I see a lot of fellow Europeans in this thread who prefer local TV series to preachy US cartoons (me too). This is slightly off-topic, do you have an opinion on the old Dutch show Alfred J. Kwak[1]? It was extremely political, but somehow I didn't mind when I was a kid. I wonder if it was simply surreal enough to make up for all the reality that it depicts? Has anyone re-watched this series again with kids, 25 years later?
What Danes consider healthy children’s television
181–190 of 200 posts
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#182Hi kids, don't forget we live in the future; seems odd to discuss something and not have a link to it.
Onkle Reje:
http://www.dr.dk/Ramasjang/Onkel_Reje/forside.htm
It may be in Danish, but it is for 4 year olds.
What would Rasmus Klump do?
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may not be aware, but those cartoons were originally made for adults , to be shown in cinemas before the main feature film.
imo, often the things made for adults are better suited for kids than the things designed specifically for kids (by misguided adults). Kids aren't dumb, they just lack refined thinking models adults develop as they grow up. Eg: I think we all have experienced reading again something we read young and loved and finding a lot more meaning in it. (I'd still avoid showing some things to them of course.)
> I think we all have experienced reading again something we read young and loved and finding a lot more meaning in it.
My favourite example of this comes from comics:
Try looking at Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run (issue #20 or 21 of volume 2 - the 1982 revival). It's a masterpiece that is well worth reading as an adult.
Now try looking at early 80's X-Men. While e.g. Days of Future Past is good, one of the reasons some of the arcs like Days of Future Past stands out so much is that many of these series were so full of excessive amounts of tedious exposition recapping things that just happened and reminding about and explaining things to the reader all the time, and the standouts were the few exceptions that treated the reader as a person with somewhat more mental capacity than a goldfish.
At the time, I didn't see the difference. I enjoyed X-Men and Swamp Thing equally. Now, going back and looking at those old X-Men issues is - with a few exceptions - almost painful and only worth it for the nostalgia.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#184The most astute observation is that characters on Danish kids TV are often completely, unapologetically flawed. This makes them relatable to kids, and kids enjoy watching them in all their dysfunction. And I actually disagree with the premise that this contains no lessons or morals. Children are able to see clearly how ridiculous and ill-advised the behavior of these characters is, and so learn to recognize it in the…
I've seen a number of British comedians make similar statements. American audiences want their comic lead to be the cool guy making witty remarks, British audiences want the lead to be the butt of the jokes.
Stephen Fry said
>You know that scene in Animal House where there’s a fellow playing folk music on the guitar, and John Belushi picks up the guitar and destroys it. And the cinema loves it. [Belushi] just smashes it and then waggles his eyebrows at the camera. Everyone thinks, "God, is he great!" Well, the British comedian would want to play the folk singer. We want to play the failure.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#185At the risk of making a tu quoque argument - if you want to see unhealthy children television, look no further than Cartoon Network.
I think it's possible to dispute not only that Cartoon Network is unhealthy children's television, but also that it is children's television at all. Several of its shows seem aimed at all-ages audiences, some are exclusively adult--so much so that they call the block Adult Swim--and only a few are primarily for kids. Of those that do seem to be kids' shows, it seems to me that they are better than the cartoons I watc…
Exactly, Cartoon Network is about cartoons, but cartoons != children television. Networks like Sprout, Disney Jr., PBS (schedule dependent), etc show much more typical children's television.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#186"Supreme Being is not only imaginary" I was immensely proud when my son at 4 years old decided to stand up in his pre-school class and point this out to everyone.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12274765 and marked it off-topic. This is a classic flamewar topic and the guidelines ask us to resist introducing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I've made this comment in response to this type of moderation before: if comments expressing skepticism (or even cute stories about kids being kids) are detached, but comments lacking skepticism it are not, then a bias is created in which it becomes okay for the religious to discuss those intellectual aspects of their beliefs suitable for HN, but not anyone else.
And FWIW, I thought the commenters in this thread did a decent job of not turning it into a flamewar.
So if this comment was detached because it received a lot of flags, consider that it may be effectively suppressing an interesting intellectual viewpoint because of one group's disproportionate taking of offense at disagreement, to the point of feeling the need to flag this comment but not other, similar comments that support that group.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#187Can we please edit the title to match the (correct) original "children's" instead of the modified (incorrect) "childrens'"
'childrens' is 'more correct' because it makes the most grammatical sense. Since it's genitiv, why would you apostrophe it, add another character for what reason? Whose ball is it? The dogs ball. Whose exhaust is it? It's the rockets exhaust. The apostrophe is used to mark silent letters inbetween the slew of two words. It is -> It's ~ It(i)s.
The apostrophe is used to indicate genitive in English. I think you're thinking of the more subtle double genitive case that you sometimes see in examples like "A brother of the man's" (double genitive) instead of "a brother of the man" (normal genitive). English is strange, but you can indicate the genitive with either the "of" construction, or the apostrophe.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll punt as to the accuracy of your "moralizing America" sneer, but remember that Disney chose their mascot--not the American public. Additionally, my understanding is that Donald Duck had at least a few American fans. Though their numbers are probably limited to the few Americans who enjoy Looney Tunes, Homer Simpson, and the stereotypical sitcom dad (among other characters).
TIL that Donald Duck isn't very popular in the US. I grew up with a weekly Disney comic book that was a collection of mostly Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse (detective) stories. Almost always skipped Mickey, he's just way too boring as a character. But didn't you guys have Duck Tales as well? I thought that was massively popular.
I don't think it was. It lasted a while, but that had to do with it being the first syndicated afternoon Disney animated cartoon. (Gummi Bears was a saturday morning one first.) It lasted a bit because of that, but around the same time you had the really popular cartoons and shows, like Tiny Toon Adventures, Batman the Animated series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Ducktales was a very well done series, but what appeals to adults doesn't always appeal to kids, and the Ducktales movie bombed so bad it canceled the rest of the movies based on Disney Afternoon shows.
For comparison, the best Disney Afternoon series in the states was Aladdin, which outlasted Ducktales by several years, and spawned several direct to DVD movies.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Britain, the nihilistic Looney Tunes cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry and (above all else) Roadrunner were vastly more popular than anything by Disney. In fact, I don't think I've even seen a single Mickey Mouse cartoon...
I'll take Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner v Wile. E. Coyote (supra-genius) over Disney any day of the week.
of course, because those are adult cartoons filled with adult references a cultured person would get, and more or less robbed the 1940s for comedy. It's more about how dynamic 1940s culture was compared to our own, I think.
If you go a bit later, to when they started doing new animation for Looney Tunes tv specials in the 70s and 80s, the cartoons got dumber as well.
Re: What Danes consider healthy children’s television
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've given me a nostalgia-trip. In return I give you: The Wombles!
I used to think the theme tune went 'The wombles of Wimbledon: common are we' but actually it's 'The Wombles of _Wimbledon Common_ are we'. I had never heard of Wimbledon Common, although it's only 4 miles from where I was born.
I find that strangely adorable, thanks for sharing.