Gravity Falls is a Disney cartoon series that follows the adventures of Dipper and Mabel Pines, twin siblings who are sent to spend the summer with their great-uncle Stan in the mysterious town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. They quickly discover that the town is filled with supernatural occurrences and bizarre creatures. Together, they explore the town’s secrets, unraveling mysteries with the help of a journal Dipper finds that contains information about the strange phenomena they encounter.

Gravity Falls Review

Refreshingly light on the sugary lessons like the value of friendship, etc., that flood most modern children’s, though not completely without them, Gravity Falls is a mostly refreshing goofball comedy cartoon series. Its fun characters and light, well-meaning adventures fall somewhere between car-driving grizzly bear ridiculous and evil gremlin-troll terrorizing…that is until he realizes that his worst nightmare is becoming his father, and he runs off.

PARENTAL NOTES IN GRAVITY FALLS

Monsters and  Magic

• The show is set in a forest filled with magic creatures and monsters. While it uses these as a springboard for farcical and slapstick comedy, the setups and designs may be too intense for young audiences.

Boxers or Briefs

• There are a number of site gags that rely on realistically drawn boy’s underwear.
• In season 2 of Gravity Falls, the lead 12-year-old boy ends up accidentally crowd surfing and makes the concerned comment, “oh no, they are touching everywhere.” Clearly, this is alluding to his genitals.
• In a later episode, the boy gets transformed into a D&D miniature and he panics at not having anything under his tunic.

Boy Crazy

• The 12-year-old girls are obsessed with boys. Even though it’s important to acknowledge that they never want to go further than kissing, there’s not an insignificant amount of kissing or allusions to it.
• The 12-year-old boy is moderately obsessed with an older teenage girl.
• One episode introduces “Lookout Point,” a makeout location for teens. A teenage boy and girl go there but are interrupted long before anything can even begin to happen.
• In season 2, the large (possibly trans) girl wants an attractive boy to take his shirt off.
• Later in season 2, there’s a lot more talk about young relationships and kissing.
• Also, in season 2, Cupid is introduced as the “Love God.” He goes around zapping people who immediately fall in love and begin romantically kissing one another. Later, we see him tumbling out of a van filled with pillows, beads, and love posters, and he is followed by a man and a woman who he addresses as his fans.
  • Even though nothing is shown and everyone is fully clothed, the clear allusion is to the Free-Love orgies of the 60s.
• Again, in season 2, the lead girl sees an attractive Austrian boy who greets her with a gutentag. Her reply is an enthusiastic “guten-take me now.”

The Occult

• Gravity Falls actually does a good job of avoiding demons and dark magic, but there is one episode in which some characters perform what looks like occult spells. One individual does it to summon a demon, and another group does it to exorcise it.
  • The creature is referred to as a demon, but the design is a simple yellow triangle and not traditionally demonic in any way.
• Season 2: Episode 7 features a cult of men whose purpose is to erase the townsfolk’s minds. They use technology in lieu of dark magic, but the episode’s music, the group’s costumes, and the trappings of their secret layer are all meant to invoke The Occult.
• Also, in season 2, the main boy prepares a spell with all of the stereotypical aesthetics of the occult (e.g. candles in a circle, etc.).

Bloody Sunday

• There’s a scene in one episode in which one of the main characters gets slapped around a bit and ends up with a bloody nose.
• In season 2, a magical character awards one of the children with a screaming, severed head. When the being removes the head, graphic sections allow you to see the various layers of a human head, including muscle and skull.
• Another season 2 episode (episode 9) has a group of kids daring one of their own to look inside an open grave from which eerie moaning can be heard. As he timidly approaches, the group “comedically” chants, “Gaze upon death. Gaze upon death.”
  • A jolted teen is inside, pining after the girl who dumped him.
    • Later in the same episode, a character visits the boy’s home, which happens to be a funeral home. His cheery parents (aka the funeral directors) pleasantly great her. However, in the next scene, they use a glass coffin containing a dead body as a coffee table.
• In yet another season 2 episode, a ghost is haunting a mansion. When the lead character walks into the haunted room filled with animal trophy heads, blood starts pouring out of the mouth of one, then they all talk in concert in a demonic sounding voice as a fire burns below them.

