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1
2
3* The bizarre magic of the world’s greatest kid’s—is it for kids?—television show.
4By Maria Bustillos
5
6Adventure Time is a smash hit cartoon aimed primarily at kids age six to
7eleven. It’s also a deeply serious work of moral philosophy, a rip-roaring comic
8masterpiece, and a meditation on gender politics and love in the modern
9world. It is rich with moments of tenderness and confusion, and real terror and
10grief even; moments sometimes more resonant and elementally powerful than you
11experience in a good novel, though much of Adventure Time’s emotional force is
12visually evoked—conveyed through a language of seeing and feeling rather than
13words.
14
15The heroes of Adventure Time—a boy in a white helmet named Finn, and his
16shape-shifting mutant dog/adopted brother, Jake—spend their days fighting evil,
17playing games, saving (and, sometimes, dating) princesses, learning secrets, and
18exploring their half-ruined home world of Ooo, as well as other worlds and
19dimensions. They possess a blind optimism that is as clueless as it is
20comforting: Whether they are fighting a swamp giant, trapped in a garbage-strewn
21cave or testing the super-spicy instant bath serum in the palace of Princess
22Bubblegum, they are (almost always) brave and kind; they want to have fun and
23they mean no harm. Finn and Jake are also full of a magical quality that real
24children have—of resilience, and of seeing the world as if for the first time.
25
26These heroes are as fallible as can be—they’re quite capable of displaying
27selfishness, impatience and thick-headedness—but their essential good nature
28always wins out, if not their wisdom or their power to set things right. They
29mess up a lot, in fact, and their errors and imperfections aren’t magically
30erased at the end of each episode. At one point they accidentally create the
31conditions whereby a monster is able to extinguish all life in the universe with
32a wish; this idea scared me halfway out of my wits and into a curled-up ball
33under the covers. But it all blindly, clumsily gets set halfway-right again,
34leaving a host of potentially terrible consequences in the uncertain future: The
35show often produces a relieved, tender and half-frightened sensation, along with
36shock, pleasure and laughter.
37
38Literature fans are likely to enjoy Adventure Time’s deliriously loopy
39philosophico-comical language most of all. Sometimes the “deeper” message is
40double-edged, both joke and not, as in this pronouncement from the scarily
41toothless, smeared and bitten gingerbread man, the Royal Tart Toter: “This
42cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms
43collectively. But, if sweetness can win—and it can—then I’ll still be here
44tomorrow, to high five you, yesterday, my friend. Peace.” But mostly the
45language is just full of fun:
46
47“I’m not righteous,” Finn laments. “I’m wrongteous. Stupidteous.”
48“Accept what fate has given you… can we stay here in this pile of trash and rats forever?”
49“Imagination is for turbo-nerds who can’t handle how kick-butt reality is!”
50“You’ve gifted us nothing but heartache, Magic Man! Where’s the life lesson in that?”
51
52The resolution of each eleven-minute episode is anything but tidily triumphant;
53each one is as likely to end on a question or a joke as on an answer. Yet one
54comes away satisfied, a little bit the way one might at a David Lynch movie. The
55narrative is endlessly malleable, and includes all the possibilities granted by
56the existence of wizards and magical creatures, time travel, and a huge,
57ever-evolving cast. It’s a canvas and a story big enough for dozens of artists
58to make their own way. Even the drawing style is inconsistent, handmade-feeling;
59longtime fans may learn to detect the hand or voice of a favorite storyboard
60artist or writer. The goal of the show seems to be exploration, not uniformity.
61
62Adventure Time’s dozens of characters are complex in a way that is rarely seen
63on television for adults, let alone children; each seems to inhabit his own
64world. In E.M. Forster’s memorable phrase, they are round characters, “capable
65of surprising in a convincing way.” Lumpy Space Princess is a lovable but
66ghastly teenager, tediously obsessed with her old boyfriend, the unprepossessing
67Brad; she treats her well-meaning parents very shabbily. Marceline the Vampire
68Queen’s father is present just enough to make it impossible for her to ignore or
69forget his cruelty and selfishness—qualities she has inherited, to some
70degree. Princess Bubblegum is afflicted with intellectual arrogance and an
71inability to anticipate the dangerous consequences of her scientific
72experiments. (One of the story’s most provocative threads concerns the tension
73between science and magic).
74
75Adventure Time’s complexity is owed in part to the many writers, performers and
76artists who make it. But there’s no question that the whole is illuminated by
77the spirit of its creator Pendleton Ward, whose warmth and antic imagination are
78offered not from above the audience, but from the seat beside yours. He is as
79much viewer as auteur; as much fan as creator. In this way, not only the artists
80and writers who contribute directly to Adventure Time but also the executives
81who support and enable it and the audience who’ve come to love it are invited to
82participate in the continued making, extension and sharing of Ward’s vision.
83
84Unlikely as it is that Roland Barthes could have imagined anything remotely like
85it, his essay “The Death of the Author” exactly prefigured the sense of
86collaboration informing Adventure Time, which is in every sense “a tissue of
87quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” and “a
88multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original,
89blend and clash.” It is delightful to find that the basic tenets of
90twentieth-century French literary theory are the opposite of boring when
91harnessed in the service of a cartoon about a boy and his magical dog in a
92fantastical post-apocalyptic Earth.
93
94The Ice King is a tragic figure—to my mind, the hero—of Adventure Time. The
95bearded, chubby, blue-robed wizard monarch leads a solitary and delusional
96existence at the farthest corner of the Ice Kingdom of Ooo, where he lives in a
97prism-shaped palace of ice with only a drum kit and a flock of penguins for
98company. A complicated history of torment and self-sacrifice has brought him
99here: One that will take us, as viewers, a long time to learn.
