Jim D wrote,
>including (yuk!) Pokemon
You got to get into Rugrats. We don't have cable
so we only see it via rented videos every few
weeks (you also avoid the commercials that way!).
One could argue that Rugrats is a bit
subversive--as much or more so than the Simpsons.
It certainly is very creative. For what it is
worth the person who writes the music for the
series once headed up the music group Devo. That
alone scores points with me.
>From the very beginning, we clearly labeled (for
our kids) commercial TV and commercials in
particular as "junk" and told our kids that the
goal of these things is to sell you stuff. This
has worked out pretty well. Although my kids
(Peter is 7 & and Emily is 3) only rarely see
commercials, as we only watch PBS which has become
increasingly commercial, whenever possible I
decode them as we watch them ("they are claiming
here that this toy is necessary if you want to be
a popular boy. That doesn't made any sense to me.
What do you think Peter?")
At the same time, unfortunately, Peter can read a
Lego catalog for up to an hour at a time,
seemingly memorizing each detail of each Lego kit
being sold. How we let this happen is not clear to
us. In any case, this is not helpful when we go to
a store that sells Legos. We tell ourselves,
however, that Legos are better than Pokemon. (But
who knows.) And then there are the annual passes
to Legoland, which is somewhat over an hour away
from here. These are not cheap.
> But Hollywood
> produces dreck (1) because people want
> it,
In other contexts I'm sure Jim could be more
careful not to make such an extreme claim. How
kids, and parents, come to want "low culture" is a
complex process mostly involved, I think, with the
nature of capitalism which creates these wants. I
don't think there is a dreck DNA strand within us.
My 2 cents.
Eric
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