On the air for less than two years, The Oblongs was one of many cartoons on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Dark and seemingly subversive, The Oblongs were a lot like another popular cartoon family–just with a lot more baggage. So why didn’t The Oblongs make it when cartoons like The Simpsons and The Boondocks have?
The Oblongs: Not Your Average Cartoon Family
The Oblongs were a cartoon family a lot like the Simpsons–simply pluck the Simpsons from nuclear-powered suburban Springfield and drop them at the bottom of Hill Valley, a toxic wasteland for all the noxious effluent that drains from the rich hill people and the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation, Globocide Industries, and you would have had the Oblongs. Much like the Simpsons, the Oblongs were a loving, if not always presentable or fully-functional, nuclear family who, at the end of the day, always returned to one another for support, understanding and love. Unlike the Simpsons, however, the toxic environment of the Valley made the Oblong family part of a misfit caste of genetically mutated and physically deformed freaks.
Pipe-smoking patriarch Bob Oblong was a loving, if limbless, optimist who always put the good of his family first. Gin-swilling, chain-smoking mother Pickles adored him, and actually left the comfort and wealth of the Hill behind to marry him. Because all of her hair fell out when she moved to the rancid environ of the Valley, she wore a huge blonde wig reminiscent of Marge Simpson. While Bob was at work at Globocide, Pickles cared for their brood. (Well, she actually would just go down to transsexual Anita Bidet’s bar and gossip, but Bob didn’t know that.) The Oblong family included their conjoined twin teenage sons, Biff and Chip, their over-medicated, hyperactive, narcoleptic, single-haired, squint-eyed 8-year-old son Milo, and their nearly normal 4-year-old daughter, Beth. Finally there was Grammy, the Oblong family’s ill-cared for and questionably-gendered drooling catatonic.
The Oblongs: The Pop Culture People in Your Neighborhood
The Oblongs’ friends and neighbors included social butterflies like Helga Phugly (a toad-like girl who dreamed of becoming popular), hunch-backed James (Bob’s sweet but dim-witted coworker), Peggy Mutant (an ambitious girl who lacked a lower jaw but was gifted with a single centrally-aligned breast), Mikey Butts (a playmate with pendulous butt cheeks), and Anita Bidet (the Valley’s own husky-voiced, hairy-armed transsexual bar owner).
Together with the Oblongs, these freakish but nonetheless sympathetic characters constituted a neighborhood and class of people who competed with the rich Hill folk for resources and respect.
Living on top of the world (literally) were the Hill people. They were generally a rich, greedy, cruel, and self-absorbed lot who were completely unconcerned with the Valley folk. There was George Kilmer, the slave-driving owner of Globocide Industries (the main polluter and employer of the Valley), and his smug perfect wife, Pristine. Their single over-indulged son, Jared, spent his time with best friend Blaine tormenting the Valley kids. Then there were the Debbies. The Debbies were all the popular Hill girls: a gaggle of tall, thin, blonde chattering clones who preternaturally floated around. There was also, finally, the bribe accepting (and expecting) Mayor who stomped around in a professional wrestling mask screaming and threatening the Valley people.
The Oblongs: A Pop Culture Cartoon Primer on Class Warfare
The Oblongs obviously called into question broad-based issues like class and social stratification, environmental pollution, individuality, diversity, and the importance of family. These larger problematics helped the show function as a serial. Would Bob Oblong, through his hard work and optimism, manage a promotion that would allow him to move the family out of the toxic Valley and onto the Hill? Would Helga and Milo ever become popular? And, if they did, would they still be likable characters? What the heck was that thing on Beth’s head? And, more importantly, would it grow?
On a smaller scale, other relevant and charged issues were addressed episodically. Episodes tackled health care (in Misfit Love, Bob Oblong advised his family, unsuccessfully, to be extra careful because they could lose their health coverage), beauty standards and status (in Disfigured Debbie, a Debbie was temporarily befriended by the Valley kids when a freak accident made her different than the other Debbies), and over-consumption and disparities in wealth (in Get Off My Back, the Valley folks celebrated “Dump Day,” the day when they get to pick through the discarded goodies of the Hill people). It was this social commentary that lent the show its sheen of anarchic spirit and deviance.
Pop Culture Cartoons and Social Darwinism
Based on a seeming distrust of power and status, The Oblongs explicitly presented the tensions that exist in a world where the needs and wants of the few outweigh the needs and wants of the many. Again and again, wealth trumped work and power trumped piety. The show may have seemed to rail against class stratification and unearned privilege then, but in the end it supported the very systems and institutions it satirized. Through characterization and story lines, the viewer understood that Mr. Kilmer may be a sadistic jerk but his natural place was in power. What kept Bob from professional success was not his attitude or work ethic, it was his environmentally pre-ordained physical disability (not to mention the social ineptitude of his family and friends). Bob’s success and caste were determined at birth, and he was good man for constantly working to overcome it but in episode after episode it was shown that his natural state was that of unthreatening underdog; just as Mr. Kilmer’s was that of the successful alpha male. When young Milo asked why there have to be popular beautiful people, it was Bob Oblong, the show’s moral compass, who explained, “So that everyone else knows who to follow, son.” This, according to The Oblongs, is the natural order.
The saddest thing about the class warfare that The Oblongs presented was that it was forever presented as an unfortunate but ultimate truth. There was never a call to action for the poor Valley folks to rise up and seize the unearned riches of the Hill people and redistribute that wealth. The workers at Globocide Industries never unionized or fought for better working conditions (hardly exciting cartoon plot trajectories, but still). In no way did any of the Valley people ever confront the root causes of their class nightmare. It just ended up being the way it was, a fait accompli.
The Oblongs End Up in the Cartoons Graveyard
It’s odd that the cartoon’s creator, Angus Oblong, after seemingly relying so heavily on Springfield’s famous family as a prototype for his own, would surgically remove one of the family’s defining characteristics: their constant willingness to fight for their needs and the needs of their neighbors. Over the years, the Simpsons have taken on just about every issue and cause that concerns Middle America. Our favorite family has tackled television violence, pollution, censorship, homosexuality, environmental activism, family values, religious tolerance, Franken foods, animal activism, (take a deep breath) and just about anything else you can think of. Collectively and individually, the Simpsons never simply accepted the status quo–true to their privileged middle-class values, they confronted every real (and imagined) injustice that came their way. Maybe it’s no coincidence that The Simpsons is America’s longest running televised comedy and The Oblongs was cancelled long ago. Situating itself as a medium that called class into question but finally accepted it as the natural order, The Oblongs failed where The Simpsons flourished.
Jennifer Silva - Jenn is a professional writer and editor with experience in: technical communications (medical, manufacturing and publishing ...
Join the Conversation