100
101He is desperately alone. His penguin companions can honk, in a manner
102simultaneously bewitching and annoying, but not even his favorite, Gunter, is
103capable of conversation. Sometimes the Ice King flies to other kingdoms in Ooo
104and kidnaps a princess or two (or more)—with a view to marriage, bien entendu so
105that, in some sense, his intentions are honorable. He flies quite silently,
106floatily, and barefoot, revealing sad, skinny little blue legs under his
107robes. He sometimes gets the upper hand, as in the episode “Still,” where he
108freezes Jake with magic and makes him have a slumber party and talk about
109girls. More often, Finn and Jake are able to thwart the Ice King’s evil schemes
110without much trouble.
111
112The Ice King is a danger to himself and everyone else, subject to unpredictable
113rages and fits of violence, but he will break your heart. He is forever trying
114to marry a princess or make a friend, but it never, ever works out; he can only
115push the thing he desires out of reach by the very force of his longing. Despite
116being a furious half-crazy blue cartoon villain, he is entirely human; he is
117ridiculous, needy and sad; he is oneself.
118
119“I identify with him more than any other character,” said Pendleton Ward,
120chatting offhandedly in the writers’ room at the studio, where we had gathered
121with the show’s key writers and producers: Adam Muto, Kent Osborne, and Jack
122Pendarvis, who appeared on a large screen via Skype from Oxford, Mississippi.
123
124“But not in terms of, like, trying to capture women….” replied the slender,
125saturnine Muto.
126
127“Oh, yes!” Ward said stoutly. Then, after the laughter subsided: “No, no, no, I
128mean…. not capture, literally kidnapping women…. Just like, living alone and
129having to talk to your pet.”
130
131Ward is a big bearded guy in his early thirties with a bemused, friendly air
132about him. He was on his own when we’d met earlier that morning, wearing a plaid
133shirt and a baseball cap, seated at a long wooden conference table and preparing
134to tuck into a foil-wrapped breakfast burrito.
135
136We began by talking about humor. Children’s humor, I suggested, is commonly
137thought of as a kind of “diversion” from fear or sadness. But Adventure Time
138confronts very dark themes head on: The apocalypse, the possibility of loss and
139pain, grief and mortality. Yet somehow it makes these grave things seem so
140simple, unthreatening, even hilarious.
141
142“It’s funnier when you’re sad, I think,” he said. “I’ve heard laughter is
143releasing stress from your body, like when you go, ’HA! Haaaa!’—you know, you
144get it out of you. My favorite kind of humor is dark comedies, because I think,
145mmm… I guess that’s my personality, maybe I’m more cynical about things, so I
146laugh stuff off easily, and life is really scary?
147
148“I constantly am thinking about how death is always looming,” he said. “I’m
149trying to do the best thing that I can do in the time that I have, when I should
150be thinking about this very moment—just being in the moment. Enjoy where I am,
151these eggs taste good, have a nice conversation, and I’m satisfied now. But I’m
152always thinking about the end of me, and what I can do right now to make the
153most of my time. I guess that’s where a lot of my humor comes from, too, is just
154thinking about that.”
155
156Ward, Muto, Osborne and Pendarvis walked me through the making of the show,
157which is set to debut its sixth season in April of 2014. Each episode takes
158around nine months to produce. After talking over ideas, the four write a
159two-page outline, which is then assigned to writers and storyboard artists. Most
160of the artists here combine roles in a way that is particular to the studio:
161They may voice characters, draw, write, or any combination of these.
162
163There are four teams, each with two storyboard artists, who also write all the
164dialogue and all the jokes for each episode. “They’re basically directors, too,”
165Muto said. “They’re deciding what the shots are going to look like; sometimes
166they’ll take the outline and not write part of it, or like, contort part of it.”
167
168But you have veto power, right? I asked. You four.
169
170“It’s not like veto,” Muto said, “it’s more like a conversation, it’s not like,
171‘Take this out.’” Here, Ward broke in: “I remember I did that once, I remember
172putting my foot down.”
173
174"I think I was just in a mood. It was the mom from “BMO Lost,” and everyone
175wanted to make her a giant baby? With a big goofy silly-putty thumb, the
176baby—they wanted to make the mom a larger version of that baby?—and I was like,
177now, NO! Because I wanted to relate to their relationship immediately, when she
178emerged from these bushes, she was looking for her baby and I wanted them to be
179like, “My baby!” And I know if I was watching it, I’d be thinking about her big
180baby body, and not their loving—like, that thing that I knew I would immediately
181grasp. And if I [hadn’t been] in a mood, we would have talked it out, eventually
182I would have settled on the big baby idea or something, but I was like,
183nnnNNOOO! I put my foot down—I’m on Skype!"
184
185I asked them about their vision of heroism, because Finn and Jake are a little
186bit like heroes, but only a little.
187
188Muto: Well, I think Finn is kind of, the guy with the sword, wears blue, and
189he goes on quests, and he serves princesses and he does all these things
190that a hero would do in old stories. But I think how he executes it is just
191so different. It’s not like he’s always outsmarting; he’s not even that
192smart.
193
194There’s like a moral universe that sort of belongs to all of them, though,
195and a shared code?
196
197Muto: Yeah, definitely. At the beginning, too, it was like… this is what a
198knight would do, this is my alignment, and this is how I’m supposed to
199act. He would even talk in those terms, which are Dungeons & Dragons terms:
200if you’re aligned like this you’re supposed to act a certain way. And now
201it’s gotten a little more nuanced than that, I think. Not like, “I have to
202be the hero.” It’s usually, “I have to just be a good dude.”
203
204Ward: I watched a lot of Star Trek, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard was my
205favorite, I think, because he always—he was flawed but he’d still always do
206the best that he could do in any situation, and he was confident in his
207ability to continue to do the best thing even when the odds were stacked.
