This essay was originally intended for another venue, but that venue has, sadly, closed its doors, so I print the essay here. —DGD
JUSTICE TEMPERED WITH CUTENESS: MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE IN CRAIG McCRACKEN’S POWERPUFF GIRLS
by D. G. D. Davidson
For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.[1]
Brainchild of Craig McCracken, who first conceived of the concept while an art student, the animated series The Powerpuff Girls ran from 1998 to 2004, and each episode save one opens with lines that have become iconic: “Sugar, spice, and everything nice: these were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girl. But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction—Chemical X.”[2]
The result of the Professor’s mishap is a trio of young girls, each representing a different component of the recipe used to make her: sugar produces the giggly and girlish Bubbles, spice produces the tough and tomboyish Buttercup, and everything nice produces the bossy and brainy Blossom. Because of the Chemical X, these girls have superpowers, including super-strength, the ability to fly, invulnerability, super senses, and heat vision.
The girls attend kindergarten, play with their stuffed animals, deal with various childhood problems, and fight destructive battles with the supervillains and giant monsters plaguing the city of Townsville. The show’s manic mixture of cutesiness, large-scale violence, and toilet humor proved wildly successful: it grew popular internationally and ran for six seasons, producing spinoffs such as TV specials, video games, a theatrical film, and even a Japanese magical girl series called Powerpuff Girls Z. A reboot with a new voice cast, and without McCracken’s involvement, began airing on April 4 of 2016.
Although many superheroes are in their teens, preadolescent superheroes are comparatively rare. Marvel’s relatively obscure comic book series Power Pack, which appeared in the 1980s, is possibly the first attempt in American comics to explore the concept seriously.[3] Likewise, superheroines who are simultaneously very powerful and very girlish, common in Japan, are unusual in American media, but the Powerpuff Girls are both extremely young and hyper-feminine. Saddled with the responsibility of protecting a city in spite of their tender age, they frequently face moral choices that prove difficult given their level of mental development and lack of experience.
Although the wordplay, vocabulary, and sentence structure in the characters’ dialogue are beyond the ability of most real-life five-year-olds, the girls nonetheless approach their various dilemmas in a childish manner. However, both they and their show grow more sophisticated over time. By following the development in the characters’ worldview across the series, it is possible to interpret The Powerpuff Girls as a meditation on justice that roughly corresponds to the general stages of a child’s understanding of morality.
Broadly speaking, psychologists describe the development of moral reasoning during childhood as moving from self-centered to social to abstract; that is, children begin by thinking of what is good as primarily being what is good for them—what gives them pleasure or makes them comfortable. Later, they develop a more social view of morality that takes into account norms laid down by adults and involves relationships with others. Finally, they reach an ability to consider ethical matters in the abstract, and are able to explain the rules of morality under which they operate.[4]
In his classic Moral Judgment of the Child, Jean Piaget describes children going through four phases. The earliest he calls motor or individual, in which a child develops motor habits and ritualized behaviors. The second stage, beginning between ages two to five, is the egocentric, in which a child recognizes rules imposed by external authorities and also learns by imitation, but has not yet learned to relate rules to social interaction. Over the course of this phase, a child comes to see rules as absolute and inflexible. The third stage, cooperation, begins at age seven to eight, in which the child learns to cooperate with others in a social setting, but may still have only a vague idea of the rules of social interaction. Over the course of this stage, a child comes to see rules as alterable, the product of mutual agreement rather than imposed absolutes. In the fourth stage, codification of rules, which begins around age eleven or twelve, the child’s understanding of rules becomes more exact, and he takes an interest in making rules himself.[5]
The increasing moral complexity of The Powerpuff Girls across its six seasons has some similarities to the general stages described above, though it does not precisely parallel Piaget’s specific outline. In its first season, The Powerpuff Girls is primarily a gag series that employs violence for the sake of shock value: confronted with various forms of villainy and mayhem, the girls take a simple approach to justice, bludgeoning enemies with their fists and feet. Recurring supervillains they only beat unconscious, but the giant monsters they kill outright—reflecting the typical methods of heroes in, respectively, the American and Japanese media that influenced the show. They evince only a simple idea of what it means to be superheroes, possibly based on imitation of adult heroes: if someone does something wrong, the girls’ job is to beat him up.
