I Adore Everything About This!

I Adore everything about this!

History Lesson on Beetlejuice the Animated Series, for the new kids from The Old Kids.

So, first of all, Beetlejuice (1989) was a well liked film. It didn't open to massive box office success or anything, but it was off the wall and memorable enough to have accumulated a following pretty rapidly. Within a year, there were talks to expand this quirky, pseudo-scary Burton fever dream into a franchise.

For kids. It was a risky move and executives wondered if there was any demand for a dark, creepy show such as this. The "halloween year round" brand of merchandising and shows had not necessarily solidified as popular enough to turn a consistent profit. Their previous attempts to do a show in this vein had not done well (gravedale high, off the top of my head, only ran for one short season. Real Ghostbusters was an incredibly light-hearted action show that scarcely focused on the Spooky/Supernatural aspects for this very reason)

Despite all odds, Beetlejuice the Animated Series opened and was an absolute success.

It was WELL recieved. Far more than the film was. It ran for 4 seasons and went up for a daytime Emmy in its' first season. Unheard of, for children's animation. The show was praised for crisp animation, a brilliant color palette, marketability, and gross-out puns that left kids rolling and adults rolling their eyes.

It was syndicated across Canadian to American television at the same time. This was Not Done, then. Usually shows played in one place then the other. If you lived near the border, you caught both simultaneously, but it wasn't common. You wouldn't catch the same show on different channels in the same broadcast day.

Beetlejuice was so well recieved and demanded across so many cable networks, it ended up running on multiple channels at one time. In Canada AND the U.S.

And why wouldn't it be so beloved? It's an Incredibly unique show. ESPECIALLY if you grew up with the typical kids media in the 90's.

Beetlejuice was revolutionary in that, ultimately, it was meant to speak to both boys AND girls about accepting yourself and others, despite a clash of opinion or taste. Gender roles, race, cultural differences, age politics, hygiene and bullying and self-image and acceptance of the "other" were all continuous topics for this show.

A gross-out show with a female protagonist and no specific coding? One in a million, especially back then. You were either watching Transformers or Carebears. I don't think kids today know exactly how intensely the coding of television in the 80s and 90s effected my generation. This was NOT that long ago, kids...

I remember commercials like "did you know a Girl could, theoretically, become president? Would we all have to wear PINK?" A gender 'equality' PSA presented by the Looney Tunes. For kids...

Beetlejuice had a Female Protagonist who liked fashion and art, but also hung out with a gross out friend. She was "weird". She liked bugs, slime, adventure. All the things young ladies were told were not for us. And lydia was also rarely the damsel. Usually, LYDIA was the one saving her MALE COSTAR from danger. The show was named Beetlejuice. It was about Lydia accepting herself as strange and unusual. Beetlejuice is all the gross, "icky" stuff Lydia is not meant to like.

She likes him anyway.

Lydia never had a "conformity" episode. Her mother would try to dress her in pink and she gagged. Lydia was talented in her own hobbies and passions. Others may not have liked those hobbies or passions, but the show was always quick to show us how Lydia succeeded by EMBRACING herself, the wat she was. She did not need to change aspects of herself to make others happy. Lydia was happy being Lydia and having a gross, ghoulish best friend. And that's all that mattered.

So. A cartoon without a target gender demographic with a genuine moral center? Made by that gothy weirdo that your grandparents thought was the devil? About ghosts and monsters and all the stuff you arent supposed to draw in school? Animated by a talented team on a ghostship budget that would go on to produce some of the biggest names in animation today? Fuck yeah!

Also, it needs to be said: this show WAS controversial. Far more so than most toons on TV today. (Far more so than the musical)

The 80's Purity Brigade tried to get it taken off air (they tried to get A Lot of Stuff taken off the air and were 99% unsuccessful) and were met with HARSH opposition. They said it was satanic (a potential death sentence for media during the height of America's Satanic Panic). They claimed it did not depict the afterlife "correctly". It was evil to talk to children about death so casually. It was polluting the children away from Traditional Values. Gag me.

Fortunately, these "critics" were ignored. There are fan letters archived at Harry Ransom from folks telling the creators what the toon meant to them and their children. These letters inspired the show runners to continue and Actively Mock the purity brigade in multiple episodes.

Example: (Snugglejuice is one example, in which beetlejuice is forcibly brainwashed and traumatized in a cutesy labor camp to be Sweet and Good. Lydia calls it monstrous and threatens to expose/destroy their entire institution to save her best friend from honest to god Conversion Therapy.)

This show was and is still a treasure. It actively taught a whole generation of little sprouting weirdos to love themselves, slime and all.

So, when tumblr kids who are only just being introduced to it through a musical produced 32 years later by folks just barely old enough to remember the film At All reduce this cartoon to "just a dark bad problematic cartoon ugly gross tossed together it's old and not relevant"

....

I'd like to remind them, your musical rode on the shoulders of the toon and film artists. Your hottakes on how "gross" you find the cartoon are pretty indicative of your lack of critical thinking skills. Your misunderstanding of the context of this cartoon as a piece of both franchise and cartoon history betrays your immaturity in analyzing the media you take in.

Yes. It's dark. It's creepy. People loved it. It was completely innovative at the time. Kids loved it. Tons of kids who grew up with it STILL love it. It doesn't speak to Your modern sensibilities? Of course not!

Because It wasn't MADE FOR YOU.

If you can't view a nostalgic piece of media with an understanding of the time it comes from, you have no business deigning to critique it with some Buzzfeed Hottake about how you're so upset about a cartoon you didn't even grow up witb and likely haven't even seen.

Don't come into nostalgia fandoms unwilling to accept the origins of the media/original fans of the media who can and will ALWAYS love it just the way it was.