208
209And then I’d bring up Janeway a lot, who was the captain of Voyager, who in
210the first few episodes—she’s really panicked. She’d go to her ready room
211with Tuvok the Vulcan and would be like, “Tuvok, I don’t know what to do!”
212
213Get it together, Janeway! You’re leading the ship!—and you’re—you know:
214How’d you even get to be in charge of this thing?
215
216So we did a few episodes in the beginning where Finn was really panicked
217about things; he had all these problems? You’d go, “Oh, I don’t know what to
218do!”—and I hated that. It made me feel terrible. So, I made sure, I tried to
219wipe all of that out so that Finn could be more like Jean-Luc. So you’d
220feel… comfortable and enjoy watching him take care of a situation. And
221relax, and relate to him.
222
223Yes, because a really scary thing will happen and Finn’ll say, “Yeah, we’ll
224just do thus and so,” and I’m thinking yeah, you could do that!—and then you
225feel happy.
226
227Ward: Yeah, it feels good.
228
229So true.
230
231Ward [wailing]: “Tuvok, I don’t know!?!?!?”
232
233There’s this idea in English literature, in their narrative style, that you
234imply rather than speak; that if you speak something, you make it
235less. That’s why they don’t go around saying “I love you” all the time…
236they’re not showy like that. But it’s not that they don’t have a deep
237feeling. I see that in what you guys do as well.
238
239Muto: In this conversation right now or in the show?
240
241[SILENCE. MORE SILENCE. Laughter.]
242
243No! I know, I’m telling you to say it.
244
245Osborne: We’re all not speaking.
246
247The four returned with me for a moment to the Ice King.
248
249He wants so badly for them to like him.
250
251Muto: Okay that’s true. Yeah, that’s real. But he’s crazy.
252
253Yeah, but he really wants that contact. It’s so…
254
255Ward: Genuinely.
256
257Pendarvis: He’s lonely!
258
259He’s lonely!
260
261Ward: He just wants someone to do the dishes with…. Why is Ice King interesting?
262It’s because he’s sad. And it’s fun for me to laugh at sad things because I
263think sadness makes me laugh in a cynical way. And I think because it also
264reminds me that I’m alive and that’s what makes me laugh, because I think I’m
265cynical about that? Or maybe more than being cynical, it’s fun to laugh at that
266stuff because… oh, jeez.
267
268Muto: Ha, that’s so complex!
269
270Ward: There’s panic—I wrote this down—there’s panic around death, because it’s
271coming for you. But if you’re looking at it you can settle down and feel relaxed
272because you know where it is, and it’s not going anywhere. And I wrote—I really
273like that sad tingle.
274
275Pendarvis: I don’t think Adventure Time is too much different from old fairy
276tales that are about the most terrifying things that can happen. Children being
277lost in the woods, and ending up in a witch’s house…. I mean, a person that
278seems like a nice person, but she might put you in a pot and cook you, or
279something.
280
281Yeah, I really hate when they sanitize them.
282
283Pendarvis: Bruno Bettelheim said that fairy tales are ways for children to deal
284with the things that scare them. Anyway, it’s fun to be scared, right?
285
286Yes.
287
288Osborne: Hearing Jake talk about his perception of death and dying, I remember
289when that was pitched, it made me feel better about my own mortality than
290watching like five seasons of Six Feet Under. It prepared me for death better.
291
292Pendarvis: And that’s what we’re really trying to do at Adventure Time, is
293prepare people for their own death. [All burst out laughing.]
294
295Rob Sorcher, Cartoon Network’s executive vice president and Chief Content
296Officer, is a handsome fifty-something, the picture of a Los Angeles studio
297executive, with salt-and-pepper hair and haute-nerd black framed glasses;
298elegant, witty, and fast-talking; beautifully dressed in a navy cashmere
299pullover and slim dark jeans. He was the studio’s original general manager at
300its founding in 1992, and went on to USA Network and then AMC, where, as
301executive vice president of programming and production, he helped develop Mad
302Men and Breaking Bad.
303
304When Sorcher returned to Cartoon Network under former president Stuart Snyder in
3052007, their original business plan had been to move the network away from
306animated shows and toward live action, and shows aimed more explicitly at
307boys. But Adventure Time was the first project Sorcher greenlit on his return,
308and as it happened, audiences made it a roaring success, while the live-action
309series fared less well. Together with Regular Show, Adventure Time redefined and
310re-energized the studio, and they were soon joined by Steven Universe, and
311Clarence and Uncle Grandpa. This fall Pat McHale, Adventure Time’s original
312creative director, will debut his own series, Over the Garden Wall, alongside
313them. Sorcher led me through the development of the Shorts Program that the
314network has cultivated as a sort of incubator for these artist-driven cartoons.
315
316"What these shows have in common is that they do not start with a script. And
317that’s unique to this studio. Everywhere else you go there’s a script, and the
318animators are animating to it. That’s not happening here. These are animators
319and board people, and they are doing the writing. They are people who process
320things visually.
