The Rot Doesn't Stop With Nickelodeon
Last week, the docuseries ‘Quiet on Set’ was released on HBO Max. This series chronicles some of the allegations plaguing Nickelodeon studios, specifically on the set of shows created by showrunner Dan Schneider. While there have been whisperings on the internet for years regarding the inappropriate writing style of his shows and his tyrannical on-set behavior, this is the first time we are hearing from the child, now adult actors themselves. Actors who, despite some un-ignorable issues with the docuseries, have finally been given the space to get candid about what they experienced on set and their stories are truly heartbreaking. Whether it’s the verbal abuse and ostracizing that many of the young black actors faced or the fact that multiple child predators worked on and abused children on set, so much wrong was done in the name of creating good TV. It’s fair to say that the enjoyment I and people of my age demographic received watching these shows does not outweigh the suffering incurred by the cast and crew. It’s also fair to say that the scale of damage that Nickelodeon caused during this time goes far beyond the victims and bleeds murkily into our wider culture and what we deem acceptable today.
For many children born in the 90s and early 2000s, Nickelodeon shows were appointment TV. I myself was glued to the TV for ‘The Amanda Show’ and can confidently say that I’ve seen every episode several times. So you can imagine the horror I felt in learning the full scope of some of the sexual jokes snuck in to what was supposed to be a ‘PG’ show. One that comes to mind is the character “Penelope Taint”. Obviously, a child wouldn’t know what her last name was referring to but as an adult, the knowledge of what a ‘taint’ is and the context of her uptight personality gives a sick context to the character and her appearances. Jokes like these as well as the proliferation of adult relationships for kids serve to normalize them. I have no doubt that children would look at a character like Drake from ‘Drake and Josh’ and think it was entirely normal to aggressively pursue women at a young age or look at a character like Sam Puckett and think “I can solve my problems with violence if necessary”. If my favorite character is doing it then why couldn’t I and that understanding diffuses into not only other shows on other kid networks (certain Disney Channel shows got a little more risque over time to try and keep up with the tone of Nickelodeon) but into the children themselves who grew up to make content of their own.
In the past few years we have experience several “exposes” of pivotal YouTubers, many of which made children geared towards kids. For popular creator Colleen Ballinger, the alleged revelations surrounding her ‘Miranda Sings’ character and her inappropriate contact with underaged fans came out less than a year ago. It was made known that the creator allegedly managed a group chat of entirely underaged fans in which they had discussions of a sexual nature and traded troubling photos back and forth. There are also allegations of her creating a codependent relationship with a child in which he was subjected to verbal and labor abuses by the creator. While Ballinger was an adult at the time that Dan Schneider was in his hey-day at Nickelodeon, there are clear parallels between their content. Whether it’s the playing of disabilities for laughs or the unacceptable age gaps portrayed fictionally between characters, you can almost see a through line between the two that hints at the Nickelodeon culture becoming synonymous with storytelling for children.
This doesn’t stop at ‘Miranda Sings’ however. Popular creator Shane Dawson has been in and out of what seems like a continuous firestorm since the start of the pandemic. Dawson was known mostly for his skits and documentaries, often dressing up as well-known figures to satirize them. This includes one video in particular in which the creator wears a pink wig and blackface, claiming to be the rapper Nicki Minaj. He has since addressed his actions but the racist hurt remains the same. While there was never any blackface on any Nickelodeon shows that I’m aware of, the playing for laughs of black characters on several Nickelodeon would encourage any young creator with a camera to think that black people are sources of humor because they are black. Characters like “T-Bo” or Andre’s grandmother are racist stereotypes of simple-minded and ‘unstable’ black people which may have been harmless had it not been for the mostly white casts. Dawson is of the age to have been influenced by these shows and his description of blackface as “just something I did” speaks to the normalization of black people as ridiculous that Nickelodeon helped inspire. The same could also be said about the myriad of pedophilic jokes Dawson has made over the years. In a world where a characters implied sex-life is the basis for their story on a kids show, it’s not hard to see how the normalization of sex at an early age has manifested in a myriad of ways.
What this can be effectively chalked up to is an extended, across space and time, form of grooming for every child and young adult that came across Nickelodeon. While that does sound extreme and I wince thinking about it, we shouldn't be afraid to say it. Normalization of adult behaviors for kids means that the things that should raise red flags in a child’s mind simply don’t. Strange adults seem fine because in the world of Nickelodeon, in kid world, all the adults are strange but they’re all safe to hang out with and spend time with. We can see the effects all around us. It’s no coincidence that so many of the spaces for kids around and following this time have since been exposed for being hotbeds of predator activity. Ask why there is no more Warped Tour for example and you’ll find that the reasons aren’t strictly financial. Or why every large creator house of the early 2010s has been plagued with allegation after allegation of abuse and grooming. Even worse, there is really no easy fix for the effects of this content. Even though we want to, we can’t go back in time and tell Nickelodeon ‘Hey maybe feet aren’t really that funny and you can’t let this man berate people on set and chase away every concerned adult”. We can’t go and un-watch those shows but we can create space for the victims to come forward and be heard and we can refuse to allow the destructive forces of our society to make comebacks when they’ve been ousted, as they often attempt to do.