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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, May 29, 2000
Time to protect kids from . . . Bugs and Daffy?
Welcome aboard, fellow sojourners on this funny old orb of ours. The captain - actually, that would be me - has requested that I advise you to keep your tray tables in the full upright and locked position. We may experience some bumpy going.
Seems we are in trouble. No, hold it: Make that "more trouble." Any number of People in a Position to Know have already told us that we are in an irreversible downward spiral, trailing plumes of smoke . . . but now we learn the only remaining engine has just flamed out.
I hate it when that happens.
Here's the scoop: As you may have already read in your local newspaper, the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association carries an article warning that our little tykes are under assault from an unexpected quarter. They have been targeted by the producers of violent films featuring such disreputable characters as . . . Snow White, Pinocchio and, perhaps not surprisingly, the Rug Rats. (Always thought there was something slightly sinister about those little twerps.)
Thought the kids were safe when you packed 'em off to a G-rated movie? Think again: According to the JAMA article, many if not most G-rated animated flicks are awash in . . . oh, well, all right: contain at least some violent scenes.
The Associated Press reported last week that the researchers "cited scenes of fisticuffs, sword-fighting, gunplay and other aggressive action."
Aggressive action? Oh dear.
(Hey: What kinda high school football teams you think we're gonna have if our kids are brought up on a diet of gentleness, sensitivity and consideration?)
In a strictly limited sense, these fretful fellas may be onto something. Think for a moment: Peter Pan battling Captain Hook. The Roadrunner repeatedly luring the hapless Coyote over the side of the cliff or cunningly steering him into the path of a descending boulder. Elmer Fudd blowing Daffy Duck to smithereens with his shotgun. The hapless Sylvester and his sisyphean quest to capture, subdue and devour Tweety - a scenario which becomes all the more kinky when you crank into the equation just how unappetizing a proposition Tweety really is.
However.
While I realize that generalizing from one individual's experience is statistically unsound and (perhaps) dangerous to one's standing in the great cosmic brotherhood/sisterhood of correct thinking, I've gotta tell you:
I grew up on Yosemite Sam doing his level best to murderize Bugs Bunny, on the Tasmanian Devil laying waste to entire ecosystems, on Donald Duck succumbing to his incendiary temper in front of his three little nephews, Huey, Louie and Dewey, and thereby giving them an object lesson in bad parenting (OK: he was their uncle, but still . . .).
And you know what? I honestly don't feel I was scarred by the experience. Nor were any of my pals.
One of the abovementioned researchers, Fumie Yokota, worries that the slapstick violence in cartoons may have a corrosive effect: "It may desensitize kids so much, they think it's OK and no big deal for somebody to be smacked in the head with a hammer."
Oh, please. This exercise smacks of those attempts that scholars occasionally undertake, driven by who knows what impulse, to Define Humor. Such exercises are without exception deadly, dreary, and ultimately futile.
Humor is . . . what's funny. Kids, even teeny ones, are smart enough to know that Elmer Fudd's efforts to blast that wascally wabbit into oblivion do not constitute an exhortation to subject one's playmates to the same sort of treatment.
Look: Arguably, nothing in this life is harmless. But the cartoons - especially the classics - just don't set my personal alarm bells jangling.
You want to talk worrisome? How about your teen-ager plopping down in front of the TV and popping a video of "Natural Born Killers" into the VCR? Now, that's scary.
Brooks Peterson
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