321
322I worked on Mad Men, and Matt Weiner pitched me that thing beat by beat. He’s a
323master salesman, and I’m a words guy, I come out of advertising, I’m a
324copywriter, a talking guy…. This is a different thing entirely. For one thing,
325they are very young, they are 23, 24, 25… they have some characters, maybe
326they’ve had them since school. It’s easy to look at that and beat that up, and
327go, “What would the 25th episode be?” and “What’s at stake?” and all this
328nonsense you do in TV development and then you’ll end up with nothing, because
329they can’t answer those questions. They don’t know. So we designed a program to
330let them process and think through that in not so much of a challenging way—in a
331positive way. You will produce a seven-minute film if you are in this
332program. It will be with a minimum of executive interference. We installed
333artists at the top of the program, so that I’m talking to more experienced and
334senior artists, and they’re talking to the younger ones in a way they can
335understand. "
336
337There’s a lot of fancy technology and fun furnishings around the Cartoon Network
338studios, which are on a nondescript street in Burbank’s commercial center, quite
339near the giant IKEA. There’s a massive rooftop party space with an over-sized
340ping-pong table; a big white stairwell, which the artists are free to decorate
341with graffiti; a lobby wall tiled with Etch-A-Sketches, many of them bearing
342intricate drawings. The overarching vibe is unselfconscious, easy and
343comfortable.
344
345Sorcher and I dropped by the recording room, where J. G. Quintel, the creator of
346Regular Show, was voicing characters with a colleague. The ability of these
347performers to do a series of wild voices on command, sighing, shrieking,
348cackling, hooting, as required, to act out the whole rollercoaster of pratfalls,
349exclamations, insults, sadness and hilarity in a cartoon—all without being able
350to watch the finished product as they work, but just to intuit from the script
351and drawings—is breathtaking. Two sound engineers supervised the performance.
352
353"
354Good, Sammy, on the squeal from the trailer hitch, a little more sense like, you’re falling and you have to jump up.
355
356Falling and what?
357
358Falling and have to reach up to grab onto the trailer.
359
360Oh, okay.
361
362Take 38.
363
364[the performer yodels in about eight registers] Oh NOOOO, BRO?!
365
366[all laugh approvingly.] Just INSANE! So, 103 is going to be an add-in:
367Muscle Man, you get slammed into the back of the truck. And the other Muscle
368Man is holding on for dear life, and gives another scream. "
369
370Generally, the creators don't do the voices in animation, Sorcher told
371me. “Because, it’s a lot of work! He’s standing on that stage, in the booth, and
372now he’s not working on the show! They’re not directing, so… But invariably,
373they’re characters that they’ve had, since… this show is based on J. G.’s
374student film! So you can’t—you just gotta let ’em do it, you can’t worry about
375that.”
376
377There is a definite paternal component to his relationship with these young
378artists.
379
380“I still miss having little kids in the house,” he said a bit later. “I was a
381camp counselor….”
382
383“And you are still—?”
384
385“Exactly.” He laughed. Sorcher’s a businessman, but also something like an
386interpreter, a cosmonaut, traveling freely between art and business, chaos and
387order, children and adults. Without the broad compass of his understanding and
388responsibilities, a creative (and commercial) machine of this size could not
389exist. He said:
390
391"These are difficult productions… so much harder than making any other kind of
392TV show that I have ever made. Everybody is incredibly young; the ideas are
393rarely completely hatched before beginning production, so you’re building the
394car as you go, and the deadlines don’t stop; animation in general is a complex
395activity requiring a lot of people, and then we ship overseas.
396
397So you put all that together and then add in the question of, “Hey: Who are we
398making this for?” I feel that a big part of my job is to make sure that that
399conversation does not come up in the building.
400
401And you have to perform to metrics for your own bosses.
402
403The beautiful thing is that the show performs—and by the way, around the world,
404too, it’s really powerful—the show performs against kids, but the secret is,
405what isn’t even included: The total population watching that show. Yeah! There’s
406a million or more people watching that show who are not kids 6 to eleven. So
407it’s really interesting, but we won’t even pay attention because we’re not
408slicing it that way from a revenue perspective.
409
410Are you kidding me right now? You are not even thinking about undergraduates.
411
412Nope. We are just… not monetizing them.
413
414You are blowing my mind. I know. And I’m not allowed to run it on Adult Swim
415simultaneously. So… my next wave is to invert the proposition. Have it be a
416cartoon for everyone that some kids might also come to, because we can monetize
417that. "
418
419Things unseen and unseeable, things that could never exist in the “real” world,
420appeared in some of the first movies ever made, as if imagination itself had
421been struggling to break free of its empirical limitations. Le voyage dans la
422lune, the mystico-fantastical 1902 film by Georges Méliès, for example. With its
423weird imagery and ideas, its wigged-out costuming and magical lunar cream-pie
424effects, it is very like today’s cartoons: Loopiness and surrealism that unleash
425a torrent of strange ideas, feelings, laughter. These are vehicles for pure
426enjoyment and fun, and for liberating the imagination, a realm in which adults
427and children are on a roughly equal playing field. But their very freedom, the
428blankness of the slate upon which such a work begins, means that a whole world
429must be constructed from the ground up.
430
431Adventure Time began as a short film when Ward was still a student at
432CalArts. Pat McHale, a classmate, was involved from the first moment. The two
433are still very close. “Pat is a guy I met in school,” Ward wrote in an
434email. “It’s hard to put into words how much I admire his cartooning. I’ll try
435though: Pat’s drawings and storytelling [are full of] tenderness and honesty. A
436punchline for Pat is the calm smile of a man made of watermelons being revealed
437through parting morning mist. I trust Pat to believe me if I call him and say,
438‘I’m calling from beyond the grave and I need your help.’”
439
440McHale is soft-spoken and slight; he looks quite like an indie rock star, with
441tousled hair and a gentle, piercing grey gaze. “Nickelodeon came to CalArts and
442wanted to make a whole bunch of—I think they were like thirty-second, or one
443minute shorts, with students,” he said.
444
445"So we were all pitching stuff, and Pen— "
446
447They all call Pendleton Ward “Pen.”
448
449"—pitched, he had a character named Bueno the Bear, and basically he took that
450character and made a hat out of it, and put it on a kid, and that was the
451character [that became Adventure Time’s Finn].
