Recently, I took a trip down Nostalgia Lane and looked at one of my favorite cartoons as a child, Hey Arnold. When I was younger, I loved the show’s designs and the character development. Now revisiting the show, I realize there’s a lot of messages I glanced over as a kid, with characters with much more complicated problems than I could perceive. From Helga’s dysfunctional home life to the touching Christmas special, the show itself is chalked full of deep messages that I could never begin to touch on when I was younger.
If you don’t remember, Helga was a bully with a crush on Arnold, who had nothing but chaotic homelife that caused her to act out. Looking at her home life, she has a verbally and emotionally abusive/neglectful father and an alcoholic mother; Helga’s mom can be seen taking naps with a blender and she constantly seems out of it. To top it off she’s constantly compared to her sister Olga, who’s described as a perfect beacon of hope. Her self-esteem is pretty consistently in the gutter, and she lashes out at the world, including the person she obsesses over. In an episode where Helga’s finally sent to a therapist, she reveals why she loves Arnold so much; she was left outside alone in the rain as a small child because of her inattentive parents, and Arnold covered her with an umbrella and complimented her on her hair bow. He may have shown her a small act of kindness, but Helga needed that most of all, no matter how small. When you look at who she associates with in her life, you see her best friend Phoebe, someone who is loyal and patient with Helga. Her bullying isn’t excusable by her friends, but they try to make her see how wrong she’s acting. At the end of the day, Helga wants to be accepted and loved but can’t help but lash out in revenge against her slot in life.
What stood out most to me from my childhood was the Christmas special; upon rewatching it, I felt it delivered the same strong, emotional impact that I had as a child. The episode is focused on Mr. Hyunh, a Vietnamese immigrant and boarder in Arnold’s house who can’t seem to get into the spirit of Christmas. Mr. Hyunh tells Arnold the story of how he got separated from his daughter, Mai; the animation closely represents the Battle and Fall of Saigon, where Mr. Hyunh gives his daughter to an American soldier on the last helicopter to evacuate the city. With his daughter gone, Mr. Hyunh does everything he can to get to the city of Hillwood in America, the place the soldier said he’d take her to. Arnold searches with Gerald for her on Christmas Eve, determined to reunite Mr. Hyunh with his daughter. He encounters several frustrating roadblocks, and right when he’s about to lose hope, Helga sacrifices her Christmas gift so Arnold can find Mr. Hyunh’s daughter. Mr. Hyunh is reunited with his daughter in a tear-jerking moment that completes the episode. What was amazing about this episode is how real it was; the episode did a wonderful job of depicting the impact of war on families and how it displaces people. Above all, Arnold failed in this episode; he reached a dead end where he couldn’t go any further to find Mai. More than that, he lost his faith in miracles and positivity, something that is not only the meaning of “Christmas Spirit” but aspects of Arnold’s personality that shapes who he is. If it wasn’t for Helga learning how to be selfless and sacrificing something so Arnold could be happy, Arnold and Mr. Hyunh’s Christmas would have had a very different outcome.
The show touches on so much more than just these two topics. There’s a character who grapples with self-loathing over being poor another character trying to stay positive in the face of poverty, characters with self-image issues and depression, episodes where Arnold’s friends are tested in a multitude of ways that could change who they are. Kids come into conflict and at times their friendships are put into question, and at times their childhood heroes even disappoint them. This show really hits home with a realness that I just didn’t remember as a child. I was surprised to find this in a show I loved so much as a child, and it makes me want to revisit what I watched when I was younger to see if they were anything as close to what Hey Arnold! was. I’m excited to continue my journey down memory lane with this show when the new movie comes out in November of 2017.
