Oh, How I Miss Those Kid's Shows Of Yore...
I was hunched over my laptop at home this past Saturday morning, hard at work on a writing project I'm hoping to finish within the next couple of weeks, when I decided to turn on the television just for the sake of having a little background noise.
I guess in retrospect I probably shouldn't have done that.
I looked up from my computer screen at one point and found myself appalled by the quick glimpse I got of the cartoon that was being shown at the time. I'm not sure what the program was, but it apparently had something to do with a group of kids who looked like they had bathed in a box of Crayola crayons and who were busy trying to teach some other kid about the importance of cleaning his room. As if any kids who look like they've bathed in a box of crayons might be expected to have rooms that looks any cleaner than they do.
I'm guessing that it was supposed to be some kind of educational program. It just looked incredibly silly and boring to me. And I found myself thinking yet again just how much modern television seemed to have paled in comparison to the programs of my youth. From what I have seen, that seems to be especially true with regards to Saturday morning programming, which is practically non-existent compared to the Golden Age that was my childhood.
In my day, television was not just some inanimate electronic box. It was a haven, a place where I could join together with the greatest collection of imaginary friends ever for adventures beyond belief. It was a means of escaping the mundane life of the real world: school, chores, et cetera.
In a word, it was FUN.
Oh, for the days when I sat in front of the television wrapped in one of my Mom's homemade afghans, cross-legged on the floor with my bowl of Cap'n Crunch and my 10-boxtop Tony The Tiger Spoon that set my folks sent away for. (It never dawned on me at the time that eating my Cap'n Crunch with a Tony the Tiger spoon - and out of a Mickey Mouse Club bowl my grandmother had bought for me, at that - might somehow be construed as some sort of betrayal of either Tony, Mickey or the Cap'n; in my mind we were all one big happy family.)
Oh, for the Winter of 1968: the peace and quiet of 7:30 in the a.m., the smell of Mom's homemade hot chocolate on the stove wafting through the chilly air, the warm sound of that fizzing Magnavox and the popping static of Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle and the Go-Go Gophers dancing into focus. Oh, for the days when my brothers and I would sing along with the theme songs to "Underdog" and "Super Chicken." Oh for the days when Space Ghost was a real, true, honest-to-goodness superhero and not just another stupid Jay Leno-wannabe talk show schmuck...
Well, you get the idea.
Those were good days. I miss them. And it saddens me to think that - were it not for the advent of home video and reasonably affordable DVD boxed sets - my sons might have grown up never knowing that same simple joy.
Alas, there has been darkness upon the land for some time now. It began some 20-plus years ago, when the Wicked Witch of the West - also known as Peggy Charren, the veteran kidvid activist who founded the meddlesome Action for Children's Television organization - sent her flying monkeys out to do battle against the idea of kids watching TV simply for the fun of it.
Charren was one of the masterminds behind the Children's Television Act of 1990, which requires television stations to air programming that serves "the educational and informational needs of children." In other words, the stations are being forced to cram education down the throats of young viewers who already get a bellyful of that sort of thing all week at school anyway and could probably use a break.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the importance of television as an educational tool. There is a definite place for educational programming on television, and there have been some very fine programs produced over the years. "Sesame Street" seems to be the standard by which all others have been judged over the past four decades; before that there were "Mr. Wizard" and "Captain Kangaroo," the latter of which was for a time every bit as much standard viewing for me as the evening news was for my parents.
And in the 1970s there were my two personal favorites, both of which aired on ABC-TV: "Curiosity Shop," a sort of hipper alternative to "Sesame Street" that aired on Saturdays and was the brainchild of revered animator Chuck Jones; and the classic Sunday morning series "Make A Wish," a show that was actually produced by ABC News, hosted by folk singer Tom Chapin and featuring songs written by his brother, the late, great singer-songwriter Harry Chapin. Shows like these really DID make learning fun, and (in my house, at least) brought parents and children together to share in the experience.
For the most part, however, we as kids tended to view school the same way we adults tend to view our jobs: it's nice to be able to take a break once in a while. I doubt that's changed much during the years in which I went from being an idealistic youngster to a sometimes crotchety old fogey. And there's nothing wrong with that. Or, at least, there shouldn't be.