452
453From what Pen has said it was sort of like, coming up with the most cliché idea
454in order to get it picked up: There’s a hero kid with a dog, and then there’s an
455evil wizard, an Ice King wizard, and then there’s Princess Bubblegum. They’re
456all like clichés, purposefully. But because it was coming from him, it kind of
457felt like—I don’t know, it doesn’t feel cliché, it just feels slightly “off” in
458just the way it’s drawn, and in the humor of it. That combination of really
459traditional children’s television tropes, mixed with Pen’s more sophisticated
460vision, and emotional stuff…. And so when there was talk about bringing it over
461to the network, Pen talked to me and Adam Muto about kind of coming on as second
462and third in command. "
463
464When I asked him to say more about the nature of Adventure Time’s collaboration,
465he said: “At this point it seems like a lot of the board artists have their own
466little stories and worlds that they kind of own, and they’re like, ‘I want to
467tell stories about this character, and this character!’ to kind of see where
468they go, and everything. And that’s what Pen always wanted.”
469
470Nick Jennings, Adventure Time’s art director, has been in animation for decades;
471he was the art director of Rocko’s Modern Life and SpongeBob SquarePants. He is
472the grooviest dad in North America, probably, with short greying hair and
473thickly lashed, observant blue eyes. He supervises the show’s whole visual
474vocabulary; it is a complex business, creating a visual unification of all the
475ideas, characters and locations in the land of Ooo. “Every show is comprised of
476a bunch of paintings and drawings we do that we send overseas as a reference,
477and then they draw and paint and animate all of the two hundred twenty
478scenes…. I have two guys that draw background layouts, which is what these
479are”—glowing, richly colored, jewel-like cartoon backgrounds that would have
480been unimaginable, impossible to produce like this even twenty-five years
481ago. “I have three painters.”
482
483I remark how well the visual style of the show matches the wild emotional ride
484it takes you on—the contrast between the dingy, dripping, frightening ruins and
485the monsters, and the sweetness and the rich, happy colors of the Candy
486Kingdom. These reflect the depth and complexity of the story.
487
488“I think that’s a testament to Rob’s leadership, and Pen’s vision,” he said. “I
489mean, for a while we’ve been struggling to build this brand and find our
490place. We have a lot more freedom here than we would at other places. And Rob
491pushes that and wants that to happen, and wants the creators to be able to just
492fall into it and do the thing they do best. So I think it really—I think he and
493Pen, they’re a good combo.”
494
495Fred Seibert, the head of Frederator Studios, where Adventure Time was first
496produced, talks about the show’s creators with an avuncular affection. He is
497sixtyish, tall, warm, funny, voluble. Frederator’s basic business model is to
498make a large portfolio of short films at a time and then try to sell them to the
499big studios; they’re based in New York, with a West Coast outpost in Burbank
500decorated in wall-to-wall posters of the company’s many brilliant successes: The
501Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Courage the Cowardly Dog and
502The Fairly OddParents in addition to Adventure Time. Seibert is a serial
503entrepreneur with a wide range of interests; for example, a young intern named
504David Karp built Frederator’s blogging platform in 2004, and Seibert became an
505early investor in this intern’s startup, Tumblr. (A small investor, he insists.)
506
507Seibert has an instinctive sense of what one might call the postmodern movement
508in storytelling. He spoke freely about this transformation, first in what he
509calls the “post-Hill Street Blues era,” when the style of television narrative
510changed dramatically and developed on its own path, away from the conventions of
511the movie business and into what he called “novelistic storytelling,” with
512multiple threads, stories and characters that could be followed out and
513developed over months and years.
514
515“Now we can balance fifteen storylines simultaneously, without even thinking
516about it,” he said. “Traditional movie and television narrative would tell you,
517you have to have a main character, three subcharacters and a couple of ancillary
518characters, and that is all you can balance in an hour or ninety minutes. Games,
519in the same way, have changed our ability to think through characters and
520stories. For example, in Pokemon, there are 150 characters just to start, and
521then it grows from there.”
522
523“One of the things that I am most blown away by in Pen’s storytelling is that
524for all of the attempts over the last twenty years to integrate video games into
525filmmaking, I think almost no one has done it successfully except him,” Seibert
526said. “Going through a great Adventure Time episode is like getting into a video
527game for the first time and not knowing the rules of the universe, and fumbling
528through until, at a certain point, you’re playing the game without even [having
529realized] you’ve started.”
530
531The intimacy of the audience’s involvement was a key element of Seibert’s and
532Ward’s vision from the start. Both are intimately attuned to the culture of the
533web, and wanted to share Adventure Time storyboards and works in progress with
534their online audience when the original short was in production (it was released
535on the Internet in January of 2007, to instantaneous and immense acclaim); this
536was a very unorthodox move, the idea of opening the hood to fans of the show.
537
538“When I was talking with Pen about this, he said, ‘Well, I was a kid sitting in
539San Antonio and I couldn’t find out anything, so I’d scour the Internet looking
540for the things that were meaningful to me. And you know, I had a really hard
541time finding those things, so I’m really happy we can share anything we want
542with anybody.’” But, Seibert says, there was a lot of resistance at first to
543sharing too much in public. “But Pen just said, ‘Look, there’s certain secrets
544that we want to hold for the audience so that when they see the episode, they’ll
545get these secrets, but other than that, just tell anybody, share
546anything—because I remember what it was like, being a fan.’”
547
548Ward’s fan feeling hasn’t undergone one iota of alteration. When I wrote to ask
549about his interest in video games and their potential for the future of
550storytelling, he replied:
551
552"Oh man, the intensely emotional storytelling in games like Gone Home… it’s
553through the roof! The wild goosebumps I experienced after Gone Home, I felt like
554I was in the body of a different person… a VERY different person haha! I don’t
555want to spoil it, but it was wild to feel so intimately connected with the
556character in that game. Movies and books transport you to a place where you’re
557along for the ride, games make you drive the thing forward. That’s especially
558true in scary games, because instead of shouting “Don’t go in that room!”
