Do You Think Death and Diseases Are Too Touchy Subject For Children's Cartoons

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Elisha B

New member
Well, I just felt like making this thread as I see it brought up a lot between parental conversations on different sites.

Well in my opinion, it seems as if this is being used too much in children's media for young kids to handle:

*Scout's Safari had an episode which had a character discovered as HIV positive. TV-Y7.

*Several Dragon Ball Z battle scenes on Toonami. TV-Y7 or TV-PG.

*The Secret of Kells had many characters presumed dead. Not rated in the US, however stamped as a "kids movie" often.

*Avatar: The Last Airbender killed off one character, proven in an interview. TV-Y7.

*The Last Unicorn, although doesn't contain any death, the unicorn is hunted far too much for younger kids. G rated.

I could go on with a whole list, but that'd spam up my post. Anyways, I think death and diseases are too touchy for shows aimed at young elementary-school children or younger. However, shows for older kids may be able to handle a reference or two, just not really humorous...that's just a bit disturbing.
 
Of course not. Kids are gonna eventually know about death, so it would be underestimating their intelligence for a show to hide these things from them.
 
Those subjects are fair game as far as I'm concerned. They exist in real life and there is no reason to hide them from the kids since they'll know about it eventually, maybe earlier than something like sex or drugs.

Of course, it all depends on the context. There's no need to have one of the characters on Dora the Explorer be tested as HIV positive for example. Of course, its pretty easy to glaze over certain illnesses so that's nothing to really worry about. Death however, isn't a very rampant epidemic in most series that use it, so when a character does die, it means that much more.
 
In general no, but it does depend on context and how the death is shown. In Avatar, that death was very unclear and for those kids that didn't look it up in an interview, they're not completely sure of what happened.

But why shelter kids from death when it's inevitable? Whether a family member passes, or some celebrity on TV, they'll know eventually what it means. Now, like Marvin said, we'll ever see Dora get AIDS or Boots get shot, but for those action/adventure shows, I consider it fair game.
 
I think that it's okay. It really depends on the context though. I don't think that Phineas taking a machete and slicing off Ferb's head or a very special episode about Spongebob getting AIDS is appropriate.
 
I'm pretty sure two characters died in Avatar. There was Zhao at the end of Book One and then Jet during Book Two, even though that was really unclear for the longest time to me.

Anyway, I don't think that they're too touchy subjects. There were a few cartoons that I saw when I was little that dealt with death every now and then, but I think those were mainly superhero cartoons like B:TAS. I think it just depends on the nature of the show and how they go about presenting both death and diseases. Having Phineas and Ferb deal with a death or talking about certain diseases really wouldn't work. A show that has more dramatic/intense aspects to its nature would work better for handling those subjects.
 
That's true. Those deaths were pretty much off-screen and they certainly weren't graphic or too intense for kids. I've noticed that whenever a character actually dies in a cartoon series, it's usually not realistic in terms of what they die from or how they look as they die, which is probably so that it doesn't scare the kids watching the show.
 
I think its fine. If I made a list of every single kid show with death in it, that could take a long while. I think its fine. Its never really bothered me as a kid.
 
Death and disease in general? nope...
However their would be limits, such as more gorish and extreme deaths; which is not really a bad thing to do without since something subtle can sometimes be a lot stronger. As for Disease, i might avoid sexual transmitted diseases; namely since i don't think you can really talk about them without addressing sex, and that's something that can be considered "too soon" depending on the age demographic we're talking about


Here i would mention that "rating" does not "equal" target demographic... just because it was rated Y7 does not mean the show was actually intended for that age group. So really, when you are bringing up the shows rating when making such an objection, it seems more like you disagree with not the issues the show touches on but by how it was rated.... not sure exactly, but i'm fairly certain that Dragon ball had more of a pre-teen demographic
 
I think anything on the preschool side gets a pass. Dora the Explorer stops the bad guy by shaming him out of it.

But if there's any sort of realism and/or conflict, I believe you have to at least acknowledge the possibility-- especially if the show's dealing with war or crime fighting. Yes, it can go too far in the other direction *koff*dccomics*koff* where death is a cheap stunt and more of a bad running gag but it all comes down to balance.
 
Like any adult subject matter, whether I'd say yes or no depends on how it's handled, but altogether? Nope.

The only way to completely shield a kid from controversial matters is to keep them pent up in their room 24/7 except for bathroom usage.

To go off-topic for an example, censoring cartoons with women wearing skimpy clothing is pointless. What's to stop them from seeing the same thing at the beach?
 
Here's some more animated series geared toward kids that dealt with, or mentioned, death.

Digimon:
season 1 - Izzy finds out he's adopted, and that his real parents died in a car crash.

season 2 - Ken's brother died by getting hit by a car. Later in the series, it is mentioned that Cody's father, who was a police officer, died.

season 3 - Jeri's mother died giving birth to her brother. There was also the death of Leomon.

Beast Wars:
Tigatron's tiger friend dies, during a battle, in one of the last episodes of season 1.

Both Terrorsaur and Scoponok die, by falling into a pit of lava, in the first episode of season 2. Dinobot also dies later in season 2, though he is later revived as a Transmetal 2 clone, during season 3.

Season 3 brought the deaths of Rampage, Depth Charge, Tiger Hawk, Inferno, and Quickstrike.

I don't know if Beast Wars was a good example to use in this topic, since most of the characters are robots. :sweat:

Superman: The Animated Series:
In Apokolips...Now! part 2, Darkseid kills Dan Turpin. A funeral is held for him, at the end of the episode.

As for my opinion of death in animation, as long as the show is serious in nature, and is aimed toward older kids, I have no problem with it.
 
I think that if the subject of death or a horrible disease is done right then it would be appropriate for childrens television, it just shouldn't be depicted in a frightful or traumatizing manor that would scare a child. Death is something that a child may witness and they need to understand that people do ultimately pass away and that sometimes it happens to people you love and care about, same thing with getting a disease such as cancer, aids, diabetes or any other kind of sickness, if the episode teaches them how to deal with these pressing issues than I don't see any problem with having the topic in cartoons and childrens shows at all.
 
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