Whatever happened to the great American tradition of Saturday morning cartoons? I was flipping around the channels on my TV a couple Saturdays ago and, just out of curiosity, I started checking the networks to see what kind of kid programming they were airing these days. My girls are both grown up now, so I’ve gotten used to being able to sleep in on Saturdays and then doing some writing in the morning. The television is hardly on anymore on a Saturday before noon.
I was shocked and saddened to find there was absolutely nothing for kids to watch on weekend mornings. The major networks are all news shows, college sports, and morning entertainment shows. I even found some thirty-minute paid programming to help me have better abs, make better grilled sandwiches, and have longer, more pleasurable erections.
Not exactly kid-friendly.
Even the cartoon heavy hitters, like Nickelodeon, Disney, and the Cartoon Network, are just running repeats of the same dreck they air twenty-four/seven during the week. There’s nothing aimed at a Saturday morning target audience.
Where did the good shows go? Is Saturday morning not a thing anymore? Am I old and losing my grasp on reality and the modern world?
All right, I already know the answer to that last one, so let’s move on.
I remember as a kid, waking up to an alarm clock all week long to get up and get ready for school. I would crawl out of bed, mumbling and complaining about how tired I was as I put my shoes on the wrong feet and stumbled out into the kitchen for a hot breakfast of burned toast. (My mom was not a great cook, but we can delve into that one on another blog post).
On Saturday morning, I woke without an alarm clock (at least an hour earlier than I did during the weekdays) and leapt out of bed in a panic that I might have already missed some of my favorite shows. I would run into the kitchen to pour a bowl of some sugary mess that claimed to have 8 essential vitamins that made it healthy, then squatted down in front of the coffee table with my breakfast to watch the best television programming of the entire week. The volume was on its lowest setting of course, because my parents were usually still asleep.
Kids today are missing out on the greatest cartoons ever made. I’m old enough to remember the classic shows that were still running from the World War II and Cold War eras, with all their subtle racism (and sometimes not so subtle) aimed at the Japanese and Germans. At a very young age, I would watch images of violence between cats and mice, coyotes and flightless birds, and even some awesome explosions and gunplay between a hunter and a rabbit. If you don’t know the shows I’m referring to, it’s probably because you’re under the age of twenty and too young to have experienced the joy of Warner Brothers at their best.
But who am I kidding? Nobody under the age of twenty is reading this blog.
I remember there was some discussion in the 1980’s about whether or not violent cartoons and kid shows contributed to people becoming violent in real life, but I don’t believe the weekly episodes of Will and Holly running from dinosaurs ultimately did me any harm.
There was an unpleasant incident in college when I was running across the kitchen floor, chasing after a mouse while swinging a broom and screaming “Die, you little bastard. Die!” But, I’m almost certain that little bit of violence was destined to happen, cartoons or not.
During the early 2000’s, when my girls were little, there was much tamer stuff to watch, but Saturday morning was still a mecca of kids’ shows. EM1’s favorites were Bear in the Big Blue House, and Blue’s Clues. There was also a sprinkling of Fairly Odd Parents, and Jimmy Neutron thrown in for good measure.
There was also a certain purple dinosaur, who shall remain nameless, that was banned from our house. If any kid show was destined to create violent, emotionless psychopaths out of an entire generation, it was that one. I still have nightmares about those smiling, dead-eyed children, chanting around a stuffed dinosaur and bringing it to life. A cartoon about devil worship would have been less disturbing.
But, even possessed children and their terrifying, magically animated, stuffed toys is better than nothing.
These days, I don’t see anything for kids to look forward to on a Saturday morning and I think that’s kind of sad. I guess in a world of streaming video on demand, on-line video gaming, and twenty-four hour, content-specific channels, there just isn’t a need for it.
It isn’t special, anymore.
It isn’t Elmer Fudd trying to stab Bugs Bunny with a spear while singing opera songs. It isn’t thinly veiled drug references while Shaggy and Scooby-Doo chase ghosts. It isn’t Snidely and Muttley trying to murder a pigeon for some inexplicable reason.
There is no joy or excitement left in Saturday mornings.
I seriously wonder what kids growing up today will reminisce about when they are adults. What era-specific events will stick in their minds enough that they will talk to their own kids about the good old days?
Based on this blog, I’m guessing it will have something to do with how grandpa wouldn’t shut up about watching cartoons while they were trying to play video games with their friends.
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