- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 6
-
Sparkle (0)
I've never been much of a television watcher, but I admit that when I was a child, Saturday morning cartoons were like religion to me. Every week, I'd grab a gimongous bowl of cereal (usually Kellogg's Corn Flakes with obscene amounts of sugar added to taste), and sit down in front of the television for a morning's worth of catatonia. One of my favourite shows was The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour -- oh, that wacky bunny, and his hysterical hijinks at the expense of poor Elmer Fudd! Oh, that harebrained Coyote -- would he ever learn that he might want to consider a supplier other than the Acme Corporation? Watching their silly antics was the perfect way to begin my day -- sort of my tween version of a good cup of coffee and the newspaper crossword -- and part of my ritual to get my weekend off the right start.
Eventually, of course, I outgrew Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner; however, the characters still evoke a feeling of nostalgia for me. Which is why, I suppose, the following conversation I had with my husband this morning disturbed me so.
Marcus had just come into the bedroom after making me my morning cup of tea (because, you see, it was for this sole practice that I married the man). He had just passed by our tiny TV room.
"Hey, remember Bugs Bunny, and Daffy, and Taz?"
"Sure," I said, taking my mug. "They were awesome."
"Not as awesome as they are now, apparently."
"What are you talking about?"
Marcus sat down. "Well, now they have superpowers."
"Excuse me?"
"Yeah. They're all lean and stylized. And they all have superpowers. The Tasmanian Devil's superpower, of course, is spinning. But Bugs Bunny can shoot things with lasers from his eyes."
Horrified, I did a bit of research. It turns out I've been out of the loop for about 18 months -- apparently the characters of the show Loonatics, which debuted last year, are actually the "descendants" of the original characters, and their superpowers come from the fact that they are living in the year 2772.
I don't mind telling you I hate this. I don't hate this in the "goodness - why - do - these - shows - have - to - be - so - violent" sort of reaction that my mother used to view the falling-anvil antics of the original series. I understand that superhero battles and other supernatural forms of violence appeal to kids -- otherwise, how could you explain the runaway success of such cartoons as Teen Titans? I understand that as much as I dislike violent television shows that are aimed at children, I bear a certain amount of responsibility as a parent to ensure that I keep my child from watching them, or at the very least, I communicate with my daughter to ensure that she's not walking away from the television with the wrong message. I understand all of this.
I hate this because the original show was entertaining enough, and the creators are messing with A Good Thing. I hate it because this sort of mindless following of television trends underestimates the fact that children are also entertained by simple and clever, and the writers of the show seemingly ignored this fact when considering how to take "the classic Looney Tunes franchise that has been huge with audiences for decades and bring it into the new millenium."
But the reason I hate it most is because in this day and age, when the news is full of scary monsters doing supernatural things like mixing Red Bull with a gel to make bombs in an attempt to blow thousands of people out of the sky, a falling-anvil joke or a slipped-on-a-banana-peel gag is sometimes the sort of respite we all need from real life.
Contributing Editor Karen Walrond also gets her blog on at Chookooloonks, and her green shopping blog, Emerald Market.