But the Peggy Charrens of the world seem to think that if our kids aren't getting some kind of lesson crammed down their throats every second of the day, their lives will be a total waste. I can't prove it, of course, but I can't help thinking that Peggy Charren's kids probably spent a lot of their childhoods wishing their mother would mind her own cotton-pickin' business.
The biggest problem I have with Charren's notion of what constitutes healthy viewing fare for children is that her "ideal programming" has always seemed to me to be extremely narrow in focus, and in many ways even more unbelievable than the relatively innocent cartoons she worked so diligently to take off the air.
Look at Barney, that nauseatingly-sweet purple dinosaur that was all the rage when my oldest son was a pup and seems to have something of a comeback in the past few years. Sure, many critics gave his show high marks for teaching children important values and other things they really ought to be learning from their parents and teachers, instead of from some long-extinct lizard who most likely would have eaten those kids in real life.
But those lessons are, in many cases, unrealistic. Many of the "truths" that the show espoused can only be true in a perfect world - something this world most definitely is NOT, and never will be. The same was true of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," a show that I'll be the first to admit certainly deserved most of the accolades it received during its run. It would quite nice indeed if all the world were like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, but it isn't. And that's something not all the sneakers and comfortable sweaters in the world is likely to ever change.
Even "Captain Kangaroo" was guilty of this sort of overzealous idealism to an extent. But while the good Captain worked hard to teach us about how the world should be, Mr. Moose could always be counted on to show up and pull one of his pranks with the ping-pong balls and remind us how the world really was.
The lesson we learned from Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose was this: Work hard to try and make it a better world - but don't be surprised at the end of the day if there's somebody out there not getting the message. Idealism tempered with a healthy dose of reality.
While I had - and still have - the utmost respect for Fred Rogers, the simple truth of the matter is that the world he wanted us to live has never existed and almost certainly never will. Kid's shows like his - to borrow a quote I read in a Time magazine article many years ago - "shelter kids from the rude real world - a strange notion of education indeed."
That's why I gravitated to Captain Kanagroo instead of Mr. Rogers. And that's why I loved and continue to love the old Warner Brothers characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and the Road Runner - characters who taught us to take a stand for what we believe in, to not take any guff off the Elmer Fudds and Yosemite Sams of the world, and to do what needs to be done to make matters right on those occasions when we should have turned right at Albuquerque.
It may not be a popular opinion (I know it would certainly curl Peggy Charren's hair to hear me say it), but I have always maintained that a child can learn more about the real world from watching just one of the old "Looney Tunes" classics than from every episode of "Mr. Rogers," "Barney" or "Teletubbies" ever filmed. And if a kid needs a Saturday morning cartoon to teach him how to clean his room, maybe there's a bigger problem with this kid and his parents that needs to be addressed. (Not that I'm the one who needs to be preaching about the value of a clean room; you should see the condition my workroom at home is in...)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I never knew of any kid who threw himself off a cliff because he saw Wile E. Coyote walk away from such a fall on Saturday morning. I have, on the other hand, known several kids who got the crud beat out of them because they followed Mr. Rogers' advice and turned the other cheek when the bully on the playground started picking a fight.
Personally, I'd rather have my kid watch the Coyote any day. Thank God for home video...
During the House Hearings on Children's Television in the early 1990s, Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey offered up the following sound bite for media types to chew on for awhile: "Children's TV on commercial broadcast television today remains the video equivalent of a Twinkie."
To be fair to Mr. Markey, that was actually a pretty accurate statement. But what he and Peggy Charren and countless others seem to forget is that Twinkies were never meant to be the major staple of one's diet. A Twinkie is a treat, something to be savored and enjoyed after a nutritious meal or as a small reward for some chore. Nobody expects a kid to live on nothing but Twinkies, not even the kid.
So it is with children's television. Sure, most of it may not have much redeeming value... but so what? It's not supposed to. It's a treat, to be enjoyed after school in the afternoons or on lazy Saturday mornings. And if it's low on educational value, that's okay; after all, there's got to be more to life than always having to learn something new every time you turn around.
