The limited series Adolescence on Netflix depicted a startling potential result of hands-off parenting.
No spoilers. But it showed how spending too much time online and alone can lead to devastating consequences. They filmed each episode in a single camera shot. It was fascinating.
A lot of problems with kids are blamed on online activities and violent programming. A steady diet of the Internet isn’t good for anyone. It’s so intense and feels so big and immediate. When I was a kid, bullies only bothered us when we saw them in person.
Bugs and Wile E. and Elmer and friends
We faithfully watched the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. Bugs had been around since 1940. This was a classic cartoon collection and mashup that ran from 1968-78. I was six when it started and in our house it was the original “must-see TV.”
It was also violent. Elmer Fudd shot Bugs’ face off. Wile E. Coyote dropped anvils from cliffs in hopes of squishing the road runner, who always got away. These cartoons were so popular that another half hour was added and it became the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show.
The theme song even alluded to the violence: “Road runner, the coyote’s after you. Road runner, when he catches you you’re through!”
A movie based on these old cartoons is finally coming out, likely next year. It was shot in 2022 but never released, even after it got great reviews from test audiences. The executives that green lit this film left the studio partway through production and their replacements didn’t believe in it. They were going to keep the movie hidden forever and take a $40-million tax write-off. But someone had a change of heart, thank goodness.
Coyote Vs. Acme
The movie mixes live action with animation like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Ghost Busters did. Will Forte plays the attorney representing Wile E. in his lawsuit against the ACME company. The coyote claims ACME’s products are inferior because of how many times they malfunctioned when he tried to use them on the Road Runner. But does he actually talk in the film? That might mess with our memories..Wile E. was always silent.
You can’t really compare our childhood cartoons to video games of today where a kid can rack up points for killing other people. We had the same angst as any other kids did but we weren’t stalked and haunted by our haters like kids are today. Even as an adult, I balk at being instantly accessible to everyone. Someone can toss out a hurtful comment in flash. Kids are especially vulnerable to it all.
Maybe a return to some old fashioned over-the-top, impossible-to-imitate violence is just what kids need. Where would you get an anvil anyway? I suppose a Blacksmith would know..Where can you find a Blacksmith??
As always, I’m on team Road Runner. But if Wile E. is able to bring the ACME corporation to its knees, that would be quite alright and maybe even cathartic for the times we live in.
Our childhood cartoons were passive viewing unlike todays video games which are interactive filled with visual stimulus tapping into our emotions, competitive spirit drawing the player in enveloping them into a virtual world on which one loses ones self and the sense of what is real, fiction and important.
My parents always told us it was fake, not real, imagination which put what we were seeing into prospective. Today, I’d have no idea on how to raise a child dealing with these issues.