newswire: 8/27/2020
- We’re in for a ’90s animation revival: Daria, Beavis & Butt-Head, and Ren & Stimpy are all set to be rebooted. But with the tone and style of these shows so closely aligned with Gen X, how will they fare in the 2020s? (The Guardian)
- NH: These shows hearken back to an era when TV programming for youth gloried in the rude, the crude, and the shocking. At best, the teen delinquents of Beavis and Butt-Head and the lead mutant animals in Ren and Stimpy were dim-witted (Heh, heh, heh). At worst, they were sociopathic. The episodes were chock-full of toilet humor and sex jokes. Both shows were regularly the target of parent groups who complained they were polluting kids' minds. Daria wasn’t exactly shocking, but it wasn’t warm and fuzzy, either. It focused on a sharp-tongued misfit who wanted to be anywhere but in high school.
- All three shows, which aired in the mid-‘90s, ran for multiple seasons and had cult followings among teens and young adults. Programmers discovered that millions of young Gen-Xers took sardonic delight in being depicted as everything their elders were deriding them for--for being dumb, nihilistic, and disaffected.
- And now these shows are back.
- No one minds the fact that they’re reboots. Twenty years ago, the rebooting of beloved old shows would have been heavily criticized as selling out. Now, in a media landscape that’s saturated with reboots and sequels, hardly anyone cares. The only question of interest to Millennials and Homelanders is whether the shows are any good.
- So what’s the marketing plan? The announcements for Beavis & Butt-Head and Ren & Stimpy make it sound like they’ll maintain the spirit of the originals, just “updated” for our current era somehow. Daria is returning as a spinoff that will focus on her friend, Jodie, as she graduates from college and starts a career. All are slated to air on Comedy Central. The execs are apparently hoping the shows will have multigenerational appeal by attracting both the original Xer fans as well as their kids.
- But if that's the plan, I'm not sure it works.
- Today, the bulk of Americans who viewed these shows when they originally ran are today Xers in their 40s, plus maybe a few first-wave Millennials in their late 30s. Most have school-age kids. The obvious challenge, then, is that the new shows don't target either of these groups very well. The Daria spinoff will be about someone in her early 20s. That's the dark side of the moon for most families with 40 something parents.
- As for Beavis & Butt-Head and Ren & Stimpy, these are not--I repeat, not--“family shows” appropriate for 2nd- or 3rd-graders. They may not even be comprehensible to today's junior-high teens, who associate kids' TV programming with upbeat plotlines and politically correct endings. (When teens want edgy content, they're more likely to seek that out on on YouTube, TikTok, or a subscription service like HBO or Netflix.) What's more, I would be surprised if many of today's teens would be much attracted to the deviant and transgressive self-image. It can't possibly shock their (Xer) parents, who have already been through it all. It would merely be imitative of their parents. Yawn
- This is the second time Beavis & Butt-Head is getting rebooted. In 2011, it returned and lasted one season. Same goes for Ren & Stimpy. A new version aimed at adults premiered on Spike in 2003, but got cancelled after only three episodes. Will the third term be the charm, with a new and more earnest generation of viewers? Probably not. But in Hollywood, that’s never been a reason not to try again.
