Being in my line of work I watch a lot of kids shows. Handy Manny, Imagination Movers, Barney, the Wiggles, you name it I watch it, an use it to the beat of my ability for educational purposes. But as I watch I can't help but be occasionally stumped and thrown into deep and introspective thought about some of the motivations for the characters that populate these kid shows. As a writer I have a hard time accepting that what we see on the surface is all that is to these characters.
For example, I can't get through an episode of Barney without wondering if the reason Barney sings and entertains kids is to ensure that he has and endless and easy source of food.
My imagination simply will not allow me to accept what I'm seeing without providing some sort of back story that believably explains the actions of the characters.
I'm sure that Smile Time, an episode of Angel that features a band of demon puppets using their kids show to steal the souls of children, is at least partially to blame for this.
I'll times wonder if there is some sort of government agency that regulates such creatures as Barney, waiting to take them down if the indulge in munching more children than their contract allows.
Picture it, the children entertainment control agency sends their top agent to check up on Barney, as there seems to be a lot of cast rotation on his show lately. The agent enters the studio late at night, and hesitates when he hears a cry and a crunching noise. He draws his weapon, creeps forward... to find Barney in a corner with the kicking feet of a child sticking out of his jaws.
While the kids I work with are enjoying themselves with wholesome edu-tainment, I'm in the corner laughing my head off.
While Bear in the Big Blue House was a great kids show and seems to have been canceled, I still wonder just how those animals came into possession of said house. What horrific fate befell the human owners of the house ? I shudder to think. Those animals are clearly deranged, as they sing at the moon every night. It may have even been the moon that told them to bump off the owners of the big blue house.
Imagination movers is a great show for kids, but I wonder about Uncle Knit Knot, a character that loves boring things and often avoids the movers because they're far too exiting. There has to be more. Perhaps Knittknot is a war veteran, an escaped POW, who escaped his captors using his hand and a piece of jagged metal. A bloodbath ensued, and once escaped, Knitknot stood in the rain, letting it wash the blood and gore off, vowing to live a quiet and boring life to atone for the lives he took. And every once in a while he'll sit in his office, open his drawer and gaze at that scrap of metal, thinking about how he would take out those Movers if be was back in the war.
Now while I am certainly being playful, I'm not trying to be insulting, the shows I mentioned above I use and recommend in my work every day. They are smart and clever and teach some great principles, including problem solving and using your imagination. They may teach it too well, as I watched a lot of shows like that and you can see what happens to my imagination.
But perhaps that's good. As a father I know that I want my son to think and use his mind, especially to understand the world. I want him to question and investigate. Now I don't want him to question authority, or the law, I do want him to be an Independent thinker. And so perhaps watching theses show is good, but tempered with other learning and interactions.
I would be tickled to death if my son were to come to me one day and talk about Handy Manny's days as a Federali before he came to the states to make a living fixing things with his hands and his talking tools that may be aliens bent on world domination.
There's nothing wrong with giving a Back story or using your imagination to try to understand a person's motivations, as long you give them the benefit of the doubt, unlike some of my example above.
Understanding is a gift I want my son to give and receive often, and the ability to imagine will be a great help in making that happen.
But seriously, barney needs to be taken down.
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