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Kids entertainment vs. edutainment
Topic Started: May 28 2008, 11:18 AM (268 Views)
Col
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Not Poodle
They've been advertising it for ages, but it just came on the telly again and it reminded me to post this topic. :) They've been advertising this Thomas and Friends thing (Thomas the Tank Engine) at the Norfolk Showground for a few weeks now. I think it ends after the bank holiday. But anyway, the topic...

Maybe I'm missing somethingg here and maybe the psychology of it all is actually correct, but back when I was a kid, I never picked up on the lessons or morals of the story of a cartoon of kids entertainment program. Now, thinking back, I think I can see what lessons or morals were taught by the things i used to watch, but I still can't actually think of all that many which do actually have a lesson to be learnt or a moral to the story.

Even though I never picked up on the lessons or morals when I was little, now the small few that I can think of are plainly obvious:
- Scooby Doo: There are no such things as monsters/ghosts
- Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Recycle, think green, don't polute, save the planet*
- Thomas the Tank Engine: Respect authority, stick to the rules
- Top Cat: Same as Thomas the Tank Engine, except with a policeman rather than an official
- Rugrats: All sorts
- Recess: All sorts

But there doesn't seem to be anything which simply keeps kids happy, occupied or quiet anymore. It always has to teach something. Why doesn't every single program aimed at older generation do the same thing? It seems to me like, nowadays, the older generations are the ones who need educating. By that, I mean age ranges of 13-19, 30-45 and 60+.

The teens need to be taught what's right and wrong, middle-aged people need to learn about what to teach their kids and consider what they're going ot be growing up with rather than sticking with old ways like my dad, and the older generation need to learn what the hell they're on about before they start complaining and causing more trouble over what they're complaining about because they don't know the consiquences.

The younger kids need to remain ignorant of the world around them to have a happy childhood, but they should be learning the basics of life, as they are taught already really.

But what ever happened to the shows which don't appear to teach anything or provide a moral? Maybe they actually do, but the lesson or moral is obscure. Examples include, and are certainly not limited to:
- Tom and Jerry
- The Flintstones
- The Jetsons
- Animaniacs and their associated cartoons like Pinky and the BRain, Rita and Runt, Slappy Squirrel...
- Looney Tunes
- Tiny Toons
- Sharky and George
- Hey Arnold
- Johnny Bravo
...

Is it possible that computer and video games may be the reason for a lack of TV entertainment for kids anymore? We all know how incorrect the government's ideas of modern childhood are, but is it possible that companies might be thinking that we have enough entertainment out of video games, so something different should be on the TV?

Discuss.
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DMHowe
Do not try and eat the cake, only try and realise the truth.
See where you're coming from, but given dibble tended to come out worse than TC, did it really teach morals? ;)

In later Tom & Jerry, Tom would get punished for misbehaving, and very often Jerry would feel bad and they'd "reconcile", so there was an element of teaching to be "nice", but I wouldn't like to say...

Sharky and George... crime busters of the sea... damn that had a memorable jingle.

I'm not sure animaniacs has any real teachings... though they did tend to make reference to "great" people - Einstein, Picasso etc. So they might've taught about such things via that medium but... again, not sure.

...

I wasted my childhood to cartoons. 0.o
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Waffles
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WT4EEEEEEEEEEEGBSF
Cartoons are meant to be fun, not educational. It's just that the people who make them run out of "innovative" things and try to adapt life problems into children's television. It's the parent's responsibility to educate right from wrong, not broadcasting companies.
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DMHowe
Do not try and eat the cake, only try and realise the truth.
Waffles
May 28 2008, 12:27 PM
Cartoons are meant to be fun, not educational. It's just that the people who make them run out of "innovative" things and try to adapt life problems into children's television. It's the parent's responsibility to educate right from wrong, not broadcasting companies.

True, but there's no real problem with teaching some morals through another medium.
Better they teach them than go against them by showing the protagonists behaving inappropriately and getting away with it.
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Waffles
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WT4EEEEEEEEEEEGBSF
Oh my God. Was it The Magic Bus or something? That taught me that eating carrots makes you turn orange.
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GarydosRC
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Resident Nintendo advocate
How did you not include the Magic Roundabout? That show was just too freaky.

It's not just kids shows that have lessons, if you look at Family Guy, they always have to have lessons and it annoys me that if they didn't have lessons people would consider it more offensive. Good thing American Dad parodies this by have lessons that the characters don't learn.
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Tiptup
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Funk.
Some of the Tom and Jerry's and Loony Tunes taught children to find humor in racial stereotypes. Thus began the revolution of children's television, bringing in new, and crapper replacements such as 'Tom and Jerry Kids' and 'Baby Loony Tunes' which taught us being mean is wrong. B******s. :(
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sqeak
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South park has gone all preachy after series 10, nothing wrong with it, it's still as awesome, but you know. Don't wind up scientologists, bonno should accept being number two. that sort of stuff.
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GarydosRC
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Resident Nintendo advocate
Tiptup
May 28 2008, 02:26 PM
Some of the Tom and Jerry's and Loony Tunes taught children to find humor in racial stereotypes. Thus began the revolution of children's television, bringing in new, and crapper replacements such as 'Tom and Jerry Kids' and 'Baby Loony Tunes' which taught us being mean is wrong. B******s. :(

Also they all had a general message:

'Now, stop saying you want stuff remade.'
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TimeShift
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PK Thunder!
Legends
When I was young I just thought TV was something fun to watch. He knew there were lessons to be taught? Does The Simpsons teach a lesson? Speaking of which, I hate how the cartoon always starts with something random which branches out to rest of the story. And at the end you forgot what happened at the start cos it was so irrelevant.

I'm going to go lie down now. That Simpsons thing was random.
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picollo no.
Wolfos
sqeak
May 28 2008, 03:30 PM
South park has gone all preachy after series 10, nothing wrong with it, it's still as awesome, but you know. Don't wind up scientologists, bonno should accept being number two. that sort of stuff.

Yeah it has which sorts of annoys me in a way, especially the end of the Imaginationland episodes. They were hilarious but the morals are a bit annoying.

But seriously when I was younger I didn't really pay any attention to the morals in the cartoons I watched which I would easily notice now. Infact my mum banned me from watching Tom and Jerry because she felt the violence was a bad influence on my poor feeble mind. But if the morals are well implemented and done in a way youngsters can understand them I believe it's a good thing, really just anything to decrease the number of kids shows based on fart jokes by half would be good because that an overcrowded market.
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