559…you’re the one taking the steps forward towards that room. It’s huge. I think
560games are a thing you can’t fully appreciate until you play them. I’ve been to
561game conventions where games are being projected on screens all around you, they
562all look nice and it’s fun to see how visually appealing they are… but unless
563you wait in line and play them… you’ll leave there without knowing how they can
564pull so many good feelings out of yah. But for emotional storytelling in games,
565Gone Home is the front runner at the moment…. There’s plenty of games play on
566moral decision making… in Red Dead Redemption, a hermit sent me on a quest to
567decimate the wild Bigfoots who were terrorizing him. I sought out and killed all
568of the Bigfoots…. I killed them from a distance, they never attacked me. Then I
569found the final Bigfoot who was sitting by a tree and crying… he told me that I
570had murdered his ENTIRE FAMILY!!! I still feel HORRRRRIBLE ABOUT IT! He wanted
571me to SHOOT HIM because he no longer WANTED TO LIVE! It was miserable!!!"
572
573When asked about his relationship to Adventure Time’s fans, Ward took care to
574explain the responsibility he feels to the kids who watch the show, again
575because he’d been a devoted comics fan himself. He’s terrified of being tired,
576or not on his game, when a kid comes to talk with him at a public event.
577
578"Because that happened to me, before. The first time—do you know who James
579Kochalka is?—he’s a comics artist. I met him once, and I was a big fan of his,
580at a comic convention. And he was just tired, I think; he was just running his
581booth, and he was exhausted, and I was like, [in a breathless voice] “Hey, man!
582how’s it goin’, have you heard about this CD that I liked, I think you’d like
583it!” And he was like “Uh, I don’t know.” I’m like, “Oh, he hates my guts, I’ve
584got to get out of here!” So kids, when they meet me, I try to keep my energy up
585the whole time. "
586
587This sense of connection to the audience is spread throughout the cast and crew
588of the show. Many of the storyboard artists maintain extensive private Tumblrs
589and blogs of their own, in which they speak directly with fans. Adam Muto
590answers all manner of questions on Formspring, writing as MrMuto:
591
592" kevinjantar: why does your picture looks like Danny from Bravest Warriors?
593
594MrMuto: Or why does Danny look like my picture. "
595
596Storyboard artist Cole Sanchez, too, answers fans’ questions very gently and
597kindly (as ColeSanchez, on Formspring); he also advises them on their cartooning
598studies and critiques their work. In one reply he completely redrew a fan’s
599character: “I tweaked the arm a little bit and the hair line on the left side of
600his face I made round, just to simplify it. Over all I think I just kinda
601rounded out the character. I like rounded shapes because the volume feels nice
602and has a fun sorta rhythm. Thanks for asking me to critique your drawing, hope
603you saw something that helped.”
604
605At the 2013 Comic-Con in San Diego, there was an audience of more than two
606thousand people at the Adventure Time panel, many of them dressed as characters
607from the show: There were dozens of Finns and Jakes (and their gender-swapped
608counterparts, Fiona and Cake), and quite a lot of Marceline the Vampire Queens
609and Princesses Bubblegum, Ice Kings and even a Lemongrab or two. There wasn’t a
610seat to be had; it was touch and go even for a crafty member of the fourth
611estate to wrangle her way in there. There were deafening cheers for Ward, Muto,
612Osborne and Rebecca Sugar, an erstwhile Adventure Time storyboard artist who now
613runs her own show, Steven Universe. She performed “Bacon Pancakes” on the
614ukulele, and led a rousing audience sing-along. The crowd went just as wild for
615the voice performers Tom Kenny (the Ice King), Olivia Olson (Marceline), Jeremy
616Shada (Finn) and John DiMaggio (Jake).
617
618On the Internet you may see Adventure Time characters painted on fingernails,
619and buy helmets sewn of white felt modeled on the one worn by Finn, and handmade
620cuddly toys of almost every character. There is a Wiki of 2100 pages and
62130,000-plus images illustrating and explaining every imaginable detail of the
622show. There’s fan fiction and Pinterest boards, and a ten-hour YouTube mashup of
623Jake singing “Bacon Pancakes” with Alicia Keys singing “Empire State of Mind.”
624
625Last year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade featured a balloon of Finn and Jake,
626surely the arch-imprimatur of acceptance into mainstream American culture.
627
628One of the best—and saddest—parts of Adventure Time is the subplot of Simon and
629Marcy, a section of the story that takes place just after the ruin of Earth, and
630the favorite of many of the show’s admirers. Pen Ward loves that part, too.
631
632"Oh oh oh OH my god, Simon and Marcy….
633
634Yeah, make you cry.
635
636Made me cry, man. Made me totally cry.
637
638Me too.
639
640Yeah, I bet.
641
642I cried a bunch. I had to watch it a million times, because I had to edit it.
643
644Oh, god! I’m gonna cry NOW. Let it out! "
645
646This story was written by Rebecca Sugar, together with Cole Sanchez and Adam
647Muto. I was particularly interested to talk with Sugar, whose songs and stories
648have evoked such strong feeling from fans, about different aspects of
649collaboration and fandom. Adventure Time “can mean different things to different
650people, because that is what real experience is like,” she told me. “Nobody’s
651having the same experience in reality, so it’s totally fair to have your own
652feeling be specific to you and not the same as someone else’s experience.”
