Cartoons Revolutionary Socialists should watch with their kids: The Return

When the mainline of a particular modern cartoon series was due to finish because of an early cancellation back in 2018, 7 years ago now (notwithstanding the four subsequent feature length episodes that delivered the real denouement to the series or the explicitly for adults sequel/successor that is currently in its second season) I made a bold claim on my socials. That was that the show in its entirety constituted one of the great works of narrative art of the modern age and ought to be studied in future years, centuries, millennia even the way we now study Shakespeare’s Theatre, The Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, The Táin etc. It was a bit of an extreme take but I stand by it now as firmly as I did then, even more so considering the excellence of the subsequent material from the team attached to the IP. 

So, before we get into the “whys” of all of that, lets have a quick word about why I’m writing about this now.

Fans of the blog may recall that in the distant past we had an occasional series wherein I would do a quick breakdown of children’s animated series and films from or adjacent to my own youth that contained progressive, even revolutionary, leftist themes and ideas. Little did I know in 2012 not having children of my own that the world of children’s entertainment was going through a minor revolutionary upheaval of its own.

What I had intended to do was after the most recent of these (name link) was to do a couple more and then finish on a particular series that wasn’t remotely political but had an incredible surrealist chaotic tip to it that I very much enjoyed and vibed to when I was a child. Unfortunately the creator and show runner of the series was subsequently outed as a creep of the highest order and I can no longer in good conscience support or platform any of their work. I wouldn’t even say the name of the person or the work that they are synonymous with. 

It was a blow and something that took a while getting over. Knowing that was on the horizon didn’t make me feel much like coming back to the series, even though it was one that I liked doing and a small part of the reason why this thing is so sparse. 

That said, we have up until a few years ago been living through what will probably come to be seen as a golden age in children and young adults animated media, especially long form episodic series for the small screen. From about the start of the 2010s to a few years ago when the Cartoon Network that was arguably the driving force for this shuttered, there was a marked spike in the quality and variety of these shows. The whole story of what this was and what happened to essentially kill it are a whole story and too long a one for me to want to go into right now, a post for another time probably. Suffice to say that I have got enough things to talk about to potentially keep me going for some time.

To begin with I’d like to start with what is in my opinion the best of these series, and also the foundational one of the era. It has proven to be both a masterpiece in itself and also a training ground for many other creators who would go on to do their own works which I will also be covering in future instalments.

So what time is it? 

Adventure Time!

(So at this point in these articles I usually split things into three sections, What’s It About, Why Its Good and What the kids will hopefully take from it. I have found that with Adventure time giving a reasonably explanation for what its about inevitably leads into explaining the others so I’ll just get stuck in)

Initially at least Adventure Time is about the adventures of Finn the Human and his stretchy dog Jake. They live in a tree house in the grasslands of the land of Ooo. The nearest civilisation is the Candy Kingdom where the candy people live ruled by the Princess Bubblegum with whom Finn has a romantic interest. There’s a Vampire Queen called Marceline who the MCs become friends with, along with other characters like Tree Trunks the elderly cute little elephant and the seemingly superficial valleygirl-accented Lumpy Space Princess. Their main antagonist is the Ice King, an Ice Wizard who likes to steal princesses who Finn and Jake inevitably rescue. Most of the stories in the first season are very simple stand alone fables, very straight forwards and just looking to entertain. The show is for young children but pitched in a way that any adults watching will get a good laugh out of the humour. 

That’s how it all starts, at some point though things start getting more complex. During the production of season one the tale grows in the making, an episode suggests that the world is not just a whacky fantasy that happens to have one human in it, but that it’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland on earth some centuries past a catastrophic “Mushroom War”. Between seasons 1 and 2 it’s decided that the silliness in the first season is actually building a world with a consistent cannon. Locations are returned to, throwaway gags become or are retconned into setup for stuff that happens seasons later. There is a subtle shift in the writing in that the characters start getting fleshed out and dimensions to otherwise pretty simple archetypes get added. The Ice King gets a backstory and becomes one of the richest and most interesting characters in the show. 

This MF'r

Around season 3 you start getting episodes that aren’t focused on Finn and Jake. Thank You is the first one of these and is told almost completely visually. We start getting episodes that are explorations of different ideas and concepts that the writers find interesting. As the series progresses the complexity in all senses levels up each year. It basically grows up with its audience. You get episodes in the late run that go from one week being an exploration of big brands and consumer capitalism to Crowleian Hermeneutics the next. Finn grows onscreen physically from the start, getting drawn a little bit physically larger as the early seasons progress. The voice actor was a literal child himself at the start, you can literally hear his voice breaking. The character also develops emotionally as we go on too. Some of the plots of the early episodes play his naivety and youthful enthusiasm and immaturity as a positive, in season three towards the end we get My Way which is a corrective to this and he learns that his particular approach isn’t always the best and that’s okay. This stays as part of Finn for the duration. Finn’s ongoing quest for romantic partnership is an ongoing feature of the show as well as his quest for identity as the apparently last human in a world thriving with other forms of life become drivers of the overarching season-long stories that we get later on. Marceline’s centuries long backstory which ties in to a lot of the backstory of the world itself is filled out in a 7-parter that is partially based on some of the major arcana of the Tarot and is some of the finest storytelling in the animated format ever. The real main antagonist of the series gets unleashed and our heroes end up travelling across space and time and into other dimensions to fight it. Jake becomes a Dad and the trials and travails of fatherhood become a feature of his story line. BMO, the cute little robot character that lives with Finn and Jake has a psychotic break. There’s a handful of episodes that are legit short horror and genuinely unsettling. 

We get episodes that are shorts compilations where you have to guess the theme that connects each of them. There’s the Fionna and Cake episodes where the characters are gender swapped. There’s even one of the shorts episodes set in the gender swapped universe where there’s a gag involving layers upon layers of layers of abstraction that is as mind blowing as it is hilarious.

