Once Again, The Day Is Saved...

How The Subversive Feminism Of "The Powerpuff Girls" Permanently Changed Television Animation”

This essay originally appeared in the anthology “Animated Mischief”(McFarland and Co., 2023).

In 1998, towards the end of a remarkably creative decade in the history of television animation, one of the most remarkably creative shows of that time appeared. It opened with these words, spoken in a deceptively serious and stentorian fashion:

Sugar, Spice, And everything nice

These were the ingredients chosen

To create the perfect little girls….

However, the creation process was altered when an “extra ingredient” was “accidentally” added- a mysterious brew known only as Chemical X. From that point on, nothing in the city of Townsville was ever going to be the same- to say nothing of the genre of animation as it would be presented in the medium of television.

Just as the show's heroines repeatedly "save the day" before bedtime at the end of the respective narratives, it can be said this program played a similar role of "savior" for the superhero sub-genre, helping to spawn the remarkably diverse world of action-comedy series that has come in its wake.

This essay explores the importance of The Powerpuff Girls (PPG) to the history of television animation in the United States in both creative and technical terms, with an emphasis on how it subtly subverted many of the established tropes of both television animation and the wider multi-media superhero narrative to achieve its aims. By situating the program within its historical context, and exploring the content and construction of some of its most audacious episodes, I will explore how this series, in spite of as well as because of its great popularity, came to be a ground-breaking series in many important respects.

*

Television animation in the United States has never had an easy existence. From its earliest days, it was condemned to critical shunning for its supposed lack of production values by fellow animators, and because it was supposedly used as a means to lure children in to both the benefits and deficits of television viewing. This latter view in particular, a hold-over from the days of theatrical animation, has often been used to attack the genre and its producers, even when this was not the intended case, and as, since the 1990s, children ceased to be the only perceived target audience- if they ever were that at all.

While a number of highly accomplished series were produced in the 1950s and early 1960s, particularly by Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward, television animation came under severe censorship later in the decade, as a consequence of its being labeled a contributor to the growing “violence” on television. This was an accusation based on querulous speculation and political protectionism, as the major television networks wished to expediently distance themselves from the “violence” debate as much as they could. Yet, between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, television animation was subjected to an unprecedented amount of censorship that was arguably applied because it was valued only for economic rather than aesthetic terms. Very little that could be considered “violent” was allowed to be presented, effectively tying the producers’ creative hands. Tying them tighter still was the insistence on the promotion of positive social and hygiene traits in the narratives, as children were considered to be the default audience. What resulted was a series of programs that, while technically competent, left much to be desired creatively. (The lingering effects of this can still felt in some modern programs aimed at the very young.) However, the genre as a whole was quick to evolve past this point by the beginning of the 1990s.

The network monopoly that instituted the censorship had begun to falter with the establishment of the FOX network in 1987. FOX was supported by a series of liberal-minded and edgier series aimed at young adults in particular, which the conservative-minded traditional networks had ignored or avoided. The Simpsons, the new network's flagship, was a series that turned the majority of television animation’s clichés on their heads, insistently suggesting that there was much more to be explored in the context of the genre and medium than had previously been thought. Over the following decades, production of television animation expanded rapidly, airing not only on network outlets, but such new cable outlets as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, as well as the Disney Channel. However, while many producers were willing and able to offer more liberal, edgier fare to these outlets, others remained, initially at least, more conservative, not willing to abandon earlier business models until it was absolutely necessary to do so.

The impact of the restrictions on programming content was no more strongly felt than at Hanna-Barbera Productions, the dominant studio of the network TV era. Studio founders William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had kept their studio afloat between the late 1960s and early 1990s by abandoning the subtly witty and insouciant programs they had first produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s in favor of backing the anti-violence, pro-social line. While Barbera in particular resented the imposition of the regulations (he famously called it “legislated television” and compared it to football without tackling), the producers knew that, if they did not abide by the regulations, they would not be able to produce material for the networks, their only real outlet at the time. Whereas the early work of the studio was produced under conditions of adopted and maintained respect for the individual staff members, by the early 1970s, the increased volume of production and the added demands made on the staff turned the company into a regimented factory working towards solitary, impersonal goals. The degree to which this had been accomplished, and how much productivity was harmed, was suggested in 1979 when the local animators union, The Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Guild, went on strike against Hanna-Barbera, in a bitter campaign with lasting effects. Not surprisingly, the company increasingly began to work more often with overseas studios in “runaway” arrangements than its own staff to produce series, creating a further sense of resentment and distrust among the workers. The quality of what was produced at the time reflected this creative entropy. By the time The Simpsons debuted, Hanna-Barbera’s product had become as inconsequential as the FOX series was deemed monumental. It might have stayed that way, had it not been for some momentous changes.

