LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS: The Future of Animation and Why We're Not There Yet

(Content Warning: physical and sexual violence on women will be discussed in this article. I tried to keep the details to a bare minimum, but still, you should be aware of it.)

I have always been a huge fan of animation. I think that as a narrative medium, it might very well be the closest both to the traditional idea of art as a visual expression of the world through a specific individual’s (the artist’s) lenses, and to the notion of universal appeal. “Cartoons are for everyone” is the common mantra of television and film guidelines when it comes to age restrictions, but I always felt it also applied to every other demographic categorizations: “Cartoons are for everyone” as in, “everyone can enjoy them”, regardless of gender, race, religion, and other identities.

Unfortunately, the “G” for “General Audiences” you see on a trailer or on a corner of the TV screen at the start of a program is generally interpreted as a “Children Only” sign. In fact, animation (like its close cousin, interactive entertainment) has always carried the stigma of being a kids’ medium – which I find very weird, because let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you probably cried at the end of Toy Story 3 like everyone else.

And yet lately there’s been some amazing progress in dismantling this annoying little prejudice cartoons carry with them. Of course, adult animation isn’t a new thing – see anything churned out by Matt Groening or Seth McFarlane – but in the past few years we’ve seen a new wave of insanely successful “mature” animated shows: Bob’s Burgers, Archer, Bojack Horseman, Big Mouth, and of course, Rick and Morty. Meanwhile, animated films have attempted to bridge the gap between young and adult audiences with movies that either appealed to the nostalgia of the latter while introducing the former to previous generations’ masterpieces (see: The Incredibles 2), or delivered a product of such undeniable quality and innovation that it could reach universal appeal across the whole spectrum of identities (see: this year’s Best Animated Feature, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I will never stop raving about).

Still with me? Great. So let’s talk about Love, Death + Robots. When I heard that Netflix had released an anthology of animated shorts for adults, created by none other than Academy-nominated filmmaker David Fincher, and Tim Miller, director of Deadpool (another groundbreaking movie for its genre), I was genuinely electrified. Black Mirror meets animation? Yes, please. As I queued up the first episode, I couldn’t help but ask myself: “How is this show going to help the genre take a step forward in this renaissance age of cartoons?”

The answer? It didn’t.

All rights to this image and the images below are reserved to Netflix. Please don't sue me.

The series I mentioned above are considered “adult” because they all include, to varying degrees, cursing, over-the-top violence, references to drugs and alcohol, and of course, the occasional suggestive image – occasional being the keyword. LD+R has all of those things, with the only difference is that suggestive images aren’t occasional, but dare I say almost mandatory. Specifically, of the 18 shorts that comprise the series, 8 of them include very explicit imagery of the female body in a variety of sexual or violent situations – sometimes, even both at the same time.

Look. I’m not a Puritan. I’ve been advocating for the de-censoring of the female body for a long time. But shows like these are why Tumblr only censors “female-presenting nipples” – because those are the nipples that they sexualize. Now, if you’re a straight man with a thing for digital titties, then please, be my guest. Unbuckle that belt and enjoy about 90 minutes of naked women – scarred women, fake women, murdered women, cyborg women, exaggeratedly-breasted cartoon women… there’s something for every taste.

But remember what we said was the true strength of animation? That it’s for everyone. And if you’re not a straight man, this is not for you.

Unfortunately, that is not the kind of pussy you'll see most of the episodes.

It’s not just the sex: pretty much every woman and queer person in the world has had to go through a couple of minutes of sweaty bedroom action in the middle of a movie or episode. I myself am not straight, and I got through seven seasons of Game of Thrones, which is notorious for having nudity at least every other episode. Why is Love, Death + Robots any different? Because unlike Game of Thrones, where sex scenes are usually (but not always) somehow connected to plot or informative of the characters involved, when sex happens in LD+R, it becomes the centerpiece of the short – the rest, no matter how interesting, is salad dressing.

Let’s take The Witness, in which a woman witnesses a murder across the street from her room and is forced to run for her life when the murderer spots and chases after her. It’s a nice little story that is centered on a very real fear for women, and even highlights how

powerless a girl in danger can feel when no one is willing to take her seriously. This anxiety-inducing chase gets put on pause right in the middle when the woman gets to her job – as a stripper/dancer in a BDSM club. Suddenly, she’s writhing naked on stage like there isn’t a crazed murderer after her. The murderer himself gets a bit distracted when he stops to enjoy the show and gets into a threesome with two leather-clad female gimps. Not only does this pornographic window feel out of place and unnecessary, but it also completely stalls the plot and undercuts the tension it built up to that point.

Although you have to admit, the amount of detail in this animation is uncanny. You can almost FEEL the texture of those leather suits.

Even odder is the sexualization of female characters that are clearly meant to be empowering in their narratives. In Sonny’s Edge, monster trainer Sonny is a scarred, edgy girl who competes in monster wrestling to vent out of her hatred for the men who raped her (because nothing says female empowerment like rape as backstory, right?). The fights are brutal, gory, even somehow slightly sexual in nature – pair them with some free use of British curse words, and you already have enough to slap an M for Mature in there. So why is it so important that Sonny have a sexual encounter with the bad guy’s courtesan?