The ruling classes, as per Adventure Time

The general sensibility behind Adventure Time is not quite overtly socialist but it is definitely anti-capitalist. Jake, when explaining how society works to Finn opines in a typically abstracted way what is a not unreasonable rendering primitive accumulation and the rise of the ruling class and the law in a way that is readily understandable to the target audience:

"The laws ain’t made to help earthy cats like us… Here on our planet, back in the old days—back in the real old days—it was just every man for hisself, scrooblin' and scrat-scrobblin' for the good stuff, the greenest valleys, and scrat-scrobblin'. And the strongest, meanest men got the best stuff. They got the green valleys and were like, "The rest of you, y'all scrats get sand. And that’s when they made the laws you see."

Jake The Dog, Season 6 Episode 12 ‘Ocarina’

The whole thing is definitely very much animated by a left liberal-hippy ethos. It is feminist, it’s very much pitched against the toxic masculinity you get in standard hero narratives. It’s very queer friendly, there’s a canonically homosexual relationship which builds from the midpoint of the series onwards. There's a lot of environmentalist messaging in certain parts too.

If you’re starting to watch it as a young-ish kid around the time of season 1 or 2 you were essentially growing up with the show. This is why I would personally recommend for any adults I know with young children that if you are going to follow my advice here and watch it with your kids that you stagger the seasons. I feel like if you’re starting off with it with children who are age appropriate for the first couple of seasons the later seasons are going to be a bit too weird and abstract, unless they’re precociously smart and this is the thing that’s going to unlock their media literacy for the rest of their lives, which it well could. If you’re starting with kids who are the right age for the later seasons they might bounce off the earlier more kiddie stuff in the first couple. This is why I would also personally advise you to get it on physical. The one legal streaming service that its on in the UK at least butchers or outright bans some of the episodes that have some of the darker or more implicitly adult humour. This shouldn’t be an issue for the home releases, though do check since some of the UK release randomly miss important episodes. 

There are 10 seasons of varying length and 4 40+ minute short films that fill out the run. These last were originally broadcast out of order, though they stand alone pretty well and it doesn’t quite matter what order they’re done in as long as you finish on Together Again as that was clearly intended as the capstone and canonical end of the series as it ties up Finn and Jake’s story and the themes of the whole show. 

We also got a spin off series called Fionna and Cake about the gender swapped universe that is explicitly for adults. It’s great, again it levels up in real time with the original audience of Adventure Time. It starts off in something approaching the real world with a 20-somethig Fionna living in a crappy apartment in an unnamed city with a seemingly perfectly normal cat going from one bullshit job to another. By the time we get to Ooo we see things we didn’t get to see in the show, like the characters bleeding after a fight and using money. The second episode is a self-conscious criticism and deconstruction of one episode from the old series about dealing with trauma. It is clever and playful as the show was at its best and is thankfully currently ongoing. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone over 15 though.

That’s about as much as I think I can or want to say without going into too much granular detail. If I feel like it I might come back to the well and do some deep dive on particular episodes, like the aforementioned one about brands that is essentially No Logo condensed into a ten minute mostly silent childrens cartoon, or the Scrat Scroblin’. I really hope I haven’t over egged the more complex or adult elements of the show to the point where people have the impression that it goes too far or is ever not child friendly. For all of that it never stops being bright and funny. Even the horror episodes tend to end on a joke. It helps that each episode only runs for ten minutes. I think anyone whatever age will get a lot out of it.

My #31daysofhalloween challenge 2025

 31 days of Halloween, 2024

Keeping up my yearly tradition of sharing the various films and spooky / horror media I’ve been enjoying over October, usually averaging about 1 per day. This year I have been in a bit of a slump but I did hit my target and did some other stuff that’s seasonably relevant, which I’ll get into. 

But first the movies:

1. Brimstone and Treacle (1982) – this was the movie version of the incredible Play for Today from the 70s by Denis Potter that was subsequently banned for being genuinely unsettling and narking off the TV Censors of the day with its themes of religious obsession and sexual exploitation. It was an undisputed classic but wouldn’t see the light of day to a mass audience until the 1990s. This film was an attempt to cash in on the controversy and get something out so people could at least see a version of it. Of the two despite better production standards this is the inferior version. The whole thing is dumbed down, the whole thing is dumbed down for a mass audience and the sexual element is amped up to being genuinely icky and exploitative. Also, whoever decided to recast the main character as Sting should have been shot.

2. Netherworld (1992) – Unmemorable cheap ropey American horror. 

3. Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) – This was a lot of fun. Part of a Netflix series based on the RL Stein YA horror books, it’s a stand alone and just goes ham on the 80s setting and slasher tropes. Its 1988 and someone is killing the prom queens in a small town high school, does what it says on the tin. Good crack.

4. Time Of The Wolf (2003) – Definitely one of the classier things I saw over the season. Michael Hanneke doing a post apocalypse. The nature of the crisis is not apparent, there’s no world building just a clear societal collapse and focus on character. We follow one family unit as they try to make their way through the world and survive as best they can. Bleak.

5. Extraordinary Tales (2013) – This is a delightful animated feature taking audio of 5 Edgar Allen Poe stories and setting them to creepy gothic animation. Solid.

6. Mermaid Forest (1991) – classic OVA period anime based on Japanese mythology around their mermaid lore. Nice and suitably creepy but if you like this sort of thjing try and find a torrent or stream for the full uncut version which is not the one that’s on Youtube.

7. Ginger Snaps (2000) – first rewatch of the season, still as great as it ever was. This is just a very cool idea executed really well, the style is iconic and the young cast rinse all the pathos out of the scenario that you could ever want.

8. Fréwaka (2024) – I managed to miss this in the pictures the one showing that it had. Really good to catch up, we need more bleak elevated horror As Gaeilgé and this did us proud. Nice creepy one.

