Why I Like Superjail

Animating is boring. You have to draw the same scene hundreds of times for a single minute of screen time.

The modern American solution to this problem is to mail the thing to Korea and get them to do it, or to animate on a computer, or to do both.

Regardless of their actual methods, Adult Swim's new show, Superjail, feels like the product of bored animators who do their own animating by hand and are trying to keep themselves entertained.

When animators get bored, which is often, they draw inappropriate things. Violence, pink elephants with substance abuse problems and naked Jessica Rabbits are the well-earned province of the bored-slash-hard-working animator.

Superjail shows many signs of animators doing things for themselves, like how each of the main characters has a particular style of moving through a scene that seems well thought-out and connected to their personality.

The Warden, for example, seems to move in great looping sweeps, like a splash of paint or a well-practiced signature. The Warden is divorced from reality in personality, and in appearance he tends to change shape and size without feeling any need to acknowledge the laws of physics.

In another sign of a dedicated group of animators, Superjail is very, very violent.

Let me talk a little about the violence.

One of my pet peeves is when people describe a movie as "violent" when there are very few actual moments of violence in that movie.

Perfect example: Pulp Fiction. Some guys get shot, one dude gets raped, there's some blood and guts, but mostly Pulp Fiction is just people talking. Sure, bad shit happens to people, but in terms of screen time, you'll find a lot more violence in an average Gov. Schwarzenegger film. Tarantino movies just feels more violent to people because there's a constant threat of violence and the violence that is represented seems more visceral than in a popcorn action flick.

That said, Superjail really is violent. People get sliced in half, they get their skin ripped off, they get forks plunged through their eyes. I just chose a clip at random from their website and there was a throat-slitting, a beheading, and a fatal stabbing in the space of 30 seconds.

Your kids should not be watching this cartoon, but you know what? You should. Just like the rest of the show, the violence is animated, surreal and actually pretty entertaining.

I have a few rules of thumb that I use to judge almost any piece of media. First, you can only take something as seriously as it takes itself. If a movie knows it's a silly movie, I won't hold its silliness against it. It's why I like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle better than I like, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Second, I prefer that people make art for a reason, and that they're honest about what that reason is.

If you're making a James Bond movie, you know and I know that I came for boat chases, amoral villains and beautiful, ethnically ambiguous women. Because we both know it, I'm not going to provide any objection to your providing for my needs.

But if you're doing something serious, and you want me to take it seriously, you'd better be in it for the right reasons. If your art has a message, it better be a message you believe in. Audiences know Oscar bait when we see it.

Thing is, when I watch Jackknife getting sodomized by an armful of broken bottles in Superjail, I feel like it isn't in there for me - it's in there because the guys who draw Superjail really wanted to draw Jackknife getting sodomized by an armful of broken bottles.

And, you know, more power to them. If someone feels either compelled or bored enough to take the trouble to do really funny violence, I'm going to take the trouble to enjoy it.