by Gentleman » Mon Feb 08, 2016 8:11 pm
Funny that all this YJ stuff came around now. The show was just mentioned in a Cracked article "5 Ridiculous Reasons Awesome TV Shows Were Canceled". From the article:
#4. Too Many Girls Liked It (Young Justice)
I was born a 30-year-old man, and I've only gotten older, so I never really enjoyed movies and TV shows with young main characters. Needless to say, I was reluctant to check out Young Justice, because it was a cartoon about teenage (uuugh) sidekicks from the DC universe trying to establish themselves as legitimate superheroes. But then I thought that there might be enough Batman there to make it worth my while, so one day I put it on, and then I immediately started working on a time machine so I could slap my younger self for not watching the show sooner.
As it turns out, there isn't that much Batman in the show, but at the same time there is, in the sense that Young Justice feels very much like Batman: The Animated Series because of how seriously it treats the audience while dealing with some heavy subjects. You have Superboy's daddy issues, Miss Martian's borderline-body dysphoria, Red Arrow's entire story arc -- oh, and that "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" Halloween episode. All in all, Young Justice is one of those rare, beautifully written, beautifully animated cartoons that really anyone can enjoy. And that's pretty much why it was canceled in 2013.
During an interview with Kevin Smith, Batman: TAS writer Paul Dini explained that Cartoon Network ended Young Justice because it didn't like the type of people it was attracting, namely the penisly challenged. Dini claims to have actually heard executives say, "We do not want girls watching this show," which was a problem because, as it turned out, women made up a significant chunk of Young Justice's audience.
The studio's reasoning was that older female viewers would either a) not buy Young Justice toys or b) demand the WRONG Young Justice toys, like official Batgirl tampons or something. What actually pisses me off the most, though, is not the economically nonsensical sexism but rather that Cartoon Network saw Young Justice, probably one of the greatest animated shows of the last few years, as just a vehicle to sell toys. It's like telling someone to make you Cars and then complaining that you got Up instead.
I'm not a hero. I'm not a savior. Forget what you know.
I'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control.