Weekly Media – Children’s television is rubbish and teaches them to hate
Like a commitment-hungry girlfriend smuggling a spare toothbrush into her paramour’s bathroom, or a little sister sitting through a whole football match on TV in the hope of being allowed to watch fifteen minute of Land Before Time 3 at half-time, I’m here to claim a bit of the boys’ territory back for the girls. I’m a girl, so obviously there’s not much room in my head for anything but silly shoes, astrology and rock stars in very tight jeans. This may be reflected in my column.
“I was deeply suspicious of Big Bird ‘ he was clearly the sort of stranger my mother had told me not to take sweets from. Watching those four-year-olds clutching at his big yellow hands roused in me the same sort of horror that Michael Jackson’s servants must have felt when little Jordy Chandler, yawning luxuriously, said, ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.”
Blake had it all wrong. Children are not ‘pure’ or ‘innocent’. They are not tiny godheads. Their state is not precious, nor should it be preserved. They are, in fact, filled with boiling, festering hatred. I discovered this a little while ago, when I watched one of those ‘100 best’¦’ programs that channel 4 loves so much. This one was about kids’ TV shows. Settling in for an evening of nostalgia and kitschy charm, I was unprepared for the terrible memories the show stirred up in me. Long-forgotten details of my highly-strung infancy suddenly came flooding back. It’s quite disturbing to see how much of the TV I was made to watch as a child pissed me off, distressed me, or scarred me for life.
Let’s start with Rainbow. God, I hated that show. Even as a three-year-old, I hated it. I remember sitting there and thinking, FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T PATRONISE ME (to paraphrase. I might have been too smart for Rainbow, but I doubt I knew the word Patronise.) Zippy, George, Bungle’¦ I hated them all with a passion. They were so stupid they made me feel violent. I hated Rainbow. Most of all I hated George, who probably had clammy hands and smelt of sucked teddy-bear.
Playdays was objectionable because it made no attempt to disguise its primary motive: to educate. It set out to improve pre-schoolers, like missionaries sallying forth into a rainforest full of joyfully naked cannibals. I didn’t like being talked down to at the best of times, but to be talked down to by a rag doll was intolerable. The whole show expressed a disapproval of mess, excessive noise or dangerous situations. I was the kind of child who enjoyed painting on walls, jumping off speeding roundabouts and putting raisins up my nose, so it was inevitable that the Y Bird and I would not see eye-to-eye.
Sesame Street upset me on a level I can’t expect you to understand. I couldn’t see why Oscar the Grouch couldn’t just be nice to people. I couldn’t see the humour in Miss Piggy knocking Kermit around, or singing puppet cows. I was deeply suspicious of Big Bird ‘ he was clearly the sort of stranger my mother had told me not to take sweets from. Watching those four-year-olds clutching at his big yellow hands roused in me the same sort of horror that Michael Jackson’s servants must have felt when little Jordy Chandler, yawning luxuriously, said, ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.’?
Fireman Sam roused bitter memories in me because if there’s one device I hated it was the stupid sidekick. Elvis Criddlington was as stupid as sidekicks come. A lot of programmes would have been perfectly acceptable, had the main characters not chosen to hang out with cretinous dregs of society. Thomas the Tank Engine had the Fat Controller. Noggin the Nog had that stupid beardy man. The Clangers had the Soup Dragon, who I never quite learnt to trust. Captain Pugwash was the cretinous dreg, along with his thoroughly hateable crew. I never grasped that this was the point of Captain Pugwash ‘ it seemed terrible to me that smart, streetwise characters like Tom the Cabin Boy or Kermit the Frog were constantly eclipsed by the mindless chaos of the morons surrounding them. The only programme I remember enjoying was The Magic Roundabout, a work of glorious genius, where everybody had their foibles but were smart enough to be charming nevertheless. I wonder if it’s odd that Ermintrude the Cow (‘was I lovely, darling?’) is shockingly similar to my good friend Charlotte.
I conclude that children’s television is rubbish and teaches them to hate. Or it did me, anyway. Surely by presenting preschoolers with characters who have all the charm of a vomiting cockroach, and half the IQ, we are at the very least encouraging them to suffer fools gladly. With the rise of reality TV, it’s inevitable that a generation will grow up thinking that it’s fine to be fucking witless ‘ you can still get on TV. Let’s not start them off any younger. I don’t care about whether TV encourages violence, crime and etc ‘ it’s encouraging stupidity in our young people. I don’t know about you, but I won’t stand for it. Let’s go and watch Newsnight.
Postman Pat however, a work of pure genius.