Animation has progressed astoundingly in capability, technology and acceptability in the past hundred years, being originally thought of a mere folly and is now respected as a major art form, along with painting and music. It has fought misconceptions of being an art form purely for children or as a novelty item, and even to this day there are many people that do not consider animation to be as respectable and important as some of the older, more established art forms.
The evolution of animation has been a slow one, though one of the first times it was popularised was in America during the twenties. Short animations, often for humour or advertising purposes, were the most common form of animation, and these were typically aimed at families. Despite this, some of them were not aimed at children at all, but contained adult humour and themes. Animation was originally not only ‘for children’, and it is clear that this misconception did not exist at the beginning but developed over time.
With the advent of the motion picture production code, more commonly known as Hays code, such animations either had to be censored or banned outright, leading to a more watered down version which was supposed to be more suitable for children. This is thought to be an instigator for the idea that animation is childish, when it was never originally so, and was instead supposed to have universal appeal and a particular message, which was not always politically correct.