Commentaries

Cartoons should make kids laugh
 July 10, 2006

 A few months ago my young cousins were staying at my parent's house and I was there on one Saturday morning. They wanted to watch cartoons. So we looked through the channels and found a cartoon they liked. I watched for a few minutes but got bored quite quickly, and went back to visiting with the rest of my family and drinking coffee. When that particular half hour cartoon was over they wanted to watch another one. So we looked through the channels again and found Tom and Jerry. My cousins had never heard of it before, but I assured them they would like it. So we started watching it, my attention didn't stray from the program the entire time, and my cousins were laughing so hard they were out of breath before the first commercial.

What happened to cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, and The Road Runner? These are good cartoons, they are funny, innocent and creative. Most of those qualities children possess but are being taken away from them at too young an age. Cartoons have the villain and the good guy. In the Road Runner the Coyote is the villain, in Tom and Jerry Tom was the villain, and in Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd was always trying to kill that wascally wabbit. None of them ever quite succeeded. Usually the villain would come up with a foolproof plan that would surely doom their nemesis, but would inevitably end up getting blown up, or falling to the bottom of a canyon, or running head first into a wall becoming an accordion. Now that is funny stuff! Seeing Elmer Fudd have Bugs Bunny in his sites pulls the trigger and all of a sudden Bugs slips a cork in the end of the barrel and BOOM! The gun blows up in Elmer's face. Even better is when Wyle Coyote throws an "Acme" bomb at the road runner slips out of his hand and blows him up instead. That doesn't get old, it is funny every time.

New age cartoons still have the same basic plot, the villain and the good guys, and the good guys always win. The difference is this, you have to watch them and think about what is going on. Kids shouldn't have to think about it. The beauty of cartoons is being able to sit down, be entertained, and laugh. These new shows might have one or two jokes in a half an hour program. If we are going to take their innocence away and make them think about what is going on in the show plots, we should at least be teaching them something. Make them watch the history channel, or learn a new language or something useful. Instead these kids are watching the evil villain's plot get outsmarted by the team of Power Rangers. What was wrong with the coyote getting pounded into the ground by the anvil trap he set for the road runner? Or Sylvester the cat getting beat over the head with an umbrella by an old lady?

Andrew Maier
Watertown, SD
Commentaries home  :  Submit a commentary

MPR News
Radio

Listen Now

Schedule

Shortcuts
Hosts
Station Map

Other Radio Streams from MPR

Classical MPR
Radio Heartland

Services

Become a sponsor

In The Spotlight