Have you recently re-watched some cartoons or movies
from your childhood? Did you pick up on
jokes and innuendos for the first time, even though you’ve seen the feature a
hundred times? Producers of children’s
content throw these kind of things in all the time.
A great example of this is the show that aired on
Cartoon Network called “Johnny Bravo.” When
I watched it as a child, I saw Johnny Bravo as a guy that just wanted a
girlfriend. He would ask out girl after
girl and every time they would turn him down.
I liked the character Johnny Bravo as a kid because I saw him as a guy
that never gave up, no matter how many people told him no. The character also is shown to have a good
relationship with his mom, which was a nice thing to see in a cartoon. It taught me that I should be nice to my mom
and that it wasn’t hard to have a good relationship with a parent.
Another thing that Johnny Bravo taught me is that
anyone can be friends, no matter what they look like. In the show, Johnny Bravo is a big macho
handsome blond man and his best friend is a dorky skinny little guy with
glasses. It showed me to look beyond the
surface appearance of people and show interest in their character.
It has been at least ten years since I have watched
the show and a lot has changed with the way I look at things. I have a broader understanding of the world,
and I am able to mindfully absorb media.
The main thing that shocked me with “Johnny Bravo”
was the way that Johnny was portrayed. In my adolescent mind, he was funny and
desirable. Watching the show now made me
view him in a completely different light.
Johnny Bravo’s character is dumb.
Not lame dumb, like actually stupid.
This show made men out to be big muscly blond idiots that can’t think on
their own. Johnny Bravo is also very
superficial; there was an entire episode where he needed more hair gel and
couldn’t function without it.
Another aspect of the show that I didn’t pick up on
when I was little was how the women were portrayed. All the women that were drawn for the show had
incredibly small waists and big butts and big chests and big bouncy hair. In one episode I recently watched, Johnny
Bravo gets abducted by aliens and even the aliens looked that way, they were
just colored green.
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Also something that was interesting to me was the
fact that Johnny Bravo would not take no for an answer from the women he pursued. The only way he stopped asking them out was
when they beat him up in the classic cartoon fashion. It was intriguing to see the makers of this
cartoon saying that it’s okay to go after a woman, even after she says no. In reality, a woman should not have to
physically beat off someone that she is not interested in.
Despite catching things like in “Johnny Bravo,” I
really enjoy having a blast from the past and watching things from my
childhood. It’s amazing what new things I
pick up on.
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I remember watching Johnny Bravo when I was younger as well. He was always the cool guy that never seemed to have good luck with girls. However, I was shocked how this show was both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic. It was hegemonic in portraying women in dimensions that were not humanly possible and being available for male pleasure. Oppositely, it was counter-hegemonic in the sense that the white, male who is usually a figure of power and knowledge was lessened to muscles and good hair. In this aspect, I think it played upon the culture’s idea of the ‘perfect man’ for women as someone who is handsome, not necessarily smart. However, the problem seems to be that men are not intellectual and their mother’s control them. This makes the audience feel bad for Johnny Bravo since he is not independent. However, the treatment to fix his lack of power is for him to prey on women as a means to please his mother while simultaneously gain control of his life. That is problematic for men because it supports the idea of stalking woman, violence, and low self-esteem if they don’t look like Johnny Bravo.
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