First was a change of the executive guard. In 1991, Hanna-Barbera was purchased by the flamboyant and controversial media mogul R.E. “Ted” Turner, and folded into the operations of his company. Turner was attracted by the studio’s wealth of material, which could easily be used as programming fodder for his cable outlets, though he was as much motivated by what he saw as the need to halt Disney from forcibly taking it over. Turner synchronized Hanna-Barbera’s assets with the animated ones of the film library of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which he had briefly owned in the 1980s, before selling it again sans the film library. To make the acquisition useful, he established a unique cable outpost: Cartoon Network. Turner had earlier established the highly successful Cable News Network (CNN), the first successful all-news television outlet. Cartoon Network, which launched in 1995, was largely an extension of the CNN strategy applied to television animation. It proved to be a highly lucrative brand that continues to thrive, in modified form, today.

Hanna and Barbera, who were both entering their eighties, retired from active management of their eponymous studio during this time. In the immediate pre-Cartoon Network era, David Kirschner largely retained the status- quo -oriented management of his predecessors in producing unexceptional material- yet his successor would not be content with this.

Fred Seibert was not an animator by trade when he became head of Hanna-Barbera in 1994, having previously been an engineer and producer of jazz records, an advertising executive, and a founding member of the MTV staff. However, he was a passionate fan of animation, and felt things could be improved upon. The need and desire to produce original programming for the fledgling cable channel simply provided an official impetus for the plans he had in mind.

Seibert, with the assistance of Cartoon Network president Betty Cohen, devised a radical experiment. The series World Premiere Toons, a.k.a. What A Cartoon!, filled a programming hole while also serving (in a way) to reconnect television animation with its roots in an unrestricted environment. Short films were commissioned (with lengths between seven and ten minutes on average), each made with the promise that they could act as pilot episodes for full-length series. Management would not and did not interfere with the creative process, which was a radical departure from the studio's established protocol. The original plan was to produce 48 films over three years, but this was radically overhauled as the producers were buried under a massive number of submissions, reflecting the idea’s wild appeal. As historian Michael Mallory notes, “[w]ell over a thousand artists presented storyboards, sketches, [art] school projects, or privately produced ‘seed’ cartoons to a studio selection panel, each hoping to land a development deal, which carried with it access to studio production resources.”

Standards were quite high, as the creator of one of the chosen projects would find out.

*

Born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania in 1971, Craig McCracken had, like many animators, shown signs of artistic skill from his youth. After attending high school in his native state, he headed west to further his education at California Institute of the Arts. During that time, he met and befriended Russian-born Genndy Tartakovsky, and developed his first films, which were featured at a popular independent animation festival. However, McCracken was destined not to finish his schooling. During his third year, a friend advised him that Hanna-Barbera was looking for an art director for its animated series 2 Stupid Dogs. McCracken went to the studio, pitched himself, and was hired. Remarkably, he had never worked in the animation industry before that time, but this was typical of the hiring practices under Seibert’s watch. Not only did Seibert hire McCracken and Tartakovsky, but several other future movers and shakers of television animation came into the studios as young apprentices among the animators, writers, producers and directors then. This young blood was just what the ailing television animation practices of Hanna-Barbera required for rejuvenation.

Naturally, McCracken was aware of the What A Cartoon project when it began, and was eager to be part of it. Drawing initial inspiration from an animated serial called The Adventures of Stevie and Zoya, produced by Joe Horne for MTV, he developed a superhero narrative, one resurrected from an idea he had developed during his student days. His heroines were a trio of prepubescent schoolgirls that were originally known as The Whoopass Girls. After completing the first pilot film, titled “A Sticky Situation”, he became so confident in the idea’s potential that he then proceeded to start work on four separate films with the characters, though only one was seen to completion. Despite this, he was able to convince the management of the idea’s worth, with the result that two films with the characters aired as part of What A Cartoon during 1993. The installments were well-produced, in spite of McCracken’s DIY approach to animation, but were nowhere near the standard they would ultimately achieve.

