Today Evan and I spent a rather pleasant day together. After a leisurely start we headed off to the swimming pool and lounged in it’s sub zero temperatures. We then went over to Pizza Hut and I let him watch me consume twice my own body weight of all-you-can-eat pizza (you have to teach gluttony when they are young). The remainder of the afternoon was spent at home playing the “hitting Daddy on the head with a variety of objects” game. It was a fun day.
Amy however wasn’t too impressed that she was to be excluded from events, and so in an effort to defuse any meltdowns I told her that Evan and I were going to buy her a present when we were out. Bribery: the solution to all parenting dilemmas.
So between the pool and Pizza Hut I nipped into HMV and bought a Tom and Jerry dvd. Amy’s been talking about Tom and Jerry for a while now, some boy at nursery likes them I think, and as I’m a sucker for classic cartoons so willingly forked a fiver for three hours of cat on mouse action.
However when we sat down to watch it this evening she rapidly became very distressed and upset, finally asking me to turn it off after about three minutes. When I asked her why she told me she didn’t like the cat being mean to the mouse.
So there goes that idea I had for buying her Slaughterhouse III for Christmas then.
That’s the problem with modern television. It just doesn’t desensitize you like it used to. Every age group, demographic, and shoe size has it’s own dedicated TV channel. And devices like Sky+ and Tivo have meant that you never watch anything when it is actually being broadcast anyway. When I was little there were only three TV channels and they used to stop broadcasting in the afternoon. There were rumors of a magical world called America where they had hundreds of different channels and we used to sit around our TV sets and marvel at why anyone would ever leave the house.
Well we have hundreds of different channels over here now, and people do rarely leave the house. But paradoxically there just isn’t the variety any more. Tune into Cbeebies and you get twelve different flavors of worthy, educational, and ultimately bland children’s programing. Nickelodeon has twenty different rip offs of Ren and Stimpy, and The Disney Channel… well I don’t know what the Disney Channel has because when we had Sky you had to pay extra for that, but you get my point.
Back in my day children’s programing was so thin on the ground that you took your entertainment where you could get it. That’s why I’ve developed a love of Laurel and Hardy, Looney Tunes, and Tom and Jerry. They were all conveniently brief gap fillers that the schedulers shoved into the breaks between programming whenever needed; and my generation descended on them like ravenous dogs chasing table scraps.
Of course I’m not really upset that Amy didn’t like the violence in Tom and Jerry. In fact I’m proud of her sensitivity and empathy. But I definitely have a rant brewing about modern children’s TV programing and the state of the multi-channel media in general. But perhaps I had better gather my arguments for a little while before unleashing my full fury.
Watch this space.