All that education can get pretty tiring; what's so bad about a little frivolity to ease the tension once in a while?
(Copyright 2010, by John A. Small)
I guess in retrospect I probably shouldn't have done that.
I looked up from my computer screen at one point and found myself appalled by the quick glimpse I got of the cartoon that was being shown at the time. I'm not sure what the program was, but it apparently had something to do with a group of kids who looked like they had bathed in a box of Crayola crayons and who were busy trying to teach some other kid about the importance of cleaning his room. As if any kids who look like they've bathed in a box of crayons might be expected to have rooms that looks any cleaner than they do.
I'm guessing that it was supposed to be some kind of educational program. It just looked incredibly silly and boring to me. And I found myself thinking yet again just how much modern television seemed to have paled in comparison to the programs of my youth. From what I have seen, that seems to be especially true with regards to Saturday morning programming, which is practically non-existent compared to the Golden Age that was my childhood.
In my day, television was not just some inanimate electronic box. It was a haven, a place where I could join together with the greatest collection of imaginary friends ever for adventures beyond belief. It was a means of escaping the mundane life of the real world: school, chores, et cetera.
In a word, it was FUN.
Oh, for the days when I sat in front of the television wrapped in one of my Mom's homemade afghans, cross-legged on the floor with my bowl of Cap'n Crunch and my 10-boxtop Tony The Tiger Spoon that set my folks sent away for. (It never dawned on me at the time that eating my Cap'n Crunch with a Tony the Tiger spoon - and out of a Mickey Mouse Club bowl my grandmother had bought for me, at that - might somehow be construed as some sort of betrayal of either Tony, Mickey or the Cap'n; in my mind we were all one big happy family.)
Oh, for the Winter of 1968: the peace and quiet of 7:30 in the a.m., the smell of Mom's homemade hot chocolate on the stove wafting through the chilly air, the warm sound of that fizzing Magnavox and the popping static of Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle and the Go-Go Gophers dancing into focus. Oh, for the days when my brothers and I would sing along with the theme songs to "Underdog" and "Super Chicken." Oh for the days when Space Ghost was a real, true, honest-to-goodness superhero and not just another stupid Jay Leno-wannabe talk show schmuck...
Well, you get the idea.
Those were good days. I miss them. And it saddens me to think that - were it not for the advent of home video and reasonably affordable DVD boxed sets - my sons might have grown up never knowing that same simple joy.
Alas, there has been darkness upon the land for some time now. It began some 20-plus years ago, when the Wicked Witch of the West - also known as Peggy Charren, the veteran kidvid activist who founded the meddlesome Action for Children's Television organization - sent her flying monkeys out to do battle against the idea of kids watching TV simply for the fun of it.
Charren was one of the masterminds behind the Children's Television Act of 1990, which requires television stations to air programming that serves "the educational and informational needs of children." In other words, the stations are being forced to cram education down the throats of young viewers who already get a bellyful of that sort of thing all week at school anyway and could probably use a break.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the importance of television as an educational tool. There is a definite place for educational programming on television, and there have been some very fine programs produced over the years. "Sesame Street" seems to be the standard by which all others have been judged over the past four decades; before that there were "Mr. Wizard" and "Captain Kangaroo," the latter of which was for a time every bit as much standard viewing for me as the evening news was for my parents.
And in the 1970s there were my two personal favorites, both of which aired on ABC-TV: "Curiosity Shop," a sort of hipper alternative to "Sesame Street" that aired on Saturdays and was the brainchild of revered animator Chuck Jones; and the classic Sunday morning series "Make A Wish," a show that was actually produced by ABC News, hosted by folk singer Tom Chapin and featuring songs written by his brother, the late, great singer-songwriter Harry Chapin. Shows like these really DID make learning fun, and (in my house, at least) brought parents and children together to share in the experience.
For the most part, however, we as kids tended to view school the same way we adults tend to view our jobs: it's nice to be able to take a break once in a while. I doubt that's changed much during the years in which I went from being an idealistic youngster to a sometimes crotchety old fogey. And there's nothing wrong with that. Or, at least, there shouldn't be.
