Today’s Cartoons

Today’s Cartoons

My bowling buddy Captain Glen* posted this and it just set me off.

In the good old days, cartoons were fun.  Mice filling a football stadium till it almost burst, rabbits foiling hunters, ducks fooling rabbits, ducks who got tied in knots trying to set up a beach chair, a cayote getting beaned or blown to smithereens trying to catch a fast running bird, and a bubble armed sailor protecting the innocent from bullies when he ate his spinach.  All these and more that as kids would have us roaring with laughter and yelling for more.

Today’s cartoons?  Yes, I have watched them, with youngest son and later with my grandchildren.  Every blanking one of them has to teach something or convey a message.  They teach the alphabet, and numbers, and sounds that a farm animal makes.  They demonstrate how bullying is mean, why you should be polite to mommy, and have good manners at dinner. 

None of these lessons of today’s cartoons are funny.  They don’t entertain; kids do not yell for more.

Do they teach children?

Maybe, but I’m pretty sure that the alphabet song has done the trick for generations, a dancing singing letter does not really improve the process.  “Old McDonald” nailed the farm animal issue just fine.  Popeye and the road runner preached comeuppance to bullies.  Do the new cartoons successfully teach children to be polite? 

You tell me. I don’t see it.

But Cranky, those old cartoons were so violent!  

Maybe, but I don’t remember any kids emulating what they saw.  No boulders dropped on heads, no cats being turned inside out, no bombs planted under butts.  As a matter of fact, we learned all these things could have dire consequences.

But Cranky in all those old cartoons no one ever was killed from the bombs and falling pianos and electrocutions…wasn’t that confusing to young impressionable minds?

Well, no, because even at a very young age it was pretty clear that these were JUST CARTOONS!  Children can separate real from fantasy.  They can do this because they have a brain!

We learned lessons form those old cartoons while actually being entertained.  More importantly we also learned to laugh and we learned that every gad dang thing in your young life does not have to be a freaking learning experience…we learn by experiencing stuff and we can learn while we laugh.

So yes, I am glad I grew up with cartoons that were produced by entertainers and not graduates with a degree in childhood education.  Cartoons produced for fun and not with the expectation of making the world a better place.  The world is a lesser place without laughter. And almost all of today’s cartoons do not entertain and are not funny.

Teach your children in school, read to them, teach them by example, but for crying out loud let them laugh and learn to just be a kid some of the time.

At least “Sponge Bob” gets it.  A talking sponge that lives in Bikini Bottom.  Do children get the Bikini Bottom joke?  No, and they also don’t believe that sponges can talk and sing and catch jelly fish with a net.  They do laugh and enjoy the silliness.  Let them, life is full of nothing else but lessons, a little bit of silliness from a duck or a rabbit or a sponge will not hurt them.   

*BTW we clinched first with three weeks to go thanks to Glen learning how to hit the ten-pin…wish he could teach me.