Dan Hawkins Supplemental Post

(This was a potential final paper topic I was considering but have decided to turn it into a blog post)

I’m not certain if the cause it a pandemic-related seeking of emotional safety in my media consumption, a short attention span, or general puerility, but every single series that I’ve watched to completion over the last year and a half has been children’s animation. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Over the Garden Wall, Infinity Train, and, of course, Adventure Time have been my entertainment mainstays. I believe that the increasing sophistication of children’s animation is extremely interesting in many respects, but I keep being drawn to Adventure Time and its relationship to death, grief, and the apocalypse. For those unfamiliar, Adventure Time is a fantasy show set in a somewhat-fairytale land of Candy Kingdoms, evil wizards, and heroes. What becomes increasingly explicit as the show goes on is that this world, (the world of “Ooo”) is a the semi-destroyed remnant of Earth, a thousand years after a nuclear holocaust. As the series progresses, we see more evidence of that decayed past, and learn more about the circumstances of its destruction – underground ruins, skeletons uncovered in the sand, ancient debris – the name “Ooo” itself is a pictographic representation of the Earth, being the third planet from the sun (o – Mercury; o – Venus; o – Earth: Ooo).

It’s one thing for a children’s cartoon to set the show in a sort of joyful rebirth amid the ashes of the mundane – The Land of Ooo is full of music, joy, friendship, and whimsy – but what I find fascinating about Adventure Time is the way that it often reminds its audience that these things too will end. In the episode “Lemonhope pt. 2,” we see a character wander the land a thousand years after the events of the rest of the show: the familiar locations are now themselves ruins, and all the other characters have presumably long-since passed away. Similarly, the final episode of Adventure Time, “Come Along With Me” has the characters face a seemingly apocalyptic event, the arrival of a dimensional horror being known as Golb, which cannot be harmed and conjures terrible monstrosities that devour the countryside. “Come Along With Me” is told through a frame narrative of two new characters who encounter the robotic B-MO from the new cast in the distant future, who tells them the story of the episode. In this frame, every other character that we know is long dead. In the main plot of the episode, Golb is eventually stopped by the whole ensemble singing a song at it together, which weakens the entity long enough for one character to sacrifice herself to banish it. It very much befits the climax of the show – our heroes are hurt but victorious, though not every character survived. The song, however, principally sung by B-MO, offers a crystallization of Adventure Time’s attitude towards death.

Called “Time Adventure” and written by longtime show writer and producer Rebecca Sugar, begins with the lyrics “Time is an illusion that helps things make sense / So we’re always living in the present tense. / It seems unforgiven when a good thing ends / But you and I will always be best friends” and has the refrain “Singing ‘will happen, happening happened’ / ‘Will happen, happening happened’ / ‘And will happen again and again’ / Cause you and I will always be back then”. “Time Adventure” is both melancholic and heartfelt, tragic and loving.

The real value of this show becomes apparent when viewed as a message directed towards a generation set to grow up and eventually die within a global climate crisis. Against an intractable calamity, despair is easy to succumb to. Adventure Time and this song offers a salve against despondency with a surprisingly complex philosophy, that the experience of living is not reduced by being in the past. Rather than an unceasing march into a worsening world, “Time Adventure” urges us to consider a more non-linear mode of thought. Time is an illusion, and the reality of existence is both momentary and infinite; our perception of time as sequential means that we often think of the past as diminishing in substance. Adventure Time asks us to think of the future with a sense of hope --  things will not stay the same, and the world will look scary or different, or unfamiliar, but there will be endurance; and to think of good memories of the past with contentment rather than mourning. I don’t think this is a leak-proof ideology, but it’s more than one might expect from a children’s cartoon that aired in 12-minute episodes. I do, however, think there’s something tragic and sentimental about Adventure Time’s relationship to mortality and catastrophe that makes it really special. 

 (Here is a link to the song from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5TkZ9bFodQ)