Another instance of this is the episode Good Hunting, based on a short story by fantasy author Ken Liu. In Good Hunting, Chinese fox spirit Yan loses her shapeshifting powers and remains trapped in the form of a beautiful girl. Her only way to survive is as an escort to wealthy Englishmen, until one specific asshole with a fetish for Steampunk robots roofies her and turns her into a cyborg. One day, she eventually has enough, murders her “master”, and seeks the help of her childhood friend and engineering prodigy. He helps her modify her cyborg body so that she can turn into a fox again, and hunt sexual predators around fantasy Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the director uses every cinematic trick in the book to make this modification scene appear as sensual as possible: the mutilated body of an innocent woman and its transformation into a weapon for retribution are once again sexualized for the viewers’ pleasure. This is particularly jarring when you consider that Liu’s prose in the original story only hints at its more sexual elements – because we’re not supposed to participate in them. Her cyborg body is not something to lust at, it’s something to be mortified for. Unsurprisingly, Yan’s journey and development as a character feels more powerful on ink, when it’s not undercut by a sequence of lingering shots of her sensual features.

One must wonder, looking at these episodes, if this isn’t the rise of a new kind of female objectification: one that doesn’t stop at turning women’s bodies into sexual stimuli, but goes on to fetishize the empowerment of characters who fight back against their oppressors – a weird form of masochistic appropriation of the female struggle.

Look, I'm not one to kink-shame, but...

Even some episodes that don’t directly contain suggestive images manage to reference them through some truly cringe-worthy lines of dialogue, like two Hillbillies talking about “them good river trash whores”, or a soldier telling his brother in arms how he dreamt that he fucked his nonexistent sister on a cafeteria table. One is played as grotesque comedy, one characterizes the protagonists as hyper-masculine tough guys, both could be classified as the kind of “locker room talk” that the current U.S. President loves so much, and neither of them is remotely essential to the story. Meanwhile, the few non-sexualized women across the series are all conspicuously modeled the same way: butch, muscular, with short hair, baggy clothes and tank tops, and maybe a couple piercings. And while I’m all about non-binary representation, I know that is not what the authors were aiming for.

I won’t go into how about 40% of the episodes focus on over-the-top action sequences and glorify armed combat like they’re cutscenes straight out from yesterday’s AAA first-person-shooter, or how I can only think of one (1) protagonist of color aside from the aforementioned Good Hunting characters. Those are topics that deserve their own think-pieces. But I will say that they are, in my opinion, secondary symptoms of a type of science fiction that glorifies the hyper-masculine white hero, the guy who “smokes cigarettes and fucks bitches”, around whom the whole universe – and the whole female gender – spins. This narrative caters to and cultivates a kind of fandom that, when put in direct confrontation with more diverse and progressive fiction, turns rabid. And so are born the GamerGate hashtaggers; the “nice guys” who get verbally (and sometimes physically) abusive when women rebuff their advances; those who watch Archer, Bojack Horseman, and Rick and Morty and idolize their main characters, unable to see that they are not role models to follow, but parodic examples of toxic masculinity; the gatekeepers who constantly quiz female fans on nerd trivia because they can’t believe a girl would legitimately be interested in a culture men have dominated for years.

Even a more comedic short like "Alternate Histories" manages to shoehorn in some gratuitous sex imagery. And look, there's a trans joke in there too! Classy.

It’s a shame, because while science fiction as a whole – and in particular sci-fi in videogames – still struggles to let go of the “old conventions”, animation has made some incredible progress when it comes to inclusivity. The Incredibles 2 was a fantastic portrayal of the role reversal between husband and wife that is more and more common these days. Into the Spider-Verse introduced a whole generation of comic book readers to the wonderful, powerful character that is Spider-Gwen. And shows like Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power are unafraid to showcase and play with all forms of gender expression. The industry itself grows more diverse every year: according to the Animation Guild, more than 25% of writers, artists, and technicians in the field identify as female as of 2018, a whopping 5% more than in 2015. The organization “Women in Animation” reports that about 60% of animation and art school students today are women. Clearly, animation is not and should not be relegated to straight male audiences, just like it should not be relegated to young ones.

Of course, it’s not all bad. Some of Love, Death + Robots’ episodes, the ones unencumbered by sexual imagery or a penchant for generic war stories, are astonishing both narrative-wise and technique-wise. Three Robots is a hilarious window into the way AIs will look at humans centuries from now. When the Yogurt Took Over is a brilliant satire of modern-day politics. Helping Hand is a harrowing story of sacrifice and survival in space. Fish Night is just stunning, a real treat for the eyes. And Zima Blue is an interesting take on the burden of consciousness from an artist’s perspective. These little gems are representative of what could have been, a tribute to animation as the most imaginative form of storytelling – but they are buried under the show’s need to assert its “maturity” through the excessive display of female bodies and wanton violence as masturbation material.

Unsettling yet mesmerizing, "Fish Night" gives us a glimpse of LD+R's untapped potential.

Look, I know Love, Death + Robots is a spiritual remake of 1981 classic Heavy Metal, another animated anthology that Rotten Tomatoes describes as "sexist, dated, and juvenile" yet "eye-popping". And as such, it is perfectly successful – it 100% achieves the vision that its creators had when they came up with the concept. But LD+R could have been more than that. It could have been an opportunity to build upon the successes of the last decade and push the boundaries of animation as adult entertainment while still championing the “for everyone” values that cartoons today are starting to uphold. Instead, all we got was more content for a demographic that has long held a tight grip on this and generally all commercial forms of storytelling. I can only hope that future installments – or perhaps a new anthology altogether – will be willing to take the step forward this first one refused to.

(Meanwhile, if you want to see something that really nails the high-tech dystopian feel that Love, Death + Robots promised without all the gore and boobs, I recommend the animated short Best Friend, by Nicholas Olivieri, Shen Yi, Juliana De Lucca, Varun Nair, and David Feliu. It's a disturbing little gem that could be its own Black Mirror episode.)