McCracken was then sidetracked. Tartakovsky had successfully pitched his project Dexter’s Laboratory (1996-1998, 2001-2003) to the network as a full-length series, and he recruited McCracken to serve as the art director and chief character designer. Working under Tartakovsky, McCracken sharpened his skills with on-the-job training. Tartakovsky’s background and influences covered both American and European influences, which Dexter displayed in the juxtaposition of a non-North American, angular approach to character design with a largely American approach to belly-laugh humor. What was unique about it, however, was that Tartakovsky and McCracken chose to dispense with some of the more repetitious elements of the process of writing and directing television animation. Rather than relying on stock backgrounds, recycled character moves and poses, and particularly limited and repetitive storylines, they treated each episode as an independent unit as opposed to the traditional, identical, field of thirteen approach of the past.

Particularly, they liberated the camera.

Technology, as well as creative restrictions during the network censorship era, had until the 1990s restricted the potential for camera movement during and between shots in television animation, making the camera chiefly a passive, impartial recorder of events. Tartakovsky and McCracken were not interested in presenting material in this manner (as, indeed, many of their contemporaries were not, either). They brought many of the techniques of live-action filmmaking into television animation in ways that enriched their visual scope and served to provide the punch necessary for their jokes. Zip pans, extreme zooms both in and out, lingering long shots and short cutaways replaced the traditional static camerawork of earlier eras. Given the emphasis of action and comedic elements, it was necessary to develop a new approach to cinematography to match the increasingly ambitious aims of the producers. The approach paid off, as Dexter acted as a curtain-raiser for what McCracken would accomplish with his own PPG.

When production finished on Dexter's Laboratory, the unit that had produced it remained intact, with McCracken now assuming leadership and Tartakovsky becoming the silent partner. McCracken had retained interest in developing PPG as a series, trying to interest other entities, but received little interest. Furthermore, the original idea and concept had not been attractive enough to the desired young demographic when it was pitched to them in focus groups. So McCracken retrenched with support from the network, and proceeded to develop a detailed background and back story for his supporting cast. As he later recalled:

When I did the first shorts, I was more focused on developing weird concepts than developing characters…That was my biggest mistake. I knew the characters so well because I’d been working with them for years, but I forgot that I wasn’t telling the virgin audience [i.e. those who were tuning in to the show for the first time] who they were [emphasis in original].

The solution McCracken came up with was to introduce the characters and concept in a short but efficient way in the main title sequence; this helped to dispose of the excess baggage of introducing and re-introducing the idea over time in the narratives proper. It allowed McCracken and company to concentrate first and foremost on development and execution on their own terms.

Animation is a collaborative medium, so it is rare that a single individual’s insight and will can come to dominate an animated film or television series. McCracken indicated such himself when he spoke about the ways and means by which story ideas were developed for the project:

It’s an open, creative process….We’ll have story meetings…kick around ideas and see what gels, and we’ll write up an outline that gives the main [idea] of a story, where it’s going…That is given to the storyboard guys, and….[they] are the ones [who are] really making the show. They’re the ones coming up with the shots, the gags, writing the dialogue, and doing a major part of the work. Then they’ll put it on the wall and pitch it to the whole group, and we’ll go through and make notes on it, tighten it up, and make it work better.

Still, an element of tight control over the process, not unlike that of a live-action film director, resided with McCracken himself. A great deal of the note-taking (which could become very complicated and detail-oriented), "tightening up" and “making it work” was done by the creator himself. He co-directed the early episodes in tandem with Tartakovsky, later employing several line directors. He was an exacting perfectionist, sometimes scrapping or redoing entire sequences if they did not match what he wanted. This was not done in a tyrannical fashion, but simply through his function as the program’s executive producer- but it is noticeable to the viewer. As with other television animation producers of the period, he was enacting his belief as to how television animation should be produced to be at its most effective. Consequently, McCracken was able to develop a highly personal approach in a genre that had previously been highly impersonal. His idea was his alone, and it would only be under his guidance that it would survive and thrive.

