Having children 30 years after being one myself is a strange sensation. There is a tendency to see yourself in your child and a desire to recreate all your favorite things from childhood for your child. I want my kids to play with Star Wars action figures, watch Magic Garden, and get goose bumps when Charlie Brown specials come on TV.

Unfortunately, that was 30 years ago and that was me, not them.

I have fallen into the trap of trying to recreate my childhood. I got so excited when I was able to see Magic Garden on tape for the first time in 25 years. Now that I’ve seen it, I can still marvel at how good it was and what it meant to me as a child, but every viewing of it diminishes the magic it held when I hadn’t seen it. The same goes for Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine, a children’s show from the 70s that I recently found on YouTube. It was great to watch again, but it tarnished the magic of remembering it. This pattern repeats in my life over and over again: Sesame Street, Electric Company, Muppet Show, etc. I have given up buying these old DVDs of my childhood memories. I show my kids the old Sesame Streets and Electric Company episodes, but it doesn’t mean anything to them. Their childhood memories will be of Blues Clues and Dora the Explorer. Unfortunately, the 21st Century TV-watching child knows about VHS and DVD and On-Demand. There is nothing special about a TV program anymore. Dora the Explorer recently had a prime-time special. We gathered around the TV and watched it, and the next day my daughter asked to watch it again. And the next day and the next day. She couldn’t grasp that it was a television program that aired and is no longer airing. She is used to things being on tape or DVD and constantly at her disposal. It cheapens the program, in my opinion. There is no more magic in watching a Charlie Brown special, when you know you can get the DVD and watch it any time you want.




In my day, Charlie Brown specials were once-a-year events. They always began with that SPECIAL animation that made you think, “Aw yeah, we’re in for some shit now!” The specials also had those only-during-Charlie-Brown-Specials Peppermint Patty commercials. They also had bumpers: “We’ll be back with It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown after these words…” They no longer do any of that. Now when Dr. Phil’s credits end, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving simply starts running, with TV-G and ads for Mr. Magorium’s Magic Emporium all over it. And when it’s an act break, it simply starts showing a commercial. It’s incredibly jarring and depressing.

Another problem with showing kids stuff from my past is that it’s no longer appropriate to do so. The DVDs for Sesame Street and Electric Company make it very clear that these shows are of their time and should not be used to educate and entertain today’s children. We also have the 1933-1938 Popeye DVD set. That also plainly states that the cartoons on the set are for adult collectors, not children. I am so sick and tired of this crap. Today’s kids’ shows are all crap. Electric Company and Sesame Street used to be made by people who loved and respected children. Kids’ shows are now made by toy companies and computer animators. Nothing against good computer animation (see Pixar), but today’s animation shows characters vaguely representing the movements of real people. In the 70s and 80s we had terrible animation, too (see Justice League, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but we also had Looney Tunes, Woody Woodpecker and Tom and Jerry on all the time. Cartoons from the 40s, 50s and 60s that were made by people who loved their work.

I don’t understand the hypocrisy of a society that tells us Sesame Street is for adults, but goes out of its way to endorse the potty humor of Shrek and a re-interpretation of Alvin and the Chipmunks, in which the main characters get horny and eat each other’s shit (Not that the two go together….they are separate things in the new movie!) I don’t understand why Popeye is not appropriate for children, but every single kids’ movie now has fart jokes and worse. Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles had to fight to keep their fart scene in a Rated R movie. Now he could market Blazing Saddles as a kids’ movie.

On the other hand, I guess I should be glad that Popeye, etc, is being made available in its original, unedited state. All too often, history is re-written. Disney’s Fantasia, Star Wars, E.T., innumerable Looney Tunes classics, have all been cut and edited to fit today’s standards. And yet, shitting, farting gangsta chipmunks….bring ‘em on.

It’s very true that, as a parent, you need to watch what your kids are watching. Besides the antisocial, vulgar stuff that crops up on TV, there’s the insidious religious stuff. I say insidious because it’s hidden. At this point, most people know Veggie-Tales is a Christian cartoon. It’s not just “oh, be nice to everyone.” It’s “Make sure you pray to Jesus and read the Bible.” Most people know this already, but it’s certainly not marketed as religious programming, and it’s not obvious. It takes watching 20 minutes before you say, “Hey, wait a minute!” I recently had the TV on for the kids while working around the house and I flipped on a new show called 123-Penguins. It’s about space penguins. Good enough. And then at the end, the characters all bowed their heads and prayed to Jesus Christ. What the hell?! I have no problem with religious programming, but just as I want to know that my kids’ shows may contain violence, adult situations and, you know, shit-eating…I want to know that it’s going to be used for religious propaganda.

My son also likes to play a game he found on the computer called Super Chick Sisters. “It’s like Super Mario Brothers!” he told me. Finally I saw the game. It’s a PETA-designed corruption of Super Mario Brothers in which you learn about the horrors of KFC and how beaks are ripped off chickens, etc, etc and you have to defeat the evil Colonel Sanders (I kid you not). Now, I’m not necessarily against the message of the game. I’m against the insidiousness of it. It’s made so kids will want to play it and then be exposed to their propaganda against their will, as it were.

I recently read a book about a society that devalues knowledge and in which the government keeps the public in the dark about an upcoming war, which they don’t care about anyway, since they’re all watching giant interactive TVs and listening to music on tiny little ear buds. The book was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 from over 50 years ago. It’s scary how relevant it is. It is an amazing book that I recommend to everyone. I just saw the movie, too…not terrible, but too hyper-stylized to be effective.

Anyway, my point is that in the book, they tell how it all started with political correctness:
"... Ah, Robinson Crusoe. The Negroes didn’t like that, because of his man, Friday. And Nietzsche. The Jews didn’t like Nietzsche. Now, here’s a book about lung cancer. You see, all the cigarette smokers got into a panic, and so, for everyone’s piece of mind, we burn it ... You see ... we’ve all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal, so we must burn the books."

So which way are we going? On one hand we have ultra-edited, censored classic entertainment and on the other hand we have uncensored, crass, vulgar, antisocial entertainment. Neither option is very appealing.