As I lay the finishing touches of a business venture (one can only hope it works out. If not I’ll be asking people if they want hot chocolate with their maple walnut doughnut at some point in the not too distant future), I had some time to expend with my daughter.
Lauren-Alessandra is two years old and watches – surprise – cartoons. I sat and watched Treehouse with her, bonding with my gal as it were. While my brain was put to the test with Dora the Explorer and Blues Clues, I confess I immediately yearned for Snagglepuss or Mutley.
Times have indeed changed. The cult of the Saturday morning cartoon is all but gone now. No more uncensored Bugs Bunny and questionable, albeit hilarious, stereotypes. No more Speed Buggy. No more Dungeons and Dragons, Captain Caveman, Flintstones, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and no more Superfriends. No more nothing. I used to expend a generous three hours eating sugar (and not the brown stuff) and watching shows early in the morning before beginning my long day in the outdoors semi-unsupervised.
Now it’s education-this and eat healthy nut bars-that. I saw the development of this revolution unfold before my eyes well before Lauren was born. If you recall, it was the ’sitcom with a message’ program genre like Saved by the Bell (started by Degrassi Jr. High) that littered Saturday mornings with their tired, trash clichés. Anyone who needed lawful lessons from Screech had deeper issues to contend with.
Since hanging around with the little tyke, I pretty much know how to speak Spanish and roll a cigar – though I argue Speedy Gonzalez was far more effective in teaching the language – and gain to grandma’s house using a sundial.
I’m not going to say the aforementioned cartoons were better than anything on today. However, the great cartoons of today (Futurama, The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, King of the Hill and not so long ago, Spawn, to name a few) are adult in nature and find their slots in the evening. Rather, I’m talking about ingesting an abnormal amount of cartoons – good or bad – in a tight compact time span.
Somehow all these new animation shows seem so…so…hollow. Yeah, the quality is great (Baby Einstein is teaching about classical music now), but how I miss tawny Saturday cartoons that spoke nothing to me! It seems to me some shows and video games are extremely intelligent and challenging. I’m all for it, but gosh, Saturday mornings were great, no?
Once upon a time there was a nice balance between fun TV, educational TV, and going to learn about life outside as we burned off the sugar.
Is it me? Nah.
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