*

That PPG was a success after it began is putting it mildly. It would ultimately run in original production for the better part of seven years, far longer than the majority of animated programs manage to do, and it was nominated for and won the highest awards of excellence in both television and animation. And, as with many a popular television animation program, it became the foundation of a small empire of licensed merchandise.

What is most remarkable about PPG is that it achieved this success, as well as altering the fundamental nature of both television animation and the wider media superhero genre, in a most unobtrusive fashion. McCracken may not have intentionally tried to challenge the status quo in developing his setting and characters, but he did so just the same.

Historically, the superhero genre, in both comics and animation, has a well-earned reputation for existing primarily as a boys’ club, one in which women were not allowed to participate in unless certain specific qualifications were met. From the beginning of superhero comics in the 1930s, and continuing up until at least the end of the twentieth century, creative power (in terms of writing and drawing) was held almost exclusively by men. Likewise, the vast majority of the heroes of this period were men, or, at the very least, masculine in nature. While there were some exceptions amongst the heroes from time to time, women who became or acted as heroines were restricted in a number of respects.

First was the fact that they were often the creations of men (Wonder Woman, for example, was devised by psychologist William Moulton Marston), and thus did not entirely reflect a truly genuine feminine mindset. Second was the fact that, unlike the men, female super-heroes have often had to face an ingrained level of sexism, the idea being that a truly powerful woman could exist only as a novelty item, rather than as a full-blooded, “masculine” hero. Third, and perhaps what was the most limiting factor of all, was the fact that female heroes were frequently made to enact tropes that reinforced their supposedly typical “femininity” (i.e. screaming, fainting, etc.) and therefore established that they were somehow “inferior” to the men. Even when editor/writer Stan Lee introduced a greater level of narrative and character complexity to comics at Marvel in the 1960s, the advances still served to benefit male heroes at the expense of female ones. The case of Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four is a good example, as she never developed an identity distinct and separate from the male members of the group.

When superheroes first began emerging as part of television animation in the mid-1960s, there was no perceived need or desire on the part of television animation producers to fundamentally alter the playbook that the comics had handed them in any way. Animation, like comics, had largely been a male preserve, and likewise tended to reflect a masculine depiction of what women were supposedly “like”, rather than what women truly knew they were. If anything, the anti-violence backlash of the late 1960s served to compromise any genuine creativity in television animation super-heroics, as it did for the entirety of television animation. Thus, any attempt to truly explore the potential of super-heroics in television would have to wait until such censorship was less limited.

This is where the historical importance of PPG lies.

The number of pre-adolescent superheroes in the canon to this point was rare; the number of ones who were girls was even less so. The persistent, almost corrosively “masculine” nature of the superhero genre denied them a place. So, to have kindergarten-age girls as the heroines of his narrative was a rule-breaking, audacious act on McCracken’s part.

This was chiefly because it obliterated and erased one of the biggest obstacles needed for taking female super-heroics seriously. The objectification of the adult female body by men has always been a major ideological concern in Western society. No more so than those of female superheroes, whose attire has always seemed to encourage voyeurism in male readers/viewers, as practical as it may be in doing their duty. But pre-adolescent girls do not have bodies that can be objectified in the same way, allowing McCracken and company to focus on other issues. This was a subtle but extremely important shift in the portrayal of superheroes in television animation, and it would be one that, in the following years, would help make the genre of television animation a place where the female voice could increasingly be respected, rather than degraded or shamed.

It helped, too, that the world had changed considerably since the 1960s. As they had in the wider world, women emerged as a stronger presence behind the scenes in both comics and animation, particularly in the creative roles once denied them. This further strengthened the appeal and viability of McCracken’s concept at the time of its debut. McCracken’s production team for the series was, not surprisingly, a co-ed one, with many women playing prominent roles. Most notable was writer Lauren Faust, who scripted some of the more startlingly feminist statements made throughout the series. She would ultimately end up developing one of the more startling successes of the 2010s with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, not to mention working on other series developed by McCracken, whom she later married.

