It didn't take long watching a modern children's entertainment program with our grandson recently to figure out that "modern children's entertainment" might just be what's wrong with the world.
Remember these?
I laughed every Saturday morning while I learned a lot from Wil. E Coyote and his buddy Roadrunner.
Concepts like "do your research", "actions have consequences" and "don't rush into things" were taught with extraordinary animation skill and thought provoking humor.
Everything Coyote did was possible...maybe not plausible, but possible. It was up to me to decide what was too big a stretch for my own imagination. And whether it was luck, or speed, Roadrunner always escaped unharmed. Maybe it was because he wasn't trying to hurt anyone,,,just minding his own business, speeding through life.
Coyote, on the other hand, always suffered consequences. Although he never "died", he ended every cartoon either covered in bandages, walking on crutches or maybe even looking a little like an accordion... whatever the creators dreamed up, Wil. E Coyote never got off "scott-free" as my dad would say.
Fast forward to what I watched a day ago.
Little dough-y looking figures, most of whom didn't have faces, speeding around, solid bodies mounted on 1950's style plastic ovals, moving as if a 3-year old was providing their animation. Yet, they were sailing cars off of bridges, crashing through main street, or sliding into an impossibly cramped garage with a auger-like lift to the top floor where the driver could sail back into the air without ever touching his brakes. All in pursuit of an orange and turquoise gorilla that was blown up, run-over and crashed into without suffering a single injury. He never even needed a band-aid.
After a loud and seriously over-stimulating half-hour, the gorilla admitted defeat by disappearing behind a dough-y looking building as the next villain appeared in his place and the robo-figures raced back to the garage, high-fiving and spinning tires.
In the real world, there are plastic highways and model garages, even a turquoise and orange gorilla whose arms move (if you consider spinning in their socket moving) and whose eyes reflect more surprise, and a poor paint job, than intelligence enough to conquer the world. They are for sale on-line and in the toy departments of every big box general store in America and promoted regularly on every children's channel and the internet. You can even get the entire entertainment set....no imagination needed.
It's a sad day indeed that 24-hour entertainment requires no IQ, no quality or skills in "art" and certainly no educational component. All that's needed is poor quality action and lots of noise to spew forth and settle into the minds of our children.
There are some lessons to be learned here......BEEP, BEEP!!!!
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