653
654"I totally cosign all you’re saying about the legitimacy or validity of each
655person’s view. Artists in general I think aren’t trying to dictate to other
656people what they should think. But don’t you think there’s another layer of
657aesthetic communion, or camaraderie, with those people who really did get
658exactly what you meant?
659
660Absolutely. In the same way that when you speak to someone and they actually
661listen, that’s one of the greatest things. Yeah, I think that would definitely
662be the best. But then, there’s also something interesting in the variations. The
663only thing that makes me sad is when I see people say, No, it can only mean this
664one thing, and that’s I think just the worst.
665
666I see so much of that fan feeling, the feeling of “this belongs to me” that I
667saw when I first met you guys at ComicCon: You’re so surrounded by all that love
668and devotion, that sort of “rock star” feeling that the audience has toward
669you. Like: I want this person to like me, so much, and I want to be the one who
670understands it, and all that sort of stuff. It took me back, in kind of a sweet
671way; there’s something so touching about wanting to understand, and join in and
672participate in someone else’s way of looking at the world?
673
674Yeah. [In college] we read this Roland Barthes book called A Lover’s Discourse,
675and it had this sort of breakdown of a romantic relationship; talking about how
676when you fall in love with someone, you fall in love with this image that you
677have of that person. And you tie to that an image repertoire: A series of things
678that you associate with that person, and all of that is what you love.
679
680The kind of love that I had for people whom I’d never met, who were making
681comics that I thought were incredible, made me think that if you take that image
682repertoire that you have in a relationship, you know—you share with them a
683series of images and ideas that are powerful to you, it really feels like you
684have a connection with someone. I think that people roll their eyes at obsessive
685fans of cartoons and comics because it seems so bizarre, but it makes so much
686sense that sharing something as fleshed out with music and imagery and stories,
687as cartoons are—you know who did that, and you want to tell them that you
688connected with it.
689
690Yes! You want somehow to tell them, “Look! You made something, an articulation
691of your whole entire character, and, you know, just: ‘Message received.’”
692
693I think especially kids who are maybe a little troubled at home, and don’t
694necessarily have a very secure sort of home life, are sometimes totally rescued
695by this, the knowledge that somebody’s out there whom they can connect with. A
696lot of young people are rescued by art. And comics and cartoons, because they
697are so abstracted—a pure art form that is only very loosely tethered to the
698so-called real world—are maybe particularly useful for that. Absolutely. On
699Adventure Time—and in a lot of what’s going on now—we all make an effort to
700really make it personal and specific. Because with entertainment, a lot of times
701there is a push to de-specify everything, so that you understand it: To deal in
702generics, like just generic ideas, because that will make your jokes read, and
703will make your stories read. But to say something very specific that lets people
704know that their experience, because it’s specific, it’s not illegitimate. That’s
705something that I think needs to exist in television. "
706
707Pat McHale mentioned to me during a talk at the studio that Pen Ward was not a
708fan of “Art”—“as a word, or as a concept. He likes entertainment. But he’s very
709artistic—
710
711"Is there a difference, to you?
712
713I think there’s like a snooty side of art that turns him off of talking about
714“Art,” in a way, of like, symbolism, or anything like that, but I think he
715automatically brings that into things without thinking, because of his own…
716creative intelligence, or whatever the word is that you would use.
717
718How do you feel about that? Are you more okay with the snooty side?
719
720Yeah, I mean I like it.
721
722So do I, I like the snooty side.
723
724I like literary criticism, and so I like, when I’m making stuff, to [be able to
725consider], 'Oh!—this can be interpreted in this, and this and this way.'
726
727Like what literary criticism? Do you have particular writers whom you admire,
728or—?
729
730No, it’s not even about writing. It’s about the literature of—the literature of
731the universe, or something. Any kind of symbolism, like looking into the
732mythology of monsters, or of religion, and history. Or like the Dark Ages, when
733there’s no historical documents that you can really trust—and what is the truth
734of those, and [with respect to] science, [and finding] oh, they had this—and
735then even further back—
736
737There’s no such thing as documents you can trust.
738
739Yeah! So it’s all, you have to critique it in a way…. Going into something like
740a cartoon for children’s television is the same thing as talking about the
741cosmos or human history, or whatever. So that’s been sort of the most fun, is
742like finding sort of I guess tropes and things about the characters, and kind of
743delving into them, and trying to get at the core of why. Why people are the way
744they are, and why the world is the way it is, and what’s good and what’s not so
745good about it. "
746
747Pen Ward had already told me something along these lines, in a reverie about
748capital-A Art.
749
750"Early days, I was real mad at the idea of—I considered myself an entertainer
751more than an artist. I always wanted to just make people happy on a very surface
752level. To plug any message or anything in below that was annoying to me. But I
753realized I was doing that anyway, and that I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t not call
754myself an artist.
755
756I was doing that at the beginning a lot. I was like, “I’m an entertainer, not an
757artist!” Because I just wanted to make something fun and make people enjoy it,
758and that was all I cared about. But I was still plugging in all the same kind of
759stuff…. There were sad themes. Because that’s just what made me laugh, what I
760liked watching…. It wasn’t like “Let’s make a beautiful show!” It was like,
761“Time to make a funny cartoon!” Something that I would want to watch when I was
762a kid.
763
764There’s a lot of baggage around the idea of “artist” in the culture that is not
765very productive, maybe. I was maybe carrying that baggage, and then I think I
766got rid of that at some point. Now I like being artful. It’s fun, the right way
767to be. "
768
769Art that pretends to seriousness, whether moral or philosophical, tends to come
770in clearly marked packages: “For Intelligent People Only” is stamped right on
771the tin. “Highbrow” reading. Art Movies. Literary Fiction. Fine Art. But because
772it’s made with such vast and rich resources, and because so many people get to
773experience and share it, mass media can sometimes offer inclusive, human and
774dynamic dimensions often denied to more recondite forms of art. Mass media can
775more easily approach universality, for example. It can be truly for everyone, of
776any age, class or level of education. It can be freer, lighter, funnier.