Just by existing as they did, the Powerpuff Girls came at a remarkable time in the historical evolution of television animation, and their subtle words and deeds reinforced their importance, while sowing the seeds of their future media influence. In particular, it shows how the subversive way it presented its feminist subtext would be one of its greatest and lasting cultural legacies.

*

As with most superhero narratives, PPG at its heart, deals with the conflicting issues and concerns that superhuman beings are perennially caught between: 1) what makes them human, 2) what sets them apart from others, and 3) what roles they must play in society. McCracken foregrounded the uniqueness of his heroines with an equally unique approach to enacting their adventures:

Nothing set McCracken’s approach to the series apart more than his heroines themselves. No other television animation characters have been more prominently featured in a series. Their delight is to be savored, their rage feared. Even at their most helpless, the viewer is never allowed to forget what they are capable of doing at their most powerful, benevolent or otherwise….[W]e are never allowed to assume, likewise, that because they are “heroes”, all their actions are therefore just. Indeed, their patience is frequently tested, and their wrath brought out, by the epic levels of stupidity they have to confront…

That most of this stupidity is committed by the largely dull-minded male characters in the series speaks for itself.

McCracken’s need to develop the series beyond the one-dimensional action-centric approach used in the earliest episodes of the series required him to develop his leads as multi-dimensional figures who could both attract and sustain audience attention. The trio therefore came to assume the particular personalities they acquired.

-Blossom (voiced by Cathy Cavadini), the group’s red-haired “leader”, is notable for her formidable intelligence. She conducts herself with a prominent mental superiority that can calcify into an iron will at the worst of times. Her assumed responsibility of the group’s public persona and battle director belies her chronological age and plays a prominent part in the stories. Her conduct at its worst does not go unpunished, and she can be contrite on the occasions when she is shown to be in the wrong.

-Blonde-haired Bubbles (Tara Charendoff Strong) exists as another type entirely. Her personality is equal parts naivete, exuberance and paper-doll fragility, which her high and extremely “feminine” voice does little to distract from. She is the most sensitive emotionally of the trio, driven to tears more than once in the course of the series by what she hears and witnesses. The trio’s enemies often try to play on this as a means of destroying them all. However, Bubbles can rouse herself with fury when called on in the most startling of ways, doing so in the name of vindication.

-Black-haired Buttercup (E.G. Daily) is equally remarkable. Taking pride in her ability to fight, in a far more stereotypically masculine way, she can be hell let loose when allowed to pummel her opponents into submission. Her trouble comes with knowing when to stop fighting. She and Blossom, not surprisingly, are in conflict regularly and often, both verbally and occasionally physically. Even on the rare occasions when Buttercup allows herself to be “sensitive” enough to reveal her inner feelings, they are explored in the same explosive fashion as her fisticuffs.

Each, in a way, comes to assume some aspects of a particular feminine stereotype, but behaves in a way that challenges and debunks it. These conflicted, highly emotional personalities are what drive the program, and McCracken gives them free reign to do so. Furthermore, he increases the level of interaction the viewer has with them and everyone else in the narrative by a highly cinematic filming approach. The editing of the show is fast and furious, with images coming from an astonishingly wide number of camera positions, placements, and movements, particularly on the occasions when the Girls fight with villains. The involvement of the viewer in these situations is both unavoidable and undeniable, to the point that they can sometimes feel the impact of explosive punches thrown on their own body. No other animated program has had this kind of immersive feel to viewing it, before or since.

*

Priot to PPG, it might have been enough to take a basic superhero situation, such as a villain battle, and replay it a few times to create a series. McCracken, however, was not satisfied with this; neither was his team. Unlike their predecessors, they chose to use their series to challenge many of the set assumptions on which the superhero narrative was based on, providing both comic and dramatic elements of a more equitable- and, arguably, feminist- narrative in its place. It is in these sorts of narratives that many of the most memorable moments of the series occur.

