Childhood Ruined: Revisiting Hypermasculinity in Johnny Bravo
Revisiting Hypermasculinity in Johnny Bravo
by Ashira Shirali
Childhood Ruined is a four-part series by the COUNTERCLOCK blog editors. We partnered with the concept of Twitter, your mother’s photo albums, and the reboot of Arrested Development to ruin your childhood. Specifically, we will review and interrogate shows from the past to recognize and name some of their underlying problematic aspects. By doing this series, we intend to honor the media we cherish by being critical of where our media has failed us and, by extension, confront our own unconscious biases.
If you missed them, revisit Woody’s introduction to the series and Sarah’s article on misogyny and elitism in Asian dramas. Continue reading with Noreen’s article on Filipinx American representation in Steven Universe and Woody’s article on neoliberal recuperation in The Legend of Korra!
My kindergarten class once got lost on our way to Games. We wandered empty corridors, basketball courts and corners of the school field. When we finally found our Games teacher, it was nearly time for us to head back. She lectured us for a few minutes before saying, “Very good. Clap for yourselves.” We looked at each other. Her tone suggested we had done something bad, and we knew that clapping was good. Starting as a trickle, the entire class clapped. Our teacher pursed her lips, which only confused us more.
Small children don’t understand sarcasm. Nor irony and satire. I was five when this happened, the same age I was watching Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo stalk women on TV after school. A popular internet trend called ‘Childhood Ruined’ reveals hidden sexual jokes and messages in children’s cartoons. These jokes go over children’s heads while giving adult caregivers forced to watch the show with them a private chuckle. In Johnny Bravo, however, the joke is not a passing comment or background animation but the entire premise of the show.
Johnny Bravo
Though Johnny Bravo has long been off air, children of the late 90s and 2000s will recognize the stiff blonde hair and the bulging torso in a black t-shirt. As a child in India, I couldn’t understand the American-accented dialogue, but I understood enough. I learned that Johnny, with his blonde hair and muscles, was attractive. That the goal of an attractive man was to kiss a woman. That attractive men followed women around, saying things in voices cool and smooth as the bonnets of luxury cars.
Today Johnny Bravo has joined the list of things we can’t believe were acceptable barely two decades ago. The vain, overconfident, lascivious cartoon character seems like the animated representation of hypermasculinity. Hypermasculinity is the exaggeration of stereotypical male characteristics. Johnny, who spends the majority of every day flexing his biceps in the mirror and chasing “chicks,” is a prime example.
So when I sat down to re-watch Johnny Bravo, I expected to be shocked by the patriarchal gender roles animators of the 90s thought acceptable to show children. Instead, I found a show which seemed to satirize hypermasculinity instead of exalting it. Johnny is strong, but he’s also comically foolish. In ‘It’s Valentine’s Day, Johnny Bravo!’, Johnny counts, “One, two, green, floor.” A painting of an angry bull in the background seems to mock Johnny as he gets ready for the day, combing his hair and dousing himself in cologne.
As a financially struggling White Southerner, Johnny clings to the one quality no one can deprive him of—his Americanness.
Johnny’s foolishness belongs to the type he’s coded as, the White Southern male. Johnny has a slight Southern accent. When he gets bucked off a donkey in the Valentine’s Day episode, he lands outside a church. Johnny’s mom is too tired to cook, and he opens the fridge to see a smelly boot. Johnny is an unemployed adult living with his similarly unemployed, single mother. The details converge to create a stereotypical White Southern family.
As a financially struggling White Southerner, Johnny clings to the one quality no one can deprive him of—his Americanness. With his blonde hair and overbuilt upper body, Johnny is good looking in an ‘all-American’ way. Despite his flaws, Johnny’s mom pampers him and insists he’s a “good boy.” Johnny tells viewers, “Foreign chicks love big buff American men.” Though being a “big buff American man” is a point of pride for Johnny, it is obvious that the show and other characters in its universe are mocking Johnny. When two strangers pass him in the Valentine’s Day episode, one says to the other, “Just keep on walking or it might talk to us.” Johnny’s self-aggrandizing notions are pure delusion; he is not idolized but ridiculed in his small town.
Throughout the Valentine’s episode, it becomes clear that the show is progressive beyond critiquing Johnny’s hypermasculinity. The numerous women Johnny pursues include a construction worker, a secret agent and a cop—traditionally masculine professions. In a dream sequence, Donny Osmond tells Johnny that to get women, he should stop calling them “chicks” and be less narcissistic. Perhaps here the creators see children learning a ‘lesson.’ But children are unlikely to remember this short dream sequence. They are probably enraptured by Johnny himself, as I was. Taken in by his antics: chasing women and being rejected by them, preening his hair and arguing with his mom.
Johnny Bravo and his date, Heather, in a still from ‘It’s Valentine’s Day, Johnny Bravo!’
The episode’s hero turns out to be Heather, Johnny’s Valentine’s date. Heather defies reductive conceptions of women in media by being beautiful and accomplished. She is presented as strikingly attractive, and Johnny is floored when he first sees her. But the show doesn’t constrain her to her looks as it does Johnny. Heather is cognizant of Johnny’s massive male ego. She calls him “so chivalrous” and lets him ‘save’ her from other men hitting on her. Later in the episode, we learn that Heather is far stronger than Johnny. She defeats several spies while Johnny promptly faints on seeing their adversaries. In a reversal of a traditionally gendered scene, Heather wins Johnny a teddy bear at the fair with her excellent shooting skills. When Heather confesses that she’s an undercover CIA agent, Johnny replies, “Want to see me comb my hair really fast?” Johnny is the blustering fool, and attractive and adroit Heather is the episode’s hero. A closer look at Johnny Bravo paints the animated series as less an example of hypermasculinity than a parody of it.
At the age I was watching Johnny Bravo, I thought the show represented the reality of how dating and love worked. Sure, Johnny was silly, getting rejected by every girl he met, but I accepted the basic tenets of the show. I didn’t know then that when men stalk and harass women in real life, they can’t coolly punch, kick, or slap him and send him flying. Johnny Bravo may be a subtle parody of White Southern masculinity, but I’m glad the swaggering, leching flexer is off TV screens.
Ashira Shirali is from Gurgaon, India. Her stories have been shortlisted for the H. G. Wells Short Story Competition's junior prize, the Adroit Prize for Prose and other contests. Her work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue and Hobart (web). A former Adroit Journal summer mentee, she reads fiction submissions for New England Review, Storm Cellar and Nat. Brut. She studies English and Creative Writing at Princeton University.