The Surprising Connection Between Scream And The Powerpuff Girls

The city of Townsville is home to a lot of things: gangs of green skinned hoodlums, a mob of amoebas, a hillbilly monster, a sexually-charged immortal cross-dressing demon, and more kaiju monsters than the Monarch laboratories of "Godzilla: King of the Monster" would know what to do with. But the aforementioned locale is also home to everyone's favorite pint-sized super sisters, "The Powerpuff Girls." The brainchild of Craig McCracken ("Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends," "Wander Over Yonder,"), "The Powerpuff Girls" is a beloved late '90s cartoon about three elementary school girls created by scientist and inventor, Professor Utonium. Thank the universe he brought them into the world, because the city of Townsville rivals Gotham for its high levels of otherworldly villains and reigns of terror from organized crime. The show became such a pop culture staple, that it inspired a reboot in 2016 and is getting a live-action version at The CW ... eventually.

Whether it was intentional or not, "The Powerpuff Girls" was a groundbreaking cartoon that helped introduce feminist ideals to younger audiences, allowing those socialized as boys to see that femininity wasn't a bad thing, and those socialized as girls to know that they too were capable of being heroes. "The Powerpuff Girls" gained popularity a decade before Marvel and DC superhero properties became the cultural norm, and boasted a cast of voiceover greats like E.G. Daily, Tara Strong, Cathay Cavadini, Tom Kenny, Tom Kane, Jennifer Hale, Jim Cummings, and Jeff Bennett. 

This voiceover cast also connects "The Powerpuff Girls" to another beloved late '90s property, the teen slasher franchise, "Scream."

Roger L. Jackson is a decorated voiceover actor with 244 current credits to his name, but he is arguably most well known for voicing Ghostface in "Scream." Present in each film in the franchise, as well as the TV series, Jackson provides the voice used by every killer who has donned the white mask, by way of a voice modulator box. The terrifying threats over the phone are all Jackson, and it solidified his voice as the source of nightmares for a generation. While he was scaring teens and adults as Ghostface, he was also the main antagonist of "The Powerpuff Girls," voicing the mad scientist anthropomorphic chimpanzee, Mojo Jojo. Considering he returned for the reboot, both the city of Townsville and the town of Woodsboro have been terrorized for over two decades by the voice of Roger L. Jackson.

The voice of Ghostface and the voice of Mojo Jojo sit in different areas of Jackson's vocal register, so there's a very good chance that there's a generation of people who've gone their lives completely unaware that Jackson is responsible for voicing both of these memorable baddies. Perhaps most interesting, both "Scream" and "The Powerpuff Girls" completely revitalized and subverted the expectations of their respective genres, totally changing the way we present women's representation in both superhero properties and slashers, both connected by the vocal villainy of Roger L. Jackson.