9. Invoking Yell (2023) – Yous know I like to hit each continent at least once when I’m doing these. This was our South American film of the year and tho looking okay on paper it wasn’t much to write home about. A Blair Witch-esque FF horror about a bunch of metallers trying to get some spooky field recordings for their mix tape ought to have been great but this was poorly executed and just boring.

10. Hell and Back (2015) – Stop motion horror, couple of stoner dudes doing Orpheus with Bob Odenkirk as the devil. Again sounds like a better time on paper than it actually was. A lot of shitty bro-y humour, probably of interest and worth only as a time capsule of dumb edgy-boy comedy just before #MeToo. 

11. Abigail (2025) – Dumb trashy blockbuster horror, best going in unspoiled as all the promotional material gives far too much away. Like the reveal as to whats happening is 45 minutes into this 1hour 40 minute film. Turn your brain off, enjoy, it’s a good ride.

12. V/H/S/Beyond (2024) – I got Shudder again this year so I got to catch up on this sci-fi volume of the ongoing anthology series. A bit hit and miss but the last few sections were pretty good.

13. Basket Case (1982) – A classic that I got to introduce my mum and sister to. We all had a great time. My Ma enjoyed it a lot and has recommended it to other people too. Will now see if can’t coax them to watch the sequels with me.

14. Frank and Zed (2020) – As far as low budget animated projects made by essentially one guy doing it all in his basement and garage nights and weekends around the day job go, its grand. Charming even. It feels churlish to say that the writing isn’t great and its not “good” per say in general considering but eh, ‘tis what it is.

15. To Your Last Death (2019) – A corporate exec sets his fuck-up children against each other in a death game in a high rise office to see which, if any are worthy of getting the keys to the big office and run things after he retires. This is why I need to be hard on Frank and Zed. This is an animated indie feature that seems to have been mostly funded online and it absolutely rocks, no excuses no qualifications. Good cast, well written, animation isn’t spectacular but it does the job. Some very inventive kills and very memorable twists and turns. 

16. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) – direct sequel to the previous one. My first time watching and it does not disappoint. Adds to and deepens the mythos around the series and the angsty queer stuff in the subtext. Great series in general nice to get fully onboard with it.

17. The Devil’s Work (2023) – This was the Australian movie from the month. A home invasion film mostly done as a 1er with the USP being that the monster is the sister of the girl from the couple getting stalked and potentially murdled. I just didn’t get on with it, too much faffing about in the dark.

18. Head Count (2018) – the Horrors of partying with people you don’t know that well! Nice idea, execution was lacking. Not scary or fun.

19. PG: Psycho Goreman (2020) – Loved it as much as the first time I saw it. Had fun introducing my sister to it which considering that it really is all about family seems appropriate. Basically ET or Mac and Me but the main kid is a sociopathic bullying weirdo and the alien is an all powerful evil warlord and it’s the best.

20. Dachra (2018) – This was our African film for the month. Never seen any sort of film from Tunisia before. This was interesting, based on North African superstitions around witchcraft but seems to run deeper as some sort of commentary on life in Tunis post Arab Spring. I wish I knew more about the culture and what’s been happening since the revolution because it comes off as quite generic and somewhat conservative and pro-fundamentaist Islam in the messaging.

21. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) – 1800s set prequel with the same lead actresses. That kind of doesn’t make sense but its fine, very well done vintage frontier horror. This was a great series of films, would recommend, may rewatch.

22. MadS (2024) – recommended to me by my friend Jason Mills. Its quite good, another “horrors of partying” film that asks, what if you’re having a bad time on trippy gear but its all real (or is it tho?) again done mostly as a 1er but this all just clicked and worked rather well in ways the films I watched earlier this month that attempted those things didn’t quite. Yes, very good, worth catching.

23. The Stuff (1985) – another rewatch where I got to introduce it to the fam. Classic but jesus don’t watch the cut that’s on Shudder, must have been edited for TV showings in the day or something because it feels weird and like there’s a bunch of stuff missing.

24. V/H/S/Halloween (2025) – This years one! And its themed around Halloween so there’s a bit of trick-or-treating and some really grim stuff done to and by children! If that turns you off fair enough, some are sensitive to those things. I personally enjoyed it, a good combo of the edgy modern youtube horror culture with FF and has a fair few bits that will stay with me.

25. The Devil’s Path (2024) – German Language historical gothic, based on real accounts of actual events. Basically, if you were suicidal according to Christian theology you can’t just kill yourself since you’ll end up in hell as suicide is a sin itself and you can’t get absolution. So some people rather than be put off by all that used the loophole that if you kill someone else and confess to it the state will execute you and give you last rights before so you do definitely get to heaven. This was heavily gendered as these were mostly desperate women and their victims were generally children in their care. Grim eh? Well aye, that’s how it was and this film does a good job of depicting the personal / psychological, cultural and social context.

26. Spoonful of Sugar (2022) – Oh dear, we’re at the point with “Elevated Horror” where we’re getting By The Numbers iterations of the Horrors Of Fucked-up Families and thats what we’re getting here. 

27. The Being (1983) – nice old school creature feature with a good cast and some dope practical SFX. Basically jaws but in a small potato orientated town in the mid west.

28. Golem (1979) – Polish “horrors of living behind the Iron Curtain” sci-fi horror. Its similar to Possession in that our removal from the original context and what is being satirised makes it impenetrable and frustratingly inscrutable though certainly memorable.

29. Bloodsuckers (2021) – Not even sure if this counts as a horror film or even adjacent. It’s a mannered satire about communism that takes the lines from Capital about the Vampiric nature of capitalism as a basis with some light implications of real vampirism in the story. I enjoyed it because I’m a nerd for this sort of thing, Eisenstein shows up in it as a character ffs, not sure how many other people I know would like it.

30. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) – we lost an absolute legend this year. RIP David Lynch, one of the best to ever do it. The last time I saw this I was a teenager and hadn’t seen any of the series, watching it again now, I can absolutely see why people were generally baffled and frustrated but I enjoyed it a whole lot. Poor Laura! 