This basic and ill-defined concept of justice mirrors some real-life research on children. According to Sparks, Girling, and Smith, nine-year-olds’ comments on what is proper punishment are made up largely of expressions they have learned from adults but cannot necessarily define, which the researchers call “stock phrases and ‘short, sharp words.’”[6] Children’s responses to questions about justice may initially involve suggestions of violence as punishment.[7] According to Sandra Crosser, when asked to recommend punishments for offences, children are likely to recommend especially harsh or unrealistic punishments.[8]
The Powerpuffs’ view of their role as distributors of justice becomes clear in the episodes “Tough Love” and “Mime for a Change,” both from the first season. In the former, a crossdressing devil named Him hypnotizes the people of Townsville in order to make them attack the Powerpuff Girls. Him expects the girls to be unwilling to fight the ones they love, so believes himself to be setting up a moral dilemma. The dilemma, however, proves too complex for the children: Buttercup says, “Those aren’t our loved ones. Our loved ones would never want to hurt us,” and the girls then proceed to slug Townsville’s citizens, including the Professor who rears them, with wild abandon. At the end of the episode, the citizens appear in various states of injury with bandages, crutches, and wheelchairs.[9] Buttercup’s comment thus reflects the earliest of the three broad stages of moral reasoning discussed above: the townspeople’s behavior is wrong because of how it affects her, so she concludes that she is justified in striking them to end her discomfort.
The episode “Mime for a Change” depicts similarly primitive reasoning. A stream of bleach changes Rainbow the Clown into an evil mime who terrorizes the city by turning everything black and white. In homage to classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the Powerpuff Girls restore the city’s color by playing in a rock band. Once Rainbow has his color back, he thanks the girls profusely for returning him to his old self—and they reply by blackening his eyes and knocking out his teeth.[10]
What these episodes depict is a simple and ultimately deficient understanding of justice: the Powerpuff Girls are unable to recognize the importance of intent. They grasp that certain acts are wrong in themselves, but the girls at this point do not comprehend that a person must commit evil acts deliberately in order to be guilty of them, so they dispense vigilante justice on Rainbow or the Townsvillains even though they are not in control of their own actions.
This corresponds with the conclusion of Piaget that, in evaluating the morality of an act, young children typically focus an act’s result rather than on the intent of the one committing it:
Jean Piaget … provided evidence that younger children give great emphasis to the outcome of the act, especially if that outcome is material, appearing to ignore or give little weight to the intentions behind the act (mens rea) and more weight to the outcome of the act when morally judging the act. Although there has been much controversy about this finding … the preponderance of evidence shows that at least under some conditions intent is either ignored or given less weight by younger children.[11]
The first season presents the Powerpuff Girls as adorable, albeit violent, little girls whom everyone loves, but subsequent seasons depict them as more flawed characters. This begins in the second season episode, “A Very Special Blossom,” in which Blossom steals an expensive set of golf clubs in order to give them to the Professor on Father’s Day. After the other girls compel her to confess her crime, the Professor asks for leniency; however, the police chief, following the same rigid code of justice as the girls themselves, answers, “It is very sad, but the law is the law.” Blossom thus receives two hundred hours of community service (but not a punch to the face).[12]
Blossom understands that she has hurt others, especially the Professor, through her actions. This suggests that the girls have moved to a new stage of moral reasoning: they now view morality as relevant to the larger society, which may indicate the beginnings of Piaget’s cooperative phase of development.
The second season also indicates that the girls have come to appreciate intent as necessary to the moral judgment of an act. In “Slave the Day,” they rescue Big Billy, a member of the delinquent Gangreen Gang, before a subway train can run him over. Inspired by this, the boss of the gang, Ace, tricks Billy into sitting on the tracks and calling for help in order to lure in the girls, whom Ace then leaves on the tracks to die. When Billy realizes what is happening, he rescues them. Blossom carefully asks Billy if he understands that what he did in luring them in was wrong. Only after he nods in the affirmative does she punch him.[13] So she is now able to take intent into account.
However, her understanding of intent is still a child’s understanding. In “Ploys R’ Us,” the girls awake one morning to find that new toys have mysteriously appeared in their bedroom, and soon after discover that the Professor is sleepwalking at night and stealing for them. Blossom reasons that, because the Professor is unaware of what he is doing, he is not technically guilty of theft. So, instead of returning the toys and finding a way to halt the Professor’s somnambulism, the girls whisper into his ear, while he’s sleeping, what toys they want.[14] They have grasped a new concept, but have misapplied it.
