Cable Teehee
Boy, am I glad that my parents pulled the plug on cable when we were little. The biggest reason for it was that me and my siblings would spend too much time on it and it wasn’t exactly healthy. Now that we have cable TV, not only can I watch what I missed out on but sift through all the crap as well.
Last night while babysitting for some really wonderful kids, the DVD player started malfunctioning and we wound up watching cartoons instead. “The Fairly Oddparents” is one show that I watched that I decided to bring up here. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s about a young boy named Timmy who’s not too bright in a lot of his decisions. He has two fairy godparents who follow him around in all the episodes that grant all of his wishes and bicker at each other at the drop of a pin.
In last night’s episode, Timmy’s parents, who are completely unmotivated to be good parents wind up on the “Bad Parent Hunter” TV show pursued by a Steve Irwin wannabe after letting Timmy do all kinds of dangerous things. It finally dawns on them that they should be good parents and be more concerned about the wellbeing of their child, which apparently translates as being in your kids face all the time and making yourself look like the bad guy. All this eventually making Timmy wish that he had to do the opposite of what his parents said, causing all kinds of damage by the time the episode is done.
What kind of world do we live in when popular television shows for kids try and teach them that parents (or even grownups in general) are stupid and/or evil? Seriously, this is not the first time I’ve seen this happen. Remember those Chuck E. Cheese commercials that showed that parents were all boring people who didn’t know how to have fun? Or how about that cereal ad where the dad tries to steal cereal from his one year old daughter and gets thrown around by her instead? During the commercial break last night, there was even a Fruit Roll-up ad for a new kind of roll-up that put colorful designs on your tongue and the kids at the “Fruit Roll-up” factory tested the apparent coolness of this product by seeing how a robotic parent reacted to a child with designs on their tongue. Needless to say, the robotic parent blew a fuse. Then there was an advertisement for “The Kids Next Door,” a show about a bunch of secret agent kids who launch missions against adults who want to ruin their fun lives in a world where all kids are good guys and most adults are bad guys.
Why do these shows and advertisements appeal to our kids so much? Because they all confirm what kids want to believe: that they are never the bad guys and that grown-us are evil or just plain stupid. Well you know what? It’s time we cut the crap on that sort of lousy advertising ploy because it’s bullshit. Appealing to kids in this manner is just going to teach them to defy authority. Then when they grow up and rebel too much as a teenager, people are just going to say “Oh, that’s just a phase that every kid goes through.” Well, Mr. Smartypants, I never smoked weed or found some way to get myself in trouble with the law in high school because my television never taught me to defy authority. And the kids that grew up with this sort of chip on their shoulder are the ones that most likely will get in trouble.
Last night while babysitting for some really wonderful kids, the DVD player started malfunctioning and we wound up watching cartoons instead. “The Fairly Oddparents” is one show that I watched that I decided to bring up here. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s about a young boy named Timmy who’s not too bright in a lot of his decisions. He has two fairy godparents who follow him around in all the episodes that grant all of his wishes and bicker at each other at the drop of a pin.
In last night’s episode, Timmy’s parents, who are completely unmotivated to be good parents wind up on the “Bad Parent Hunter” TV show pursued by a Steve Irwin wannabe after letting Timmy do all kinds of dangerous things. It finally dawns on them that they should be good parents and be more concerned about the wellbeing of their child, which apparently translates as being in your kids face all the time and making yourself look like the bad guy. All this eventually making Timmy wish that he had to do the opposite of what his parents said, causing all kinds of damage by the time the episode is done.
What kind of world do we live in when popular television shows for kids try and teach them that parents (or even grownups in general) are stupid and/or evil? Seriously, this is not the first time I’ve seen this happen. Remember those Chuck E. Cheese commercials that showed that parents were all boring people who didn’t know how to have fun? Or how about that cereal ad where the dad tries to steal cereal from his one year old daughter and gets thrown around by her instead? During the commercial break last night, there was even a Fruit Roll-up ad for a new kind of roll-up that put colorful designs on your tongue and the kids at the “Fruit Roll-up” factory tested the apparent coolness of this product by seeing how a robotic parent reacted to a child with designs on their tongue. Needless to say, the robotic parent blew a fuse. Then there was an advertisement for “The Kids Next Door,” a show about a bunch of secret agent kids who launch missions against adults who want to ruin their fun lives in a world where all kids are good guys and most adults are bad guys.
Why do these shows and advertisements appeal to our kids so much? Because they all confirm what kids want to believe: that they are never the bad guys and that grown-us are evil or just plain stupid. Well you know what? It’s time we cut the crap on that sort of lousy advertising ploy because it’s bullshit. Appealing to kids in this manner is just going to teach them to defy authority. Then when they grow up and rebel too much as a teenager, people are just going to say “Oh, that’s just a phase that every kid goes through.” Well, Mr. Smartypants, I never smoked weed or found some way to get myself in trouble with the law in high school because my television never taught me to defy authority. And the kids that grew up with this sort of chip on their shoulder are the ones that most likely will get in trouble.
posted by Jaimetud at 4:32 PM
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