be it with smug gusto or not, the villain is still gonna look over punished getting a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for stealing a kid's lollypop.

Maybe that's where Marvin came in, Marvin was the other way round, he was affable and likeable, but genuinely dangerous. It wasn't a case of punishing for mere principles anymore, Bugs was terrified of what he could do.

Concerning Aesops with bullies, there's also 'Griffon The Brush Off' from Friendship Is Magic. It's a particularly careful one, concerning how you treat friends connected with a bad crowd. It's not a bad outlook (if kinda clunky and Anvilicious), granted not every victim will be able to perform an elaborate Batman Gambit like Pinkie Pie.

edited 25th Aug '14 7:01:34 AM by Psi001

I think a key problem is that a bully is often connected not only to certain cliched designs and quirks (eg. bulky, ugly, usually dumb muscle bound punk with an obsession for lunch money) but also drives and actions. Bullies thrive off of making a person they target suffer, be it physical, humiliation or intimidation. They want their opponents to feel small.

A textbook example of this is Flash Thompson from SSM and USM. Honestly, they were so over the top psycho with him that Peter really should have just knocked his teeth out. But then, I've always hated his character in all incarnations.

He eventually became much more nice to Peter after a while (Namely going to Vietnam). While he obviously could not do the same in Spectacular, the team did intend to develop him and make him more than just a bully after a while.

Would Pacifica Northwest from Gravity Falls count as a bully character?

Not anymore since she's redeemed herself.

The only bully characters that I hate more than any bully character in the history of cartoons are Peter and Lois from Family Guy. Sure you may say Connie , but Connie is an antagonist and she's supposed to be an unlikable bitch. The same goes for Pacifica (at first) , Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon and Myrtle. Lois and Peter are seen as the good guys for bullying Meg and making her feel bad, and they get away with it. I see them as evil demons for this because they are supposed to be loving parents.

edited 13th Apr '15 9:03:36 AM by MsCC93

For better or worse, that's the joke, that they're parents with a daughter so lame that they can't help but abuse her. The problem is that for the joke to work and the abuse to seem justified, you have to presume that they are "good" parents by default, and that Meg is just such a waste of space that they can't help themselves despite their goodness (i.e. an inversion of Even Evil Has Standards. Even Good Has Standards?). The trouble again is that there's no other evidence that they are good parents, unless you look back on the earlier episodes when they would pull through for their kids (Peter after some goading). So they just look all too realistically abusive.

@Bonerfart: I know Paul Germain of Rugrats based Angelica off of a girl who picked on him as a kid.

Allegedly Angelica was supposed to be a lot nastier originally, and get away with her crap more often, inflicting a "life isn't always fair" Aesop for kids. A few of the other creators took a dislike to her, insisting she get toned down, either being more sympathetic or more of a Butt-Monkey to her own antics.

Remember the early "Barbecue Story" episode, she throws away Tommy's ball, gloats nastily about it till Tommy cries and is never dealt with again. That was seemingly the shtick Angelica was supposed to be about originally, Klasky Cuspo saw that episode as an Old Shame.

Actually Nickelodeon has a recurring fondness for these sort of characters, and most of them are more a barebones example of the original concept Germain wanted (e.g. Megan from Drake And Josh). Perhaps a lot of the creative teams there had some horrid sister or female bully stalking them as a kid.

Concerning Peter and Lois, I don't think they're supposed to look good bullying Meg, just the writers tend to overthink the "character picks on Butt-Monkey and gets away with it" shtick is always funny in adult comedies. I get the feeling that writers think all adult audiences are sadistic and think raw cruelty or 'anti-karma' is automatic humour. I could be wrong though, I notice while Family Guy rarely punishes it's own cast, it's fond of taking shots at other medias (eg. the Bewitched cutaway, nearly every time Lucy Van Pelt appears in a gag).

edited 13th Apr '15 1:37:28 PM by Psi001

With Angelica, I think they took her too far in the "Chuckie's Wonderful Life" episode. In all fairness she does get her comeuppance, but what she did was pretty low, even for her.

What she did in that episode was essentially Mind Rape. She did a cruel thing to Chuckie and his father and then convinced the former his existence was a burden on everyone. Getting lectured and given no dessert from her dad seemed pretty meagre punishment for something so outright evil.