By this point in the series, we have seen enough of the girls’ behavior to recognize how they understand justice. Their understanding is strictly retributive: they see their role as one of giving villains their just deserts. As an illustration of this, in the episode “Powerprof.,” a prison break occurs, during which Blossom slaps an escaped convict back and forth across the face while saying, “And maybe this will teach you to leave jail before you’ve paid your debt to society!”[15]
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
… the Latin root of retribution is re + tribuo, which means “I pay back”. One way to understand the notion of paying back is that it concerns paying debts that are owed. This understanding connects to the commonly shared retributive thought that a criminal who has been appropriately punished has “paid his debt to society”.
This idea of a debt owed may be connected to the idea that criminals have taken unfair advantage of the law-abiding. Punishment in the form of harsh treatment can then be thought of as pay back in the sense that it strips away that advantage and restores the status quo ante that was wrongfully disturbed.[16]
Blossom, in using the phrase “debt to society,” reveals what the first season only hinted, that the girls view justice as payback. By the third season, the Powerpuff Girls are able to state this theory of retributive justice clearly with words and not merely with their fists. In the episode “Moral Decay,” Buttercup discovers that she can get money from the Tooth Fairy by leaving teeth under her pillow. In a fit of greed, she begins knocking villain’s teeth out deliberately and exchanging them for cash. At the end of the episode, several villains gang up on her, but instead of coming to her assistance, the other girls hang back and tell her, “Sorry, Buttercup. You know what they say: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The villains then break Buttercup’s teeth.[17]
This indicates that the girls are beginning to develop a capacity for abstract reasoning. The Powerpuffs are here able to articulate a basic theory of justice rather than simply present it physically. They can express their theory of retributive justice in a brief maxim and can apply it equitably: a person deserves to get what he gives, even if that person is their own sister.
This appears to reflect the behavior of real children, who famously complain of unfairness or lash out in kind when wronged. That is, the principle of “eye for an eye” appears to be intuitive, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy agrees, as it opens its article on retributive justice with, “The appeal of retributive justice as a theory of punishment rests in part on direct intuitive support. …”[18]
The Powerpuff Girls theatrical film appeared in 2002. Afterwards, when the show returned for its fifth and penultimate season, it did so with more experimental and complex storytelling. The fifty-seventh episode of the series and sixth episode of the season is a rock opera, “See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey,” which never aired in the U.S. It is a tour de force, easily the show’s most ambitious, as well as its most ambiguous, episode, and probably one of the greatest episodes in the history of children’s television. It is also The Powerpuff Girls’ one attempt to delve into philosophy, and it shows that the girls are now fully capable of abstract thinking. Instead of opening with the usual “sugar, spice” intro, the episode begins simply by displaying the Powerpuff Girls title logo as a strong bass note plays. Several villains attack the city while singing, “Townsville’s going downsvilles.” The Powerpuffs appear and fight back, but, overmatched, lie defeated beneath a stormy sky and bemoan their inability to save the city. A drop of rain falls and produces a red rose, in which sits a gnome who promises to bring peace to Townsville if the girls give him their powers. They hesitate at first, but finally take the chance so that they might be “normal little girls.”[19]
The gnome hands roses to all the citizens of Townsville, who then don cultish red robes and pay homage to Gnomey as he sits in a giant rose towering over the city. The girls appear content with this situation; they sing happily that they can “play all day” now that they need no longer protect the city.[20]
Then the Professor appears dressed as a butcher and singing a largely incoherent song, the apparent gist of which is that the peace of Townsville is not worth the loss of freedom:
Can’t you see they’re blinded by the light?
Don’t you think that it’s time that you fight
For freedom?
Can’t you see there’s evil in the world?
Don’t you know you’re the Powerpuff Girls
For freedom?[21]
Convinced by the Professor’s rousing song, the girls get their powers back. It isn’t entirely clear how they achieve this, but they apparently conclude that Gnomey is evil, and thus has not kept up his end of the bargain. The girls confront Gnomey in the center of his giant rose. Rather than simply accusing him of taking the people’s freedom as we might expect, the girls instead present a metaphysical justification for their violation of the deal they had made with him. “You can’t have bad without the good,” they sing. They add, “Don’t you know that everybody knows the yin and yang’s the master plan?” They follow this up with a recitation of pairs of opposites:
There’s no dark without the light!
