Years back I went to Lyon on a student trip to visit the Emile Cohl school of animation.
The quality of what was (and is) being produced there is absolutely baffling and breathtaking compared to just about 99% of what can be made in the states, and everything there are by students. All of them had their own unique styles built on very strong fundamentals which allowed them to do pretty much anything they could think of and make it look beautiful.
This being the main and major difference between a country like France and the US. Huge amounts of initial effort is being spent on teaching the fundamentals of drawing before anything else. Shape, proportion, etc. Starting with stilleben, then figure drawing and only once you have a firm grasp of how to draw "properly" do you start finding your own style. The foundations must be solidly in place before you can start building on top of it, or you won't be able to arrive at something which will last. That is as true for a house as it is of personal skill, in my belief.
I believe the grotesque, abominable shit in OP's post comes from generations of Americans who have no fundamentals and consider these to be outdated, pointless or stifling and avoid them (and who likely couldn't afford art schools until they were already in their late 20's and already considered themselves "artists").
I also don't think schools like Calarts can even teach proper drawing fundamentals, so they probably just focus on making everyone draw the same horrible trash going by the ideology that it should be cheap to draw, easy to mass produce and both cheap and easy to animate. How it looks isn't even a secondary or tertiary consideration, just do whatever and make that your "signature styler".
Have a look at the homepage for Emile Cohl. Someone might find it interesting.
https://www.cohl.fr/en/ 