Dads, Amiright?

• Episode 8 of season 2 introduces us to Jesus’ (Hey-Zeus) dad, or rather, the lack thereof. The thrust of the episode is that Jesus’ dad abandoned him as a child, ruining all of Jesus’ birthdays. The resolution is that Jesus, who has just been given a wish, doesn’t wish to know his father because his father never loved him, so who needs him?
  • Why is this in a children’s program for 7-year-olds?

Dear Reader, I Never Thought It Would Happen To Me

• In season 2, Stan picks up a curvaceous stranger and goes on a walk with her to a secluded location. She ends up being a spider monster who captures him with plans of ingesting him. But before she does, she tells him, “This time, you’re getting used to your body.”
• Again, in season 2, there’s a two-second scene in which the lead 12-year-old boy is rifling through his uncle’s belongings when he opens a chest that reveals two magazines. One is titled “Fully Clothed Women Magazine” and depicts a dolled-up woman in a turtleneck sweater and trench coat. The other is “Lady Swimwear,” which shows a woman in a wetsuit. Upon seeing them, the boy says, “Ew, pretending I never saw that,” and he quickly shuts the chest.
  • This is a clear allusion to men keeping a stash of pornographic magazines and all that implies, and even though the two magazines in question are innocent in their own right, it begs the question, why is there a joke of this type in a cartoon rated safe for 7-year-olds?
• Also, in season 2, the 12-year-old boy is playing video games with the older girl on whom he has a crush. They are alone in her bedroom, and when she clearly indicates that he is in the Friend Zone, he lies back on her bed, sandwiching her bra between him and it. She says, “Hey, you’re lying on my bra.” to which he replies with a scream.
  • Again, this is a cartoon rated to be appropriate for 7-year-olds. Why must they sexualize our children?

WOKE REPORT

It’s Pat

• One of the main female characters’ best friends is a beefy girl with a deep voice (voiced by a male). It’s never said that she is trans, and her voice and awkwardness are always a punchline. However, there is a line about her voice becoming masculine after puberty. Even for a show from 2012, it’s hard not to believe that Disney wasn’t trying to slide in LGBTQ nonsense, but the show’s openly pro-Alphabet Agenda showrunner is on record, saying that the censors kept him in check.

A Little Light In The Cowboy Boots

• There is a male town local who sounds stereotypically gay and often wears cowboy boots and Daisy Dukes. He only appears in a couple of episodes and never has more than one line.
  • He appears to exist to make fun of the stereotype rather than celebrate it.
• The two town cops always hint at caring deeply for one another, although it’s always done for a laugh. That said, in the finale, they lovingly embrace one another, saying that they are “mad with love.”

Eat The Rich

• When excusing their own cheating, one of the main characters says, “She’s rich. She’s cheating at life,” in reference to their opponent. It is not said as a joke but as a commentary on the disparity of classes.
• There are some other instances of class warfare.

Guys Are The Worst

• The older teen girl on whom the lead boy has a crush repeatedly tells the boy-crazy 12-year-old girl that “boys are the worst” and she should “forget about boys.”
  • So far, she has claimed (in season one) to have dated many, many boys, but we’ve only seen two pine after her. One is the lead, who is nothing but respectful, and the other misguidedly uses a special music CD with subliminal messages to get her to stay together with him. It’s possible that she is still stinging from the last one, but it’s still a woke cliché.

Dads Shmads

• Re: Jesus’ (Hey-Zeus) deadbeat dad from the Parental Notes above. The show had the opportunity to illustrate how much better Jesus’ life could have been had his father been present during his childhood, but instead chose to argue that good friends are equal to or better than having a father during childhood.
  • Until this episode, any wokeness has been a one-off (often a single line or brief moment) with no thematic importance to the episode’s narrative.

Whole Lotta Kissing Goin’ On

• Nothing explicit happens, but there are many attempted relationships, much talk about kissing, and some very unnecessary, very subtle allusions to more adult themes (see PARENTAL NOTES above). Why the Left is in love with the idea of tweaking our kids’ curiosity with this stuff is beyond me.