There’s no dim without the bright!
There’s no warm without the cold!
There’s no weak without the bold!
There’s no sun without the moon!
There’s no fork without the spoon!
There’s no silence without noise!
There’s no girls without the boys![22]
The implication of the song is that, because Gnomey is evil, the power of good, which the girls represent, is necessary to combat him. The girls cast Gnomey out of his giant flower. As he falls to his death, he recites this soliloquy:
As I descend to the earth, and I view the universe above me, I realize that life evolves, revolves, and dissolves completely around the opposites. Therefore, I conclude that I cannot exist in my utopian mind.[23]
What are we to make of this strange speech? The episode is a parody of rock opera, complete with a rock opera’s pretensions, so it is possible that it doesn’t mean anything. If we assume it is to be taken seriously, however, it appears that the girls and Gnomey have concluded that good and evil keep the world in balance, and that both the girls and the supervillains they fight therefore serve a necessary function. That reiterates the Professor’s ambiguous song, in which he complains that Townsville has become peaceful, but lacks freedom: if they do not struggle against each other, good and evil grow stagnant.
John Holbo describes this episode as an example of what he calls “utophobia,” the view, for any of several possible reasons, that a utopian society is either impossible or undesirable.[24] He distinguishes between what he calls concessive and ideal political theories: concessive theories concede that certain bad things such as war, crime, and poverty cannot be eliminated, and then examine how to deal with them; ideal theories, by contrast, assume that a perfect society is attainable.[25] Certainly, this episode can be understood as saying not only that utopia is undesirable, but that it is impossible as well: Gnomey in his final moment concludes, “I cannot exist.” That is, as a representation of utopia, he is himself an impossibility.
“See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey” arguably contradicts itself in its final moments. Although The Powerpuff Girls frequently presents life lessons to its young target audience and then immediately reverses those lessons either for cheap laughs or out of sheer bloody-mindedness, in this instance, the apparent contradiction does not appear to be deliberate. In the last scene, the citizens try to worship the Powerpuff Girls as they had previously worshipped the gnome; the girls, however, reject this worship. Then they, the people of Townsville, and the supervillains join in singing, “Why can’t we all get along?”[26]
Of this, Holbo writes,
The episode ends on the higher irony that it’s really no better for the people to adore the Powerpuff Girls, who only use more violent methods of keeping the streets safe. That is, the ethical fantasy of the superhero story is actually no less toxic than the utopian saviour story. But: what the hell. We love the girls and we hate Gnomey.[27]
Holbo, in other words, interprets this episode as a dismantling of the show’s basic premise: what the girls do is not, in fact, justice at all, but instead merely another method, neither better nor worse, and certainly no more realistic, than Gnomey’s.
I believe Holbo has missed the metaphysical forest for the political theory trees, and has misinterpreted the episode. Although he is correct that the Professor “utophobically” rejects Gnomey’s utopian society because it is contrary to human freedom, the girls spontaneously arrive at a deeper reason, that it is contrary to first principles of reality; and if we suppose that a complete philosophy must be self-consistent and unified, these two conclusions are really the same. The girls are not merely offering one vision of justice or one way of ordering a society in place of another, but are offering to return to their duties of struggling against evil because such a struggle is fundamentally necessary. The people’s loss of freedom is merely one manifestation of the stagnation that results when opposites cease to exist in pairs.
The high irony, then, is that the girls surrender freedom for the sake of freedom: they give up the freedom to “play all day” so that the people of Townsville may be free. Drawing on deep metaphysical roots, the girls arrive at a vision of ethics and politics (the two are one, as Aristotle would have it) that is indeed concessive instead of utopian: they will continue to fight evil because evil must be fought, and utopia is not an option. Their rejection of the people’s worship is not, therefore, ironical in the sense Holbo means; it is not a rejection of heroism as such, but merely a further rejection of Gnomey’s utopianism. The girls refuse to take Gnomey’s place, but instead return to their original roles, in which they were certainly admired—but not worshiped.