Keeping in mind this kid is three years old.

edited 13th Apr '15 3:10:11 PM by Psi001

Don't get me started on Lois Griffin.

Why is the Karma Houdini trope so common? Like most of the Family Guy cast is full of jerkasses that deserve some comeuppance at least a few times per season.

I sometimes feel like some adult writers just think Karma Houdini = funny. It's the most vulgar and mean outcome right? Surely that's what you want when you watch a Sadist Show. Sometimes it feels like they actually take out gags just to make sure the character gets away with it however. eg. times Peter and Roger do horrible things and the others just stand there like they don't connect what they've done to them. Karma Houdinis can be funny but there has to be an actual gag to it.

I can't be the only one burnt out on hearing the term Karma Houdini altogether.

You're not the only one. The obsession with mean spiritedness I see in the Internet cartoon community these days is kind of abnormal.

I've heard that Peter sometimes gets called out on his horrible actions, but Lois always gets away. Unfair Sex is still sexist regardless of the gender.

On the subject of gender issues and bullying, it's interesting how male bullies are usually portrayed as relying on physical power and size, while female bullies, almost always, are given strong focus on Rich Bitch traits instead (while a rich haughty boy is more likely to be treated as a prissy Butt-Monkey rather than a threat). The stereotypical cartoon male bully will often be poor and ill-educated, a brute, while the stereotypical cartoon female bully will most often be as physically unimposing as the girls she harasses, but making up for it in numbers.

While it's not uncommon for a male bully to have followers or a gang (like Jimbo), they still can be often portrayed as loners as well, while a female bully will always have her Girl Posse (because we aren't used to see a female as threatening on her own yet?)

The only recent case where the female bully is noticeably bigger than the children she's harassing is Babs Seed, and even so, she had to click with an already existing Girl Posse. Then again, I guess Gilda can also count, sort of, although that case is atypical in that it doesn't happen between 'child' characters.

Thinking about it as I type, I suppose there's also Tina Rex, but her gender is so little of an issue in the episodes I have watched... does she ever get a posse of her own, anyway? I don't feel too sure making any sort of judgement about her. She's kind of more of a force of narrative nature rather than an actual character from what little of her I've watched.

As said Karma Houdinis can sometimes be funny with the right execution, it's just that too many modern Sadist Shows tend to overblow this trope intentionally, like it's a gag on it's own.

You want an instant great Sadist Show protagonist, make them a jerk and have them get away with it.

edited 13th Apr '15 7:11:23 PM by Psi001

What about the red haired bully in older cartoons? I know Street Fighter II: th Animated Series, The Addams Family and A Pup Name Scooby Doo all rfeature the trope altough they were usually one note.

about the entire thing about Karma Houdini being common: The problem is that to a character be punished, the character being punished must be put in the story. The opposite is not true- many times, the author not cares/forgot about the punishment of the character. In many cases, they do guess that the actions of the character in question do not deserve punishment. In other cases, despite seeing their acts as wrong, they do see no reason to punish them.

Agreed.

People get away with crappy things sometimes. That's life.

"The stereotypical cartoon male bully will often be poor and ill-educated, a brute, while the stereotypical cartoon female bully will most often be as physically unimposing as the girls she harasses, but making up for it in numbers."

It's funny because in my experience that's EXTREMELY Truth in Television, though the wealth thing vaires a bit, it tends to not be 100% accurate, but is guidelineish.

I'd be fine with people getting away with stuff if the victims of bullying weren't punished for fighting back. It's an unfair double standard.

I've heard that Peter sometimes gets called out on his horrible actions, but Lois always gets away. Unfair Sex is still sexist regardless of the gender.

Then some fans wonder why Lois is more hated out of the two.

edited 14th Apr '15 2:03:37 PM by MsCC93

My experience is that male bullies used name-calling, throwing objects, and pushing me. Female bullies tend to be verbal...and much worse than male bullies.

Seriously, one of them made fun of me liking Fi M, said to my face that "I was going to die alone" and pushed me to get out of the classroom before me on that same day. She also refused to let me do any work when we were doing labs in Chemistry. Luckily the first semester when I had her (and a bitch from my freshmen year) in a class this year, she didn't bother me at all.

This is why I hate female bullies in any media.