Since we are now in the year 2009 and well on our way to another decade, hindsight is now becoming clearer and clearer regarding the decade of the 1990s. Today we’ll look at my top three cartoon animation series in the 90s which was most notable for its shock and awe approach in telling jokes and entertaining its audience – Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead and South Park.
Ren and Stimpy, as can be remembered, was one of the important cartoon animation series to show that it is possible for cartoons to succeed in cable television. Moreover, their brand of flamboyant humor opened the gates for cartoon animation shows which were more progressively morbid: Beavis and Butthead and South Park.
Beavis and Butthead is a titular cartoon show featuring two teenagers from the hip and cool Music Television Network (MTV) who are proficient at nothing except crude and vulgar jokes. South Park, from the Comedy Central upped the ante a bit with a more relentless sense of humor.
Ren and Stimpy started on August 11, 1991 on Nickelodeon and was a beacon for indecent humor. Ren (Marlin T. Hoek) is an Asthmahound Chihuahua which is violently psychotic. Stimpy (Stimpson J. Cat), on the other hand, is a fat, red and white Cornish Red Cat who is obese and brain-damaged. So that doesn’t prove to be a good combination for a tandem and it only results in chaos and controversies regarding its mostly adult-oriented content.
As far as chaos is concerned, however, Beavis and Butthead is a stand out. Having a cartoon series about two characters whose lives revolve around the television, nachos, heavy metal music and failed efforts to win women and make money is a perfect recipe for disaster – and that’s just what Beavis and Butthead is all about.
Created by Mike Judge for MTV, Beavis and Butthead was a hit from 1993 to 1997 – culminating in a full-length feature film in 1996 entitled Beavis and Butt-head Do America.
Beavis and Butt-head are said to reflect the values of Western media in their airhead lifestyle but it amounts to several dosages of good fun for viewers. They do all sorts of blunders with their lack of work ethic in trying to earn money, especially in Burger World where they have served bugs and dead mice for example. Here is a video to show you just how ridiculous they are:
South Park upped the game when it was released in 1997 in Comedy Central. Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park is an excellent case study of a show with dark humor at the forefront. It features four children Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick as they go about their lives in the town of Colorado.
The boys are mostly the voices of reason – powered by strong words of profanity – in the show because their town is populated with gullible, irrational and hypocritical people. This is a subtle way of the show by showing the distorted views of morality and society. However, beyond this the show is populated with absurdist techniques, violence, sexual content and satirical portrayals of celebrities.
South Park has never missed earning high ratings and this even scored them the feature-length musical film entitled South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. Apart from this, Parker and Stone have a contract to create fourteen new episodes a year up to the year 2011.
These three cartoon animation series hailing in the 1990s have successfully secured their niche in the shock-and-awe cartoon animation annals. Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead and South Park may seem pointless to some but they usually pack a punch and a subtle message with each hardcore take.
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