31. I wanted to cap the month off by rewatching Sinners and showing it to my Dad at least, who is a big Blues fan, but he’s been busy and I couldn’t get him to sit and watch a 2 hour film with me on the day or any other I tried him. So instead I dipped again into the extended To Watch list and watched a new Irish film All You Need is Death (2023). This is about Irish traditional music and musicologists getting in over their heads collecting unheard and nearly forgotten tunes back in troubles era rural Ireland. The soundtrack is done by Ian Lynch of Lynched / Lankum, Darragh is in the film, as are members of The Mary Wallopers. Naturally, all that is the best part of the film, which does the typical horror thing of starting well with a creepy set of ideas and visual conceits but not quite sticking the landing re. taking it all somewhere. So imperfectly executed as the last act might be I’d say its still worth seeing just on that basis.

Other visual media:

Netflix actually came up a blinder by showing a pretty decent wee horror comedy series Haunted Hotel. A woman co-runs a Shining style haunted hotel with her Brothers ghost, there are supernatural hijinks etc. Good fun. I also got recommended a Polish indie animated horror series Bad Exorcist which probably makes more sense and is funnier / more relatable if you are polish or familiar with the culture. Still pretty good without that. I also rewatched Over The Garden Wall and aye, still great. Cutesy YA Autumnal spookiness that just happens to match with The Divine Comedy’s circles of hell each episode. Great voice cast too.

Reads:

Wasn’t reading as much as usual this year. I read Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica that came out in its native Argentina in 2017 but since getting published in English at the start of this decade has developed a cult following online. It’s easy to see why, a meatless, animal-less dystopia where people that supposedly don’t have a consciousness are used as cattle and treated the way we treat animals in the meat industry IRL. Reads like vegan agitprop. Its well written and relentlessly grim. Decent enough, not quite my bag though. I also started reading but haven’t finished the latest Chuck Tingle non-tingler Lucky Day (2025) which is very good so far. It’s about probability and the central theme of the horrors of being hit by the random unfairness of existence is very resonant to me right now. I have also started and am still reading through Back For Good the collected EC Ray Bradbury collaborations, and most of the ones I’ve been through so far are his work on the Tales From The Crypt and adjacent lines. These are a whole lot of fun and its cool getting them all in one volume with supplementary materials (including a short bit by Greg Bear about Bradbury’s involvement in the fandom / convention culture in California during his lifetime). 

So that’s been basically it. If anyone else has been watching or reading anything fun please comment. Happy Halloween!

My Top Films of 2018 (Kinda)

My pick of the top films I saw for the first time in 2018 (which may or may not have been released in that year) in no particular order:

(Also please note that I have purposefully not linked any trailers as there's a few of these that are best experienced going in cold.)

Wonder

 It is not often that one sees episodes of ones own childhood rendered on the big screen in a full hollywood production and yet here we are. This was one of the first films I saw at the cinema last year and I don't think anything else really topped it, but then like the kid in the film I suffer from Treacher Collins Syndrome, I've never seen the condition in a film before so this film was basically made for me. I loved everything about this, not least that it had my home boy Daveed Diggs of the industrial hip hop crew clipping in it, of whom I've been a fan for quite some time and am enjoying watching him blow up at the minute. As someone with TCS I liked the messaging in this, particularly the scene late on where the kid who is sort of the antagonist is confronted and then you see why he is the way he is. I honestly think everybody should watch this film, the earlier the better, like they really should be showing it in schools.


Spring

 I'm not usually one for romantic films about young Americans abroad finding love amidst the beauty of a picturesque town in rural Europe, but this was one of the best written films of any genre I've seen in ages. It is legit a great romance film, a timeless meditation on life and love, men and women, sex and romance, the wisdom and charm of old world vs the optimism and cute naivety of the new, and also a boss monster film with charm, humour, subtle observation, real heart and some pretty solid SFX on what looks like quite a low budget. The lads that did this also did The Endless which is on Netflix at the moment, they are 3 for 3 in terms of making solid good films and I love their style and can't wait to see what they do from here on.



Baskin

I went on a bit of a horror binge after feeling somewhat let down by Hereditary, looking all the time for something genuinely unsettling. I watched a lot of stuff and some of it was good but never quite got what I was after. Then this came on TV one night and delivered in spades. Not a perfect film by any means  (doesn't quite stick the mark at the end) but it was a wild ride and got right under my skin as I was watching it and even thinking about the scene: "No, really look and tell me who else is here.... You've seen it. You've always seen it, running in the woods with grandma...." gives me the shivers.


Last Shift

Brought to my attention in a conversation between RedLetterMedia and Max Landis, I was very impressed with this. Proper fucking straight up horror that goes hard in all the ways a horror film should. Lots of nice gotcha moments, slow dread, some really creepy shit and unrelenting escalating intensity. Good stuff.


World of Tomorrow Parts 1 & 2

Two short films from Doug Hertzfeldt, in his  typical doodle-esque /  line drawing style of animation, now with some beautiful moving colourful backgrounds. With dialogue provided by his 4 then 5 year old neice this weaves some truly dank existential sci-fi with the whimsy and innocent optimism of childhood. Both parts are truly masterful, deep, hilariously funny and profund. This was the highlight of the (generally well curated) Belfast Film Festival this year for me.


The Shape of Water

Okay, it won an oscar and shit but seeing this and Get Out win big at the academy awards and beat off obvious oscar-bait and pseudo-intellectual garbage was for me like seeing my local team bring home the European Championship cup or something. Get the fuck in there Guilermo my son! Personally I'm a sucker for a good monster romance and anything vaguely lefty so this hit a few of my buttons, great central performances all round and a good happy ending. Actually an interesting one to watch in contrast with Spring for various reasons, for both how they are and aren't alike yet are completely brilliant.

