Justice League: Soft Core Porn For Kids?

Cartoon Network’s Justice League Unlimited has been cancelled (I believe there are about three episodes left) and with the direction it’s taken, I say: Good Riddance.

My daughter and I really enjoyed the first two seasons of Justice League (the “Unlimited” moniker was added for this season’s makeover). The animation was cool, and who doesn’t enjoy watching superheroes flying around and defeating the bad guy/girl/alien? It got even better during the second season as they began to delve a bit more into each character’s life, fleshing them out a bit and letting us into their heads.

But it was too good to last. Apparently not familiar with the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The original concept was changed big-time with the addition of every obscure DC hero under the sun to the league, putting the main characters (The Flash in particular, who is one of our faves) in the back seat while highlighting obscure characters instead. Sure, I love Jeffrey Combs and he was interesting as The Question, but I’ve been reading comics for a LOOOONG time and I didn’t recognize half the heroes they had floating around.

That was just one thing that bugged me. Another was the increasing prevalance of hints of sex and the increase of more revealing costumes on the super-babes along with more, shall we say, detailed animation. In particular is the female character whose name is (are you ready?) Vixen, and has the power to take on the properties of whatever animal will help her defeat a bad guy. She has an intense air of sexuality about her and a low cut outfit that would do J-Lo proud. Then there’s Hawkgirl, who at some point it was made obvious that she slept with some one-episode character.

This week’s episode really took the cake however. It was called Grudge Match and it was basically about cage fights between female superheroes. I happened to watch it when my daughter wasn’t home because of the description. I promptly deleted it after viewing and without her having seen it.

Among the cute little items were a cell phone call between “Huntress” and “The Question” where she asks him “What are you wearing?”, of course as mentioned above the all-out no-holds-barred fight scenes which were the most violent I’ve ever seen on the show, and one other female character called Fire who “flames on” and becomes essentially naked except for little flames covering the naughty bits. The animators really seemed to go out of their way to render that particular character in a manner that emphasized the lack of clothing (see image above, and/or click here for the clip).

Now listen, I’m not some stuck in the mud prude… I know that female and male superheroes have spray-painted on costumes. What bugs me is the attention given here to “sexing-up” these female characters on a cartoon TV show that is rated TV-Y7. It just bugs me that on a show that kids watch the cleavages have gotten bigger and deeper, the butts more defined and the indirect sexual stuff and double entendres fly left and right.

It’s just really annoying that now I even have to pre-screen a TV show that features superheroes like Superman, Batman and The Flash before I watch it with my daughter.

Yeesh.

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