In this episode, then, the girls have now moved beyond merely reacting to evil with two-fisted vigilantism, and are now thinking about good and evil in the abstract, considering the questions of what good and evil are in themselves, and what the natures of good and evil mean for them and for society. Whether we agree with their conclusions or not, we must concede that this is advanced thinking for kindergartners.
At this point, however, the show has completely moved away from Jean Piaget’s model: he considers the belief in absolute moral principles to belong to the egocentric stage and implies that such a belief in an adult is indicative of arrested development, as he says, “… many conservative adults … delude themselves into thinking that they are assisting the triumph of eternal reason over present fashion, when they are really the slaves of past custom at the expense of the permanent laws of rational cooperation.”[28]
There is a contradiction here in Piaget’s assertion. He holds that absolute moral principles do not exist but also describes “rational cooperation” as a “permanent” law; that is, the one unchanging law is that laws are changeable as long as any changes are agreed upon, a paradox. In any case, the Powerpuff Girls’ moral reasoning as depicted in “See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey” should not be understood as indicative of an arrestment in the girls’ psychological development, but simply as the development of reasoning about ethics that diverges from Piaget’s own.
The practical consequence of this more speculative approach to the Powerpuffs’ role as superheroines becomes clear in the second episode of the final season, “Makes Zen to Me,” in which Buttercup, the most violent of the girls, who has often fought merely for fighting’s sake, reexamines her behavior. In this episode, Buttercup delivers a thorough beat-down to the villain Fuzzy Lumpkins even after he surrenders. Inspired by a fortune cookie, she does penance for this unnecessary roughness by traveling to Tibet to study under a spiritual master and achieve inner peace. Arch-villain Mojo Jojo appears and attacks the master, for which Buttercup punches him off a cliff. The master afterwards tells her, “Grasshopper, a skilled warrior strikes a decisive blow, then stops … fighting evil is your purpose, but remember: all things in moderation.” At the end of the episode, the narrator announces, “Wow, it’s a whole new Buttercup.”[29] She is still a fighter, but is now able to fight with discipline and self-control rather than out of the rage and bloodlust that previously motivated her. This is a far cry from the early days when the girls would punch a clown for no reason![30]
On the surface, The Powerpuff Girls appears to be a simple if witty cartoon that teaches occasional moral lessons to children while entertaining with explosions, fisticuffs, and barf jokes, but upon closer examination, we find that it depicts the gradual development of children’s thinking on a fundamental concept, the concept of justice. In the beginning, the Powerpuff Girls can express themselves in the only way young children can, by acting out: they perceive that there is wrong in the world, so they respond to it by hitting. From this point, they mature (though they remain forever in kindergarten) until they are able to explain their actions with words: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” From there, they consider the deeper question of what justice is in itself. They contemplate the nature of good and evil, at last arriving at a theory of metaphysics that explains their actions. Having reached the point where they can act, articulate, and finally explain, they learn to temper their behavior so that, by the end of the series, they do not merely act out, but act on principle. By imagining superheroes as small children, The Powerpuff Girls is therefore able to depict its characters growing into ideas that adult heroes might already take for granted.
[1] G. K. Chesterton, “On Household Gods and Goblins,” in On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 2000), 437-441.
[2] The Powerpuff Girls. “Monkey See, Doggie Do / Mommy Fearest.” Episode 1. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, and John McIntyre. Written by Don Shank and Chris Savino. Cartoon Network, November 18, 1998.
[3] “Power Pack.” Comic Vine. http://comicvine.gamespot.com/power-pack/4060-40498/ (accessed April 9, 2016).
[4] “5 Stages of Moral Growth in Children.” AskDrSears.com. http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting/discipline-behavior/morals-manners/5-stages-moral-growth-children (accessed April 3, 2016).
[5] Piaget, Jean. The Moral Judgment of the Child. (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1932): 16-17. Piaget’s study is based primarily on observing children playing games; he assumes children will treat the rules of their games the same way they treat moral rules taught by adults. Though he writes from the perspective of the psychologist and not the philosopher, the underlying ethical philosophy of his work is deontological (he views morality as primarily a system of rules) and relativistic (he treats moral rules as beginning with the commands of elders, and not as objective absolutes). We should stress that Piaget’s claims have been contested; on some matters, other researchers have drawn opposite conclusions, and his data is open to contrary interpretations if his underlying philosophical premises are rejected. However, since the present essay examines the moral development of fictional characters, the question of whether Piaget accurately describes real children need not concern us.
