Archival Consumed: Adult Swim

Television used to be a uniter, not a divider — a kind of nationwide campfire that regularly gathered tens of millions of Americans to watch, say, Johnny Carson. But that’s over. Now we’re a nation of tribes or, perhaps more important, a nation of carefully targeted demographic marketing segments. For proof, consider the following strange assortment of TV cartoons: Japanese anime; shows that were canceled by networks; a cheap original or two; and second-rate Hanna-Barbera action series that have been cut up and repurposed.These are the building blocks of a set of programs running from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday nights on cable TV’s Cartoon Network. The ”Adult Swim” cartoons, as they are collectively called, are apparently more relevant than Johnny’s late-night heirs, at least to one demographic. In recent months, males ages 18 to 34 have watched the ”Adult Swim” cartoons in numbers that consistently beat David Letterman and that either beat or tie Jay Leno.

So what is it they are turning away from Letterman to watch? The most popular ”Adult Swim” show might be ”Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” in which a talking, human-size trio of milkshake, fries and hamburger meat have adventures. Actually, they fail to have adventures, and mostly hang around their rundown Jersey tract home and bicker instead. If there’s something drug-induced about this scenario (what if these fries could talk?), the ”narratives” have a jagged quality that practically begs for Ritalin. Its audience seems to find this addictive: a recent DVD compilation of ”Aqua Teen Hunger Force” has already sold more than 100,000 copies.

The popularity of ”Adult Swim” has won it sponsors that include video games, youth-oriented films and, alarmingly, the United States Army. Clearly ”Adult Swim” has a lot of college-age fans, and if any of them have to write a term paper about, say, ”Aqua Teen” for Postmodernism 101, they could deconstruct it as a celebration of commercial detritus. This is also a reasonable explanation for most everything in the ”Adult Swim” canon. ”Cowboy Bebop” (about bounty hunters in space) and InuYasha (about a schoolgirl transported into the feudal past) are recycled anime hits from Japan. ”Family Guy,” ”Futurama” and ”Home Movies” were all canceled by other, bigger networks. (”Family Guy” has been such a hit for ”Adult Swim” and through its own DVD releases that it may get a new life back on its original home, Fox.) The surreal chat show ”Space Ghost Coast to Coast” takes clips of the 1960’s superhero and splices them for maximum humorous effect with interviews of guests — by Space Ghost himself. An even more obscure figure from Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon-action library, Birdman, has been remixed as a lawyer named Harvey Birdman. And Cartoon Network repeats all this stuff relentlessly.

As Mike Lazzo, a Cartoon Network senior vice president, explains, this approach came about largely because of lack of funds. The network originally consisted mostly of reruns from the Hanna-Barbera library (which Cartoon Network’s founder, Ted Turner, had acquired) and had no budget for original programming; that’s where the ”Space Ghost” paste-together came from. ”We didn’t want to see an actual talk show,” Lazzo recalls. ”So what would be crazier than splicing this bombastic superhero with these B-grade celebrities?” Even ”Aqua Teen Hunger Force” — a rare original series inspired, Lazzo says, by fast-food promotional giveaway junk — is done for about $60,000 an episode, maybe a tenth of what ”The Simpsons” costs.

Asked what it is in the shows that seems to touch a chord with its audience, Lazzo says breezily: ”Oh, America. It’s all about America.” Looking for something more specific, I quizzed Sam Murr, a 22-year-old University of Florida criminology major, who is such a fan that he signed on to be part of Cartoon Network’s team of reps who promote the shows through college-town parties. ”It’s so different from anything else you’ll find on TV,” he says. For instance, ”There’s an episode of Harvey Birdman where Shaggy and Scooby get busted for smoking weed in the Mystery Van. Which everyone sort of suspected, but no one would ever really go there. That’s the kind of thing they’re willing to do.” Of course they are, so long as Sam and enough of his friends are interested.

[This installment of the Consumed column appeared in the January 18, 2004, New York Times Magazine; it was posted on this site some time much later, despite the fiddled-with time/date stamp.]