This episode was addressing pedos apparently
That said, there is one episode in particular that stands out as being more deeply unsettling than the rest: "Freaky Fred." The titular Freaky Fred is a dog barber who has been committed to a mental institution because of his uncontrollable obsession with cutting hair, particularly the hair of small animals. In the episode, Courage predictably gets trapped in a small room with Freaky Fred. Big deal, right? Courage gets trapped somewhere with a terrifying monster in literally every episode.
Well, in
this episode, Courage gets locked in the bathroom with Fred, who forces Courage into his lap and shaves him while
speaking in rhymes about how "naugghhttyy" Courage makes him feel. That's right -- "Freaky Fred" is arguably the clearest analogy
for sexual molestation that has ever appeared in a children's cartoon.
The
implications that Fred represents a pedophile aren't hard to spot, as he admits that his first shaving victims were a baby hamster and a tween-faced girl named Barbara, who also made Fred feel "naughty." However, another of Fred's victims was an adult man with a beard, so maybe he's just an indiscriminate rapist. Either way, if the goal of
Courage's producers was to deeply terrify children in ways they couldn't even fully understand, this episode is a fukking home run.
From the start, the victim (Courage) is the only one who sees the danger and reacts appropriately -- the grown-ups are either oblivious (Muriel, the old woman) or intentionally helping the "freak" (the old man, Eustace, gleefully traps the dog in the room with him, then leaves). The result is a terrified, small, helpless main character trapped in a room with a grown-up who can't control his impulses.
Fred proceeds to slowly remove Courage's clothes (er, fur) ...
... while the mother-figure listens from the other side of the bathroom door and the father-figure leaves the house. Finally, Courage is able to get to a phone and call the authorities, nervously waiting for them to arrive while Freddy asks a "naked" Courage to come sit on his lap:
Cartoon Network
The guy is arrested and hauled back to the mental hospital in the nick of time. So, here's the question: is the episode intended to teach a lesson to abuse victims (that is, if the grown-ups don't take you seriously, call the police)? If so, will kids even make the connection, with the situation disguised within the whole "wacky crazy barber" metaphor? And if that's not the intention, are they seriously just doing a goofy comedy riff in which the pop culture trend they're riffing on is
child molestation? This shyt is pretty alarming either way.
Ol fake azz China Mac
