By Taylor Drake
I was falling down a nostalgia rabbit hole and came across Moral Oral. Moral Oral was a claymation show that was on Adult Swim. The show was a parody of “Leave It to Beaver” that satirized right-wing Christian evangelical culture. The show centers around Oral Puppington, whose throwback 1950s TV innocence/nievate lands him in over the top scenarios.
The formula for the show went like this: an adult in Oral’s life will say something to guide him; His plaster talks about the gift of life. Oral, with good intentions, will go totally off the rails; he uses the Necronomicon to bring the dead back to life, and Moralton is overwhelmed with zombies. It all comes to a head when his father, Clay Puppington, invites him to his study and gives him bad advice after a spanking; the problem with the zombies wasn’t all the people who died, it’s that they were nude, nudity is horrible, and you should be ashamed of your natural body.
The show didn’t have a long run, but it earned its place as one of the best Adult Swim shows. It used comedy to expose the pure misery that resides in these all white communities. You have kids who are abused and neglected, families staying together to keep up appearances, having to hide a gay identity due to survival, racism, alcoholism, etc. I found out recently why the show only lasted three seasons. The show aired an episode called “Alone,” it was an episode that examined the lives of three side characters: Nurse Bendy, Ms. Sculptham, and Ms. Censordoll. I was in 8th grade when I saw the episode, and my jaw was on the floor at the end. The whole episode examines the effect of past traumas on each character. They use visuals to allude to molestation, rape, and sterilization. This heavy episode made Adult Swim executives pull the plug on the show, citing the creator’s decision to move the series away from comedy.
That being said, I had to do my own form of fan art by dedicating each verse to the trajectory of the show. I am offering this poem to fans alike. But it’s written in a way that you don’t need to have seen the show to understand it.