TLDR: Another Hamza ("Hot Takes") Insights on the World Post.
I like to divide my generation, Millennials, roughly into two segments:
-The Ren & Stimpy Cohort
-The Avatar Cohort
Let's start with the first group, The Ren & Stimpy Cohort.
For those of you unfamiliar, The Ren & Stimpy Show was a cartoon rooted in gratuitous violence, desensitization to unsanitary behavior, and riddled with stereotyping, and normalization of bullying. There are people who like the show, there are *a lot* of people who do not like the show. Regardless, it set the tenor & tone of social behavior for many middle & upper-middle-class young people in the US (it was only syndicated on cable). It originally aired in 1991.
The show's impact was huge, and cannot be understated. While there is truth to the idea that the show also took on adult hypocrisy, and the Sallingeresque phoniness of product marketing and American popular culture, it inculcated an entire swathe of young Americans with a sense of gross entitlement, "me" culture, and acceptance of bullying. My *very strict* parents banned it in our household when I was five, but school friends often referenced the show, and acted out its emotional abuse on people around them. It also normalized the "whining" or "take out your rage in any way accept constructive self-improvement" that older Americans often like to grouse about Millennials.
Now, let's talk about the Avatar cohort.
The Opening Credits to Avatar: The Last Airbender
14 years later, Nickelodeon decided to take a gamble on Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was the only time since the "Chan Clan" cartoons by Hanna-Barbera that the entire main cast of characters was of Asiatic background. It was the *first time* ever a person with a disability (one of the main characters is blind) was featured prominently. The show focused on major life lessons: friendship, team work, test-taking anxiety, responsible and irresponsible adults and teens, family problems, and personal redemption stories (the bad guys often change their ways after traumatic journeys that mimic real-life scenarios -- if we could control air, fire, water and earth with our hands lol). It also fostered a strong sense of cross-generational tolerance and friendships, something that was deemed "weird" by older Millennials.
While I was starting college during the original run of Avatar, I grew up in a family-oriented environment. My sister, brother and I watched the show every single week when I would come home, and loved the storyline. We also appreciated that as minorities ourselves, the cast of characters had names or racial demographics that made us feel included (even if we are not East Asian). The show ended with the major antagonist, who had been acting out because of childhood trauma, teaming up with the major protagonist to do good. When you're late teenager in college, you identify a lot with that, and the show fundamentally changed the way I viewed how to forgive and how to redeem.
These two very different models of American socialization, the pro-bully, pro-violence, pro-othering through taunts and abuse approach of Ren & Stimpy, and the pro-inclusion, pro-redemption, pro-pluralism approach of Avatar, have come to symbolize the very different ways Millennials communicate and operate in the world around us. Those with an affinity for the latter show (or who grew up watching it), generally seem to have a much more robust sense of self-responsibility, proactive service to others, and forgiveness. Those who were reared on the latter by largely irresponsible parents who didn't bother to monitor what their kids were watching (yes, I'm judging you), well you can take it from there just from that loaded statement.
The major theme to take away from reading this blog post is the following: words matter, media messaging matters, and responsible parenting always matter. It used to take a village to raise a child. Now it takes a smartscreen, and a whole lot of discipline & example-setting by the adults in one’s life.