Climax

The New European Extremity is still alive and well, one of the most singularly satisfying films I've seen at the cinema this year. It did its bit and did not outstay its welcome, delivering something truly unique along the way. There are no other films like this in the world, and its nice to be able to say that.

A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot

There have been some really excellent local documentaries that I would think are sufficiently good as films in their own right that I'd recommend them to anyone: No Stone Unturned, I, Dolores, Unquiet Graves and Massacre At Ballymurphy. No doubt we'll see many more in the near future. One could surmise  that since the 30 year rule now extends to the early troubles and we are far enough away from the hot part of the ongoing conflict here (which hasn't gone away you know...) that the immediate physical danger to its protagonists means that certain things are now accessible and can be said in public that we're ripe for a golden age of documentaries and books that actually tell the truth about what happened here. That said the best (or for me at least the most entertaining) of the current crop is this one, which is about what is still going on in the shitty wee estates on the edges of our metropolitan sprawl, the people that live there and how they live with  the local 'boys', the paramilitaries that are supposedly staunch defenders of their communities against Them 'Uns but are essentially just the same gangs and hoods that run 'tings on estates all over the western world, but in our unusual context. This was about a notorious incident in the Creggan on the edge of Derry and was tragic, shocking and very very funny in a way that is uniquely Northern Irish. Also a dire warning for the future that nobody else seems to be willing or able to deliver.

Best Worst Movie

Documentary about the legendary Troll 2 and the weird fandom that's grown up around it and the general social phenomenon of getting together with your mates and watching bad movies for the crack. A thoroughly entertaining and well made documentary in its own right worth watching as part of a double bill with the film itself if you've got company and that sort of time to kill.

Annihilation

Dumped unceremoniously on Netflix at the start of the year it kills me that this wasn't watchable on the big screen this side of the Atlantic. Boss special effects, lots of really dark creepy stuff and moments of beauty, in that grey area between art house and schlock that I love. This is everything Sci-fi should be on the big screen. Obvious visual and thematic nods to Tarkovsky, Kubrick and Alan Moore (like if you're going to borrow borrow from the best), yet very much its own thing.

Blindspotting / Sorry To Bother You

Two films. Two passion projects from directors with a background in hip-hop. Both star young upcoming African-American actors whose careers on the small screen in the states are blowing up into super stardom partly through their supporting roles on extremely well received situation comedies. Two films dealing in their own way with race and class, white privilege, gentrification. Both employ elements of satire to get their points across and are both incredibly funny, while being quite serious with some heavy moments. Both are masterpieces of modern cinema. Yet, one landed this side of the Atlantic with the hype and aplomb behind it it rightly deserved and got a wide cinematic release and the other didn't, and I can't for the life of me tell you why. If anyone knows do please fill me in.

A Dark Song

Absolute belter. As someone with a bit of an interest in though not a practitioner of magick this hit a lot of my happy places, like I've never tried doing anything like the stuff in this film myself but I know enough about it and the people who do do this IRL to appreciate that the writer and director knows his shit. Also nice to see some more great cinema coming out of my own country (albeit with and all English cast and pretending to be rural Wales). Does tone and atmosphere masterfully, big surprise for a first time director.

Mom and Dad

Yeah, we all loved Mandy but the Nicholas Cage performance of the year for me was this absolute gem. Picked it up from John Waters end of year list. Definitely one of the funniest films I've seen all year (is it just me or is it hard to find a good comedy these days?) again good sci-fi, nice central pleasingly Ballardian) conceit that's used to the fullest to explore something IRL and milk it for thrills, scares and dark dark humour. I look forwards to watching this with my own parents. (Not to be confused with Mum and Dad which I haven't seen yet but intend to).

The Untamed

Mexican cult cinema is really going off at the minute, in the wake of Guillermo Del Toro there is some really brilliant stuff being done, usually using a genre conceit to explore some IRL horror. Tigers Are Not Afraid was another one which was excellent and worth seeking out. The Untamed gets mad props from me for being an example of using a particularly trashy subgenre of sci-fi / horror with genuine thoughtfulness and seriousness. Would seriously recommend, best watched sight-unseen as its one where the less you know about it going in the better.


Spiderman: Into The Spider Verse

The very last films I saw in a cinema last year. I went in reckoning that it was going to be good. It wasn't long in before I started to feel like it was going to be the comic book adaption of the year, in what was quite a good year for that sort of thing came out thinking that it was the best comic book feature film  adaption of the current crop, possibly of all time and one of the best animated films ever full stop. I always say that the mark of a good comic book adaption is if it captures on screen the essence of what makes the comic good, down to the formal conceits employed. This did that like few others I've seen. The whole alternate universes being represented by different art / drawing styles is an old trick on paper (the earliest I remember seeing it was in 2000ADs Hewligans Haircut which is from the 80s but I don't doubt it had been done well before that) but this is the first time I've seen it on screen (aside from a throwaway gag in the otherwise shitty Hitchikers Guide film) and it made it a central plot point. That was cool, as was the brilliantly realised character work, the cutting edge animation, the meta inter-textual referential stuff that was just the right level of nerdy to please the die-hards endlessly while never disturbing the enjoyment of anyone else who wasn't in on it, the humour. Every element popped individually, and yet this managed to be more than the sum of its parts, even as good as those parts were.

Cartoons all Revolutionary Socialists should make their kids watch, Part VI Steven Universe

Welcome back to this occasional series which I haven’t updated for way too long. This installment is a bit of a departure because it doesn’t deal with a series from my childhood or a more recent feature film, but with a series that is currently ongoing and yet to reach its completion, something I hadn’t anticipated doing way back when I started this.

