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What Danes consider healthy children’s television

economist.com

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Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#2

    > And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and 
    > their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being 
    > is not only imaginary, but also gay.
That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#3

> And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and > their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being > is not only imaginary, but also gay. That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.

To me it's just propaganda, normalisation, etc

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#4

> And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and > their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being > is not only imaginary, but also gay. That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.

I think it is just there for the parents, so they won't fall asleep

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#6

> And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and > their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being > is not only imaginary, but also gay. That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.

> That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay.

It turns out that they are not gay, but not because it's inconceivable to children. They just aren't gay. (http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Are_Ernie_and_Bert_gay%3F)

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#7

> And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and > their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being > is not only imaginary, but also gay. That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.

Or Felix Unger and Jack Klugman in The Odd Couple.

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#8
Kaj and Andreea is fantastic!

I'm Dutch but my wife is Danish. She does her utmost best confronting our kids with Danish TV (we live in Holland), so I understand a bit of what the author is on about. I was initially surprised as well.

Truth is, it _is_ entertaining! But most importantly, once you get past the absolutely amateuristic way things are shot (hey, the kids don't care, why should you?), there's a lot of depth to a lot of it. You need to let that depth sink in a bit before you can see the value of it.

For example, the article about Kaj and Andreea:

Probably most striking, though, is another thing lacking: education. Quite simply, there is none, academic or moral. “Kaj and Andrea”, a pair of puppets, are sweet friends, but also goofily flawed: Kaj is terribly self-obsessed, Andrea is warbling and neurotic. When other characters do something wrong, there is little of the obvious consequence-and-lesson resolution of American shows; the results are usually left to speak for themselves.

The lovely thing here is that it is educative, but it's up to the watcher to draw the lesson. Kaj's self-obsession is usually very funny and rather ridiculous. It teaches kids "wow, it's pretty ridiculous to be so self-obsessed". And at the same time it teaches kids that even if you're flawed, that's ok - both Kaj and Andreea appreciate one another and are appreciated and respected by the human co-hosts of their TV shows. This is something that I've not really seen anywhere else.

I'm not convinced that kids learn lessons like these better when it's spelled out for them.

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#9
> But until then, they seem utterly unharmed by a childhood of hearing about the queen’s bottom and watching grandma light some bodily gas on fire.

Is that really as surprising as is implied? To me, none of what the article describes seems like such a bad thing. Sure it's a little weird, but it seems right up there with the humor children enjoy. And not everything has to have a message or a moral at the end of it.

Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television

#10

> And God he says, lives in heaven with Santa Claus and > their dog Marianne, implying that the Supreme Being > is not only imaginary, but also gay. That is like saying Ernie and Bert are gay. I'd appreciate if the author tried a little harder at interpreting childrens television from a childs perspective.

If we are all made in his image, a bit of him must have been gay, trans, fluid, etc. etc.

Or is this not how it works?

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