But the Peggy Charrens of the world seem to think that if our kids aren't getting some kind of lesson crammed down their throats every second of the day, their lives will be a total waste. I can't prove it, of course, but I can't help thinking that Peggy Charren's kids probably spent a lot of their childhoods wishing their mother would mind her own cotton-pickin' business.
The biggest problem I have with Charren's notion of what constitutes healthy viewing fare for children is that her "ideal programming" has always seemed to me to be extremely narrow in focus, and in many ways even more unbelievable than the relatively innocent cartoons she worked so diligently to take off the air.
Look at Barney, that nauseatingly-sweet purple dinosaur that was all the rage when my oldest son was a pup and seems to have something of a comeback in the past few years. Sure, many critics gave his show high marks for teaching children important values and other things they really ought to be learning from their parents and teachers, instead of from some long-extinct lizard who most likely would have eaten those kids in real life.
But those lessons are, in many cases, unrealistic. Many of the "truths" that the show espoused can only be true in a perfect world - something this world most definitely is NOT, and never will be. The same was true of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," a show that I'll be the first to admit certainly deserved most of the accolades it received during its run. It would quite nice indeed if all the world were like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, but it isn't. And that's something not all the sneakers and comfortable sweaters in the world is likely to ever change.
Even "Captain Kangaroo" was guilty of this sort of overzealous idealism to an extent. But while the good Captain worked hard to teach us about how the world should be, Mr. Moose could always be counted on to show up and pull one of his pranks with the ping-pong balls and remind us how the world really was.
The lesson we learned from Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose was this: Work hard to try and make it a better world - but don't be surprised at the end of the day if there's somebody out there not getting the message. Idealism tempered with a healthy dose of reality.
While I had - and still have - the utmost respect for Fred Rogers, the simple truth of the matter is that the world he wanted us to live has never existed and almost certainly never will. Kid's shows like his - to borrow a quote I read in a Time magazine article many years ago - "shelter kids from the rude real world - a strange notion of education indeed."
That's why I gravitated to Captain Kanagroo instead of Mr. Rogers. And that's why I loved and continue to love the old Warner Brothers characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and the Road Runner - characters who taught us to take a stand for what we believe in, to not take any guff off the Elmer Fudds and Yosemite Sams of the world, and to do what needs to be done to make matters right on those occasions when we should have turned right at Albuquerque.
It may not be a popular opinion (I know it would certainly curl Peggy Charren's hair to hear me say it), but I have always maintained that a child can learn more about the real world from watching just one of the old "Looney Tunes" classics than from every episode of "Mr. Rogers," "Barney" or "Teletubbies" ever filmed. And if a kid needs a Saturday morning cartoon to teach him how to clean his room, maybe there's a bigger problem with this kid and his parents that needs to be addressed. (Not that I'm the one who needs to be preaching about the value of a clean room; you should see the condition my workroom at home is in...)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I never knew of any kid who threw himself off a cliff because he saw Wile E. Coyote walk away from such a fall on Saturday morning. I have, on the other hand, known several kids who got the crud beat out of them because they followed Mr. Rogers' advice and turned the other cheek when the bully on the playground started picking a fight.
Personally, I'd rather have my kid watch the Coyote any day. Thank God for home video...
During the House Hearings on Children's Television in the early 1990s, Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey offered up the following sound bite for media types to chew on for awhile: "Children's TV on commercial broadcast television today remains the video equivalent of a Twinkie."
To be fair to Mr. Markey, that was actually a pretty accurate statement. But what he and Peggy Charren and countless others seem to forget is that Twinkies were never meant to be the major staple of one's diet. A Twinkie is a treat, something to be savored and enjoyed after a nutritious meal or as a small reward for some chore. Nobody expects a kid to live on nothing but Twinkies, not even the kid.
So it is with children's television. Sure, most of it may not have much redeeming value... but so what? It's not supposed to. It's a treat, to be enjoyed after school in the afternoons or on lazy Saturday mornings. And if it's low on educational value, that's okay; after all, there's got to be more to life than always having to learn something new every time you turn around.
All that education can get pretty tiring; what's so bad about a little frivolity to ease the tension once in a while?
(Copyright 2010, by John A. Small)
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