What it’s about:

Thousands of years ago a race of immortal crystalline alien beings from another part of the galaxy (the Gems) came to the planet earth in order to harvest it for its mineral properties. Some of the Gems realised that the merely organic life-forms, the animal and plant life that lived on the planet which would inevitably be exterminated by the harvesting process had intrinsic worth no less than their own and rebelled against their home-world. They succeeded, saving the planet and the life on it but at a cost, all but four of the rebels being destroyed in the final battle. In the centuries and millennia since as human civilisation has grown up around them these surviving crystal gems have been quietly protecting the organic life on this planet from the odd crystalline mutants that occasionally threaten it.

Steven and his girlfriend Connie training to fight the bad Gems

More recently, the leader of the rebels, Rose Quartz, fell in love with a human called Greg Universe and in order to procreate (something the crystal gems can’t do by themselves) she gave up her own mortal form to give birth to a son, Steven. The series picks up when Steven is just on the cusp of adolescence, and follows him on his adventures as he learns to use the powers and abilities he inherited from his mother to take his place as a defender of the Earth, and learns to be a young human being as well.

Why it’s Good:

I think its easy for our generation to get overly emotionally attached to our childhood memories and easily dismiss any contemporary animated series in favour of nostalgia for the stuff we used to watch when we were wee. This would be a mistake and Steven Universe is but one example of something that is as good as if not better than any of the stuff we used to have. In fact one of the things that makes it good, and I believe should be accessible to people my age who might have kids of their own, is that it is quite clearly the product on one of our generation.

From the little chip-tune bassline in the opening titles to the background art and character design the whole aesthetic of the show is permeated by 8 and 16 bit computer gaming culture. You can also see the influence of Anime through the look and the story lines of the whole series. It’s kawaii without being sickeningly cutesy (a balancing act that is often tried and utterly failed at in Western animation).

The show is light, funny, full of charm but also has this epic backstory and various arc-plots that run throughout it and lots of big sci-fi concepts that are jut casually implanted into the story in a way that seems perfectly natural and wouldn’t confuse or alienate its younger viewers. Its emotional when it wants to be and when the arc plots kick into gear towards the apex of the seasons it is genuinely exciting.

What the Young ’Uns will hopefully take from it:

The underlying philosophy of the show is intensely humanist. Steven, our hero’s main attribute is his humanity and empathy. he sympathises with the mindless crystal shard creatures which he and the Gems have to hunt down, and this sympathy can be an advantage, something which he has over the Gems.

While much of the premise of the show is quite personal (it is inspired by the relationship between the show’s creator and her younger brother) there is some very deep subtext going on that should be of interest to readers of this blog. As alluded to above, the Gems come from a rigidly hierarchical society that is prepared to commit ecocide for its own material gain and the goodies in the series are rebels that defy their social norms by becoming more than their designated roles. Which is great and everything but so far, so liberal. The really interesting stuff is what the show does with gender and sexuality.

Greg with an infant Steven from a recent episode

In the series the Gems don’t procreate organically and so needn’t have any particular gender but yet are all female. Which essentially means that the characters with Super-Powers are all women. This was a deliberate move on the part of the show’s creator Rebecca Sugar to "tear down and play with the semiotics of gender in cartoons for children”. The show isn’t intended to be an action adventure show for boys or a cutesy show for girls but to break the gendered social norms of the medium and create something genuinely inclusive. There’s implied lesbianism, the show has touched on gender queerness. The one adult male figure in the shows main cast, Greg Universe (Steven’s dad) is kind of a bum, though he is sympathetically realised and still quite a good dad. Basically we are a long long way from He-Man. This is perhaps the main reason that it has the massive multi-generational fanbase that it has.

What’s also really interesting on the show is the concept of Fusion. In the context of the show two Gems can, through a delicate dance particular to their pairing, come together or ‘Fuse’ into a single being with the qualities and attributes of each. What this concept is used to explore on the show is the nation of human connection, relationships, taboos around sex and sexuality. This is done with deftness of touch and a sex-positivity as well as body positivity and acceptance of difference.

Capitalism is structured around patriarchy and the behavioural norms associated with the nuclear family, heteronormativity and cis-sexism. Cultural projects like Steven universe that are about consciously breaking down those structures could be argued to be part of a re-alignment within bourgeois society, or alternatively as being an inevitable part of the gradual realignment of the system into something else. Either way it would seem to be a step in the right direction, and its great that the show itself is so good while wearing its deeper meaning on its sleeve. Its one of the few shows from recent years I’m sorry I didn’t get to watch when I was younger but I’m glad exists now.

Cartoons all Revolutionary Socialists should make their kids watch, Part IV Cities of gold

Mysterious Cities of Gold (TV Series, DiC Entertainment and Studio Pierrot 1983)

What it’s about:

The year is 1532 and we are in the midst of the golden age of exploration, or to put it another way, the first period of European colonialist expansion.  In the midst of the Spanish conquest of continental South America three children and three adults set out to find El Dorado, the Mysterious Cities of Gold in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.  They are constantly pursued by Spanish conquistadors, who are also looking for the titular Cities of Gold and get into various adventures along the way.

Why It’s Good:

Out of the various feature length cartoons I have talked about and will talk about in this series on this blog this is probably my all time favourite.  I have fond memories of watching this on BBC children’s television when I was a kid myself.  The way they had a “previously on” and “next week on” at the beginning and end of every episode meant that essentially you got to see everything three times so the complicated episodic plot was relatively easy to follow for me even at that young age.  Then I read about it as a teen and was pleased to find that this old favourite was regarded among Animé fans as a classic and although I couldn’t see it at the time.  Then years later when it was finally released in on DVD 2007/8 after protracted wrangling over the copyright I bought it, watched it again and marvelled at how good it actually was.

In the middle of quite a pumpin’ wee adventure story there are skilfully inserted elements of science fiction (it’s never stated overtly but the advanced technology of the inhabitants of the Cities of Gold at the end of the series include nuclear fission) and historic fiction (real world historic characters are part of the plot and are presented in a way that is easy to understand and gives you some insight into the era).  Also, the little 4 minute mini-documentaries at the end of each episode where the factual real-world elements are explained are very well done and informative.