On a basic level, subtle feminism is reflected in the fact that the majority of the male characters the Girls interacted with, friend or foe, are ones they can easily fool or beat. They tended to embody a range of masculine stereotypes (e.g. stubbornness, stupidity, obliviousness) in much the same fashion as the Girls did feminine ones, but the males are not allowed to show a wider range of feelings, as the Girls are. Only the Girls’ creator, Professor Utonium (Tom Kane), was able to be seen on equal terms to them in this regard, since, as their “father”, he was able to use a modicum of patriarchal affection and authority to keep them in line. He, however, could be charmed, beguiled and dominated by them, as he often was by some of the adult females in the series. As a consequence, it was often the case that the Girls were more befuddled by female villains, who fought them on their own terms, and were more apt to look up to friendly female adults for guidance.

This formulation, constructed in tight eleven-minute episodes, was what the show existed as for the balance of its run, and how it exists in its current form on DVD.

While not all the episodes had a feminist agenda, the ones that did are notable for such, and, as always with the series, were remarkable for the matter-of-fact manner in which they asserted the plurality and diversity of women’s voices in what had once been a masculine playground.

Take, for example, the 2001 installment “Equal Fights”. Here, the Girls are confronted by Femme Fatale, a personification of the radical nature of feminism- and the misandry that often comes with that political viewpoint. Earning the Girls’ confidence only after convincing them the men in their lives have given them a raw deal, the villain converts them to her cause, and causes them to act in highly misandrist ways themselves. It is only when the Girls are confronted with the fact that 1) Femme Fatale’s view of the world is highly limited and 2) the fact that she notably does not speak for all the women in the world- that the Girls are able to take measures into their own hands again and defeat her.

The 2001 episode “Members Only” presents an equally uncompromising inner message. In it, the Girls attempt to join the masculine-centric superhero organization, The Justice Friends. However, while they meet the physical requirements for the job, they are denied membership because of the membership’s sexist bias against “little girls”. Revenge comes when the members are attacked by a male villain capable of draining their “manliness” from them. The Girls, having none of that in their systems, defeat him easily.

Other episodes of the series underlined the unique super-heroic status of the Girls, while at the same time acting as cautionary tales for those who became too infatuated with them. The 1999 episode “Collect Her” involves a stereotypical comic-book aficionado who imprisons the Girls in “power packages”(oversized versions of the Mylar bags in which comic-book collectables are stored) so that he can have them “forever”. In a just form of payback, the people of Townsville rescue them, for all the times the Girls saved the city from destruction. The 2004 episode “Documentary” involves a similarly obsessive filmmaker trying to make a film about the Girls. However, they themselves barely appear in the episode, and he has to, ironically, try to cobble something together about them by the most amateurish of means.

Nothing, however, served to highlight the uniqueness of the series, and its lead characters, better than the brilliant 2001 episode “Knock It Off”, a scathing and ironic satire of the sort of mass media merchandising of which PPG had, by this time, irrevocably, become a part of. Dick Hardly (a college classmate of the Professor’s) meets the Girls and discovers their secrets. This prompts him, with some stolen Chemical X, to create a variant of the Girls, which he creatively calls The Powerpuff Girls X-Treme (sic). But he’s not done there. He then clones them ad nauseum, positioning his clones around the world. Cornered by the Girls, he ingests the remainder of his supply of Chemical X, becomes a monster, and nearly kills them by draining the chemical from their bodies. It is only when the Professor sincerely declares his love and affection for the Girls that Dick and the clones are finally destroyed.

It is a haunting lesson about the destructiveness of greed, but also a vindication of how love and affection are necessary in the world. It further reaffirms the particular brilliance of this series and its storytelling method.

*

The achievement of PPG begins with a unique approach to storytelling, presenting a style that had become hackneyed, only to transform it from an entirely new point of view. By bringing a decidedly feminist perspective to something that had been almost drowning in corrosive masculinity, McCracken changed the way television animation approaches super-heroics permanently, and certainly for the better. PPG proved that heroics, super ones and otherwise, are not and could not be something for white men alone. Many shows in the coming years would adapt PPG’s dramatic, cinematic storytelling to a wide variety of narratives, carrying on the work started by Craig McCracken and his company in following decades. But it will always be apparent just where- and from whom- certain tricks in their bag had been learned from.

By showing how effectively super-heroics could better reflect the realities of the world, PPG made it safe for anyone to dream of the occasions when they, too, could conquer their limitations and “save the day”.

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