[6] Sparks, Richard, Evi Girling, and Marion Smith. “Children Talking about Justice and Punishment,” The International Journal of Children’s Rights 8 (2000): 199-200.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Crosser, Sandra. “Emerging Morality: How Children Think about Right and Wrong.” Early Childhood News: The Professional Resource for Teachers and Parents. http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=118 (accessed September 1, 2016).
[9] The Powerpuff Girls. “Telephonies / Tough Love.” Episode 6. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. Written by Clayton Morrow and Chris Savino. Cartoon Network, December 23, 1998.
[10] The Powerpuff Girls. “Just another Manic Mojo / Mime for a Change.” Episode 11. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. Written by Genndy Tartakovsky and David Smith. Cartoon Network, February 3, 1999.
[11] Spring, Toni, Herbert D. Saltzstein, and Bianca Vidal. “A Moral Developmental Perspective on Children’s Eyewitness Identification: Does Intent Matter?” Archives of Scientific Psychology 3.1 (2015). http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/arc/3/1/1.html, accessed April 3, 2016.
[12] The Powerpuff Girls. “A Very Special Blossom / Daylight Savings.” Episode 20. Directed by Randy Myers, Craig McCracken, and John McIntyre. Written by Lou Romano and Chris Savino. Cartoon Network, November 26, 1999.
[13] The Powerpuff Girls. “Slave the Day / Los Dos Mojos.” Episode 19. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. Written by Genndy Tartakovsky and Chris Savino. Cartoon Network, October 8, 1999.
[14] The Powerpuff Girls. “Hot Air Buffoon / Ploys R’ Us.” Episode 35. Directed by John McIntyre, Craig McCracken, and Robert Alvarez. Written by Mike Stern, Chris Savino, and Cindy Morrow. Cartoon Network, December 1, 2000.
[15] The Powerpuff Girls. “Powerprof.” Episode 37. Directed by Randy Myers and Craig McCracken. Written by Lauren Faust. Cartoon Network, February 9, 2001.
[16] Walen, Alec, “Retributive Justice.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/justice-retributive/, accessed April 3, 2016.
[17] The Powerpuff Girls. “Moral Decay / Meet the Beat Alls.” Episode 38. Directed by Robert Alvarez, Craig McCracken, and John McIntyre. Written by Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust. Cartoon Network, February 9, 2001.
[18] Walen, Alec, “Retributive Justice.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/justice-retributive/, accessed April 3, 2016.
[19] The Powerpuff Girls. “See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey.” Episode 59. Directed by Chris Savino and John McIntyre. Written by Chris Savino and Dave Smith. Cartoon Network, November 10, 2003.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid. The lyrics are, of course, partly nonsense; one could have a fork without a spoon and even, conceivably, the sun without the moon. It is unclear exactly what the song is getting at: it could be an expression of Taoism, as the “yin and yang” suggest, or it could be Hegelianism. Alternatively, being tongue-in-cheek as this show often is, it could be gibberish.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Holbo, John. “Utophobia and Other Freedom Beefs.” Crooked Timber. http://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/18/utopophobia-and-other-freedom-beefs/ (accessed April 2, 2016). Holbo sees the beliefs in the impossibility and undesirability of utopia as mutually exclusive. What he misses, or doesn’t mention, is that attempts to achieve an impossible utopia may involve things that are undesirable.
[25] Ibid.
[26] The Powerpuff Girls. “See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey.” Episode 59. Directed by Chris Savino and John McIntyre. Written by Chris Savino and Dave Smith. Cartoon Network, November 10, 2003.
[27] Holbo, John. “Utophobia and Other Freedom Beefs.” Crooked Timber. http://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/18/utopophobia-and-other-freedom-beefs/ (accessed April 2, 2016).
[28] Piaget, Jean. The Moral Judgment of the Child. (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1932): 64
[29] The Powerpuff Girls. “Makes Zen to Me / Say Uncle.” Episode 65. Directed by John McIntyre and Randy Myers. Written by Bryan Andrews and Craig Lewis. Cartoon Network, April 23, 2004.
[30] Some ethicists might argue that no reason is necessary to punch a clown, but that is a discussion beyond the scope of this brief essay.