The animation was ground-breaking at the time and still stands up as a product of the two best cultures as far as animation and sequential art go both then and now, Japan and France.  The music all the way through is pretty immense, the theme music is catchy enough that it’s indelibly lodged in the back of my consciousness as a bridge to that time in my youth, as I'm sure it is many other peoples.  All together, it’s just a nicely done bit of work.

What the young ’uns will hopefully take from it:

Mendoza, brilliantly morally ambiguous 

Well, here’s where it gets interesting.  This is pure “baby’s first anti-imperialism”.  Rather than glorifying the conquest of the new world, as some children’s adventure fiction set in that time will do, the whole process is depicted as a rapacious land grab, a scramble for resources and specifically gold.  The fate of the Incan and Mayans is presented as tragic.  The three children, who are the unambiguous heros of the story, are all native Americans.  The white European characters are all either evil and motivated purely by greed (the conquistador characters) or stupid (Sancho and Pedro, the protagonists comedy sidekicks) and even Mendoza, the children’s adult protector is at best an anti-hero, a rouge who is depicted as being on the children’s side out of enlightened self interest and only comes out as unambiguously heroic in the last couple of episodes.  This is powerful stuff and alongside the factual elements of the story make for quite an education as to what the conquest of the new world actually was.

Cartoons that all revolutionary socialists should make their kids watch, Part III Flight of Dragons

Flight Of Dragons (Animated feature, Rankin Bass 1982)

What its about:

As the age of magic draws gives way to the age of reason, the four Wizard brothers who are the guardians of the realm of enchantment meet to discuss what to do.  Carolinus the Green Wizard (whose domain is nature) argues that if man is to chose logic and reason over magic then the brothers should gather their magic together to create a haven for themselves and all the enchanted creatures in another world, away from the ravages of logic, in a place where they can live on in our imagination to inspire us.  The magic brothers agree to the plan, except for Ommadon The Red, the wizard of darkness and destruction who wishes to use the imagination of mankind and his darkest impulses to drive him towards self destruction, leaving the world free from logic for magic to rule again. So begins a quest to the dark depths of Ommadon’s realm to secure his red crown of power and make sure that his plans don’t come to pass.

Why its Good:

Well, to begin with, for 1980s Rankin Bass the art and animation is unusually good.  The art work on the dragons in particular is wonderfully detailed, showing the film’s origins in a book of illustrations of dragons.  The story is good, the plotting is tight and the quest feels suitably epic.  The voice acting is also brilliant, with James Earl Jones in particular shining as the dark wizard Ommadon with his deep baritone vocals, possibly projecting even more menace than he did as the voice of Darth Vader.  It has many moments of escapism and wonder and a good couple of really dark scenes, Ommadons speech to the wizards council and the Ogre of Gormley Keep’s attack on the Inn both stand out and definitely left a deep impression on me at least.

What the Young ’Uns will hopefully take from it:

One of the basic truths of the world that many people, indeed most adults I know, have trouble getting to grips with is the dialectic between reason and cold hard logic on the one hand, and the imaginative / intuitive / creative mode of thinking on the other.  This “left brain / right brain” divide (actually this has no basis in real physiological terms, but I like it because it’s a handy short hand for describing the relationship between the two) should be central to our way of understanding the world and the mental processes that shape us and it is precisely this that the film tackles as its main thematic material.  In the story Carolinus (who wanted to separate the two spheres) is told by the tree of knowledge to call on a person from our time (who shares a name with the author of the book the film was based on).  He is told to do this because in order to defeat Ommadon, who represents acquisitive self interest and nihilistic cynicism, you need someone with a foot in both worlds who can thereby bridge the gap between the two.  This is a very profound lesson to impart to anyone, especially the young but including the most hardened activists.  Gramsci talked about the mentality of a good Marxist revolutionary as “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”, and surely that’s more or less the same message?  It’s a good lesson and in this instance it is charmingly conveyed in a film that is enjoyable to adults and children.

Cartoons that all revolutionary socialists should make their kids watch, Part II Princess Mononoke

Now for another of my occasional series on how to get your kids into communism using cartoons (see part 1 for my spurious justifications for such actions).

Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli, 1997)

What its about:

Princess Mononoke is a modern legend about man’s relationship with the environment as told by one of the greatest story tellers of the age.  Basically, in the middle of the 20^th century Japan went from a fairly agrarian / semi feudalistic society to a fully industrialised advanced capitalist economy in an incredibly short space of time.  They went from a green country side still full of the gods and spirits of the Shinto religion to miles of sprawling suburbs and industrial production zones practically over night.  The environmental pollution that inevitably came with it meant that what had been almost unheard of as a problem became a national crisis in a few short years as the Japanese saw their natural environment ravaged by industrial development.  Also, because of the topography of the country a lot of land was too mountainous to be built on, so quite close to the cities you have great towering reminders of everything that was lost.

One of the ways that this has impacted on Japans arts and culture is that environmental considerations have never been far from the imagination of its creative community.  In Ireland we used to say that the Banshee had been driven from the countryside by the electric lighting.  In Japan where this process was much quicker and they still had a much more direct relationship with the gods and spirits of the land it must have seemed like man kind was at war with the spirits.  Princess Mononoke is a story about that war and a parable for modern times about its implications.

Why Its Good:

For starters, the animation is absolutely beautiful.  The colour and detail shine out from every frame, the character design is exquisite and the backgrounds are just as detailed as the foreground.  At the very beginning of the film before anything really happens we see the main character riding his Elk through a wood in the shade of some branches and the way the light is picked out and moves is amazing.  It’s not just at the level of Disney but actually better than anything ever produced in the west.  The plot is well structured and although the characters are essentially mythic archetypes they still feel real and are capable of inspiring real emotion.  Although it doesn’t speak in the entire film, the Elk thing the main character rides has more soul in one of his antlers than all the characters in all the Disney animations in the last 20 years put together.  It is an adventure film and more than satisfies on that level, but it completely runs the gamut of emotions, there is a very touching love story in it and it has moments of genuine horror as well.

