The Fuckedness that is Children’s Entertainment
by Jane Sane
Remember Mr. Rogers? He wrote a show that was designed to teach kids patience, self-control, dignity, and respect for others. This philosophy was unwavering in every single episode, and every single encounter between the characters therein. In one episode, after a scene from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe where X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat peacefully resolved a conflict, Mr.Rogers said “Isn’t it nice to pretend things work out that way?”
He knew what he was up against. The unwavering blindness and arrogance that corrupts everyone. The selfishness that prevents us from seeing the benefits of cooperation. These were some of the problems that Mr. Rogers was aimed at curing, and he was not the only one. People like Jim Henson, Pee Wee Herman, and Raffi,
"If we call them tweens, then we can sell sex to them!"
pioneered this peaceful vision for children’s entertainment.
But despite that, most of what we sell our kids to watch these days it total garbage. Just turn on the Disney Channel any hour of the day and look at the screen. Everything is overdone. The kids are richly dressed, impeccably groomed, and are given lines and parts that make them act a lot older than they are. The drama is totally image-driven. Characters are egotistical, selfish, and destructive. All the while, a soulless laugh-track plays in the background to highlight all the best teases and japes that the characters make amongst themselves, further promoting division and scrutiny between people to reinforce the moral pecking order. Its just plain fucked up.
Barney was the same way. A great big purple pedophile dinosaur keeping a gang of kids hostage in his upper-middle-class dinosaur lair. Giving them presents and feeding them candy so they will sing and dance with him. Sounds a lot like Michael Jackson actually, I wonder if there is any connection there…
So anyway, there’s a lot of shit out there for kids to watch that will teach them how to be spoiled brats with a sense of entitlement. In all seriousness, do not let your kids watch some of this shit, look at it, and tell them what is wrong with it so they know why it is horrible. If that’s not enough just mock the laugh track until they get tired of it and change it to Discovery Channel.
Have you seen the linup for the Discovery Channel. I don’t think watching an episode of Hoarders is really the answer.
While it may not be perfect, seeing the results of the materialistic lifestyle as per Hoarders may help kids recover from the indoctrination they have been given towards a materialistic lifestyle by the Disney Corporation.
May I suggest History Channel? As a kid I watched the history shows on Discovery nearly religiously. Then Discovery went tumbling downhill, and A&E appears to have gone with it.
That being said, I am genuinely appalled at Disney’s particular brand of children’s broadcasting. I was watching shows with my niece and nephew a few weeks ago, and it was absolutely shameful. In this particular episode of whatever it was (something to do with kids who lived in a hotel?), a foreign exchange student from one of the Eastern nations went to the wrong extra-cirricular class. Rather than have someone politely tell him he was in the wrong class like a normal person would, some very obvious rich-girl type of character got up and screamed in his face: “YOU. NO. LEARN. HERE. WRONG CLASS.” and pointed towards the door. That, amongst several other things in the show, left me boggled and stunned that my brother was letting his children watch such terrible crap.
Frankly, I think Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry were considerably less harmful. Sure, there was violence and whatnot, but as far as I can recall, children weren’t stupid enough to think that they could strap themselves to a giant red rocket and fly over canyons. It was exaggerated to such a point of silliness that the nature of the impact it left on a kid’s mind was entirely different. Was it particularly educational? Generally not, but it was still leaps and bounds above the programming that’s on TV now.