For those of us who grew up in the ’90s, MTV animated series (all of them, bar none) represented in a way the entrance into adulthood. Let me explain.
If up to that time the themes and representations to which I was accustomed (I like all my peers) were those of the classic cartoons “canonical” that we used to watch in the afternoon, with the animated series of MTV everything has changed, especially thanks to Beavis and Butt-Head.

Let’s start by saying that Beavis and Butt-Head – my absolute favorite MTV cartoon – aired in the evenings, within a container dedicated to animation composed of a triptych that included, in addition to the two slackers who loved hard rock and metal, the nemesis of the latter, Daria (a spin-off of Beavis and Butt-Head), a young cynic, intelligent, prickly and unsociable, and Celebrity Deathmatch, a bloody and brutal stop-motion series that was a parody of professional wrestling, in which the most famous personalities of show business challenged each other in the ring. 

MTV Animation, , MTV’s animation department, characterized almost all of its products with dark humor, sexually explicit and politically uncorrect jokes, violence, and pop culture references, automatically making them suitable for an adult audience.

Here we could write/speak about it for hours but today I will focus on Beavis and Butt-Head because it is yesterday’s news tha Paramount+ nnounced that in July this year will be released the new feature film dedicated to the two characters born from the mind of Mike Judge in 1993 entitled, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. A sort of sequel to the first feature film dedicated to the two debauched, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

The synopsis of the film is as follows: “In perhaps the dumbest space movie ever made, Beavis and Butt-Head are sentenced to Space Camp by a “creative” judge in 1998. Their obsession with a docking simulator (huh huh) leads to a trip on the Space Shuttle, with predictably disastrous results. After going through a black hole, they reemerge in our time, where they look for love, misuse iPhones, and are hunted by the Deep State. Spoiler: They don’t score.“

Paramount+ has also confirmed that over 200 remastered classic episodes will be released.

But who are Beavis and Butt-Head? 

The series created by Mike Judge in 1993 has as its protagonists two teenagers with absolutely no desire to do anything except sit on the couch and watch and comment on metal and hard rock music videos. They attend high school but are totally detached from everything around them, their adventures are surreal because of their absolutely bizarre behavior, bordering on the crazy.

Characterized by constant swearing, the series mirrored a certain type of narrative (that of bro-culture) that dominated American television shows in the ’90s and cascaded into ours as well, the slacker male. Here Judge adds a disproportionate dose of stupidity, idiocy, no sense, music, swearing and gratuitous violence. Menefreghisti, cynical, frivolous and without the slightest restraint and dignity, the two protagonists often find themselves endangering themselves and others with dangerous and senseless actions.
Accompanying this superficiality there was a subtext of fierce criticism of American society, thanks to a biting satire that made Beavis and Butth-Head two icons, two absolute myths despite their attitude, two anti-heroes who started to adult life millions of boys like me all over the world.

Now all we have to do is wait for the trailer, I’m already laughing.