777
778How much truth can “highbrow” works really contain, when their audiences are
779limited to only the “serious” and “intelligent”? Granting that they can’t
780possibly pretend to be speaking to everyone—because, when we say, “everyone,”
781shouldn’t we mean exactly that? After all, the human condition is the property
782of all—of the youngest as well as the oldest. The same fears, and the same
783delights are what make us all human. The same mystery at the heart of existence,
784times seven billion.
785
786Pen Ward told me to ask Rebecca Sugar about the sublime, and what she said
787turned out to be intimately involved with this idea of universal mystery, and
788with imagination. “I learned about this in college,” she said, “in a class I
789took with the artist Bill Beckley”:
790
791"The idea is that a beautiful image is frameable. Everything you need to see is
792there: It’s everything you want, and it’s very pleasing because there’s no extra
793information that you don’t get to see. Everything’s in a nice package for
794you. But sublime art is unframeable: It’s an image or idea that implies that
795there’s a bigger image or idea that you can’t see: You’re only getting to look
796at a fraction of it, and in that way it’s both beautiful and scary, because it’s
797reminding you that there’s more that you don’t have access to. It’s now sort of
798left the piece itself and it’s become your own invention, so it’s personal as
799well as being scary as well as being beautiful, which is what I really like
800about art like that.
801
802My teacher described it as the difference between a sort of cute pinup drawing
803of a smiling woman, and then the more modern model sort of staring off into the
804distance and you can’t tell what they’re thinking and they look depressed? What
805that’s trying to achieve is the sublime, because you don’t get to know what this
806person is thinking…. Something’s wrong, and you don’t know what it is, and
807that’s a powerful idea. Cartoons achieve that almost sort of by accident all
808the time, because you cannot show everything: And every moment that you’re
809seeing something—like, the sight of a room with a cartoon character standing in
810it, it’s a drawing, and nothing else but that exists; but the point of a cartoon
811is to imply that there is this whole world that these characters exist in…. In
812order to enjoy it, you have to believe that that drawing’s real. But in order to
813believe that, you have to enter a sublime artwork, because you’re convincing
814yourself that this place exists, and it doesn’t, and everything you’re seeing is
815a little nod to the fact that there’s a bigger world that just isn’t there. And
816when we’re making it we have to believe that, too. "
817
818There’s a kind of intuitive correctness that corresponds more to the aesthetic
819operations of taste and to the instinct for humor and delight than it does to
820intellection, a sensitiveness to what feels right, what seems to reflect aspects
821of existence for which we have as yet no words, no concepts. We have an emotion
822that we might represent with colors, with images or music, clothes or
823flowers. Or maybe with poetry, or a cartoon. This is evocation, rather than the
824explicit message-making of the kind one engages in when writing a news
825story. There are things one thinks out, and then there’s what cannot be thought
826out. Pen Ward wrote something to me about this, perhaps as a warning not to
827“read too much” into a work which, in the end, for all its sublimity, really is
828better understood as “entertainment” than as “art”:
829
830"In our conversation with you we talked a lot about theory and death, but I
831think a lot of us are just following our instincts for what’s funny, we just
832like making funny stuff and it doesn’t have to go deeper than that. Lumpy Space
833Princess living with a family of wolves is just funny…. Analyzing it can be fun…
834but sometimes the answer is just “we did it cause it’s funny.” "
835
836Countless works of art touch on this theme: The casting off of self, living in
837the moment, in a more instinctive and intuitive way; an awakening into a more
838vivid world, a world of expanded awareness, of enlightenment, pure being. “These
839eggs taste good.” Ikiru is like this; Along Came Polly and Adaptation and The
840Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin are like this. Harold and Maude, and
841Ulysses. Adventure Time.
842
843Certain works of art signify “impeccable taste.” For example, the Bellini
844St. Francis in Ecstasy is one of the fanciest, most valuable, most important
845paintings in the world. To love this painting is not only intellectually
846unimpeachable: Your love for it will also serve as a signifier of taste and
847sensitivity. Say that this is your favorite painting and even the snobbiest
848person in the world will sigh knowingly, in the way he might when you say that
849you admire Beethoven’s late quartets or confess, or brag, that your favorite
850poet is Rilke. But in its message, the Bellini St. Francis almost exactly
851resembles Adventure Time.
852
853Adventure Time, it is true, is a cable network cartoon principally intended for
854boys age 6 to eleven, and the Bellini St. Francis is a religious painting from
855A.D. 1480, worth about one kazillion dollars, and hanging in what was once Henry
856Clay Frick’s living room in New York City at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street. Even
857so, the detachment of Bellini’s Saint Francis from earthly concerns, his evident
858regard for all living creatures as worthy of love, attention and respect, the
859cute creatures and little details hidden all around, the beauty and sadness and
860solitude in it, and the mixture of self-awareness, awe, doubt, affection,
861kindness, humor and dread in which he confronts the world and the mysteries that
862may lie beyond it are all very reminiscent of the work of Pen Ward, Pat McHale,
863Adam Muto, and the many artists and performers who have contributed to Adventure
864Time, a work likewise loved by millions, a very substantial proportion of whom
865are not boys age 6 to eleven.
866
867But how unsurprising that the people to come up with such a fine portrayal of
868the world in art would include the imagination and worldview and reality of
869childhood, of children. That the natural champions of the instinctive, the
870wordless, the sublime, should have been the ones to create such a satisfactory
871and resonant picture of beauty, tragedy, humor and truth. The literature of the
872universe, and the mirror of the world.