What the young ’uns will hopefully take from it:

Well, they should certainly take from it a more balanced and nuanced idea of man kinds position in with regards to the environment than they would from watching Walt Disney’s Bambi or such other schlock with its trite black and white morality or even James Cameron’s Avatar.  It contrasts nature and the natural environment with all its violent and brutal inhumanity and the inevitable forces of civilisation and industry, which are depicted as progressive as well as destructive and motivated by human greed.  Most of all, the message of the film is that hatred and anger are the most destructive forces of all, you can draw on your pit of rage for strength but you never let it consume you.  This is a small lesson that we could all do well to learn, even (indeed especially) those of us on the revolutionary left.

Cartoons that all revolutionary socialists should make their kids watch, Part I an Introduction and Avatar: The Last Air-Bender

No two ways about it, indoctrinating your kids isn’t cool. Using your parental authority to shape the psychological makeup of your offspring in a very specific direction is, some would argue, an abuse of that authority. If you truly have the courage of your political convictions then you should also have the confidence that if you instil values and basic decency into your offspring they’ll come around on their own without specific prompting from yourself.

There’s also the possibility that they’ll have picked up your bolshie streak and if you lay it on too thick they’ll become reactionary little bastards just to spite you. Just look at Ralph Milliband FFS. It's natural that teenagers lash out against their parents and they will at times do things just because it’s the very thing in the whole world that would piss you off the most. Drinking, doing hard drugs, becoming Emos or joining the BNP (or Fainna Fail or even the SDLP), nothing should be considered beneath them.

So, politically indoctrinating your offspring, morally dubious and liable to backfire. That said, there is nothing wrong with some gentle nudging in the right direction. This is where the Cartoons come in. As we know, all cultural artefacts are loaded with layers of meaning and the cumulative effect is a subtle form of programming that inputs the cultural and social mores into the individual. If this process is a part of socialisation and going to happen anyway, one might as well have a bit of a hand in it.

It is to this end that I direct friends and comrades towards this occasional series on this Blog relating to some of the animated features and TV shows that I feel will have a positive impact on their young minds and as well as being good entertainment in their own right, the sort of thing that any adults reading this might actually enjoy watching along with their brood, because lets face it, some of the stuff you are going to be obliged to watch is going to be pure gack. Also, it is important that these are good shows from the kids POV because if you melt their little heads with a cartoon diet of hard East-German Socialist realism or those weird depressing Soviet Russian cartoons that used to show up on TV every now and again they will grow up to hate you and your politics, become reactionary enemies of the movement and the people in general and will certainly have to be shot, and we don't want to see that happen now do we?

For each cartoon I will be have a little section explaining what it is about and why it's good before delving into the meaning and messages of the show.

With this in mind we'll start with a personal favourite from not too long ago, or at least recent enough that I was in my 20s when I saw it and managed to really enjoy it.

Avatar: The Legend of Aang The Last Airbender (TV Series, Nickelodeon 2006-8)

What it’s about:

Aang is an adolescent boy, gifted with the power of Air-Bending and destined to become the Avatar, master of the 4 elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). After spending 100 years encased in an iceberg, he finds that a war has been launched by the imperialistic Fire Nation to conquer the whole world, and that his own people, the Air Nomads, have been wiped out. He and his small band of companions travel the length and breath of their world (based very loosely on mythic China) so he can learn the ways of the other 3 elements and hopefully stop the Lord of the Fire Nation’s plans for world domination.

Why it's good:

Its works very well in its own right as a cartoon. The animation is extremely well done, it’s a perfect fusion of the expertise of American and Asian animators. The world of Avatar is well constructed, the attention to detail in every aspect of which makes the complete whole something marvellous. A good example would be the different elemental magics which are based on real-world Chinese martial arts which the series writers feel capture the essence of the elements, the smooth flowing Tai Chi style is water bending, the sharp and explosive Northern Shaolin style represents fire bending and so on. It’s obvious that the animators have spent a lot of time studying how the human body moves when performing the various moves.

The story is well told too. There is a good mixture of personal stories relating to each of the well constructed, believable characters and the epic quest with a huge back story in the best traditions of fantasy against a background of war that makes up the story arc. The stories can be by turns, funny, heroic, emotional, exciting, human and in a couple of episodes, really really dark (the story from the third season about the Water-Bender who could use her power over water to control people by manipulating the water in their body seriously creeped me out). The voice cast (mostly quite young themselves, no middle aged women playing adolescent boys here which is usually the case in animation) do a fantastic job, particular props have to go to the, sadly deceased, Asian-American actor Mako for his turn as Uncle Iroh who in some ways provides the emotional and philosophica; heart of the show.

What the young ’uns will hopefully take from it:

Well, the basic thing of exposing small children to concepts and ideas from different culture is, I believe, always generally beneficial to creating open minded and well rounded individuals. The story setting has a definite anti-war theme to it, the degradation of war and the effects on civilian populations are well handled. The main character is the last survivor of what is essentially a holocaust.

There are also a lot of strong female roles in it. For example, the Earth-Bender Toph (pictured), who joins the show in the second season, is both female and disabled (blind) and manages to be a very strong role-model for both in a nicely un-forced way.

So it’s a popular American TV show that is well made and enjoyable, has some good action, well drawn characters (in all senses of the term) and some nice anti-war, pro-diversity and feminist themes that are all handled with a deft touch, i.e. they don’t beat you round the head with “the message”. The only mild criticism I have is that the humour is sometimes a little forced and it doesn’t quite go far enough, but I think that that’s a reasonable trade off.

Next blog I'll be doing at least a small report back from this weekends up coming Revolution 2012 conference in the QUB Student Union. There will be more of these to follow over the coming months and theres a lot happening in and around Belfast.