[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8MY7PjSXU&w=480&h=360]
This little clip from The Electric Company makes me wonder if some of us never had a chance. I mean take a look at the message and remember - the target audience was 7 - 12 year olds:
Kids, it's cool to read when you're on the street smoking cigarettes and living without boundaries and feeling each other up and acting loose which should come easy to you but if it doesn't for some reason and you aren't cool like everyone else (which everyone will notice and you'll be a social outcast) don't forget where you are: the street! You can get drugs that will help you loosen up and fit in! Don't forget to read!
Children's television made huge strides in the late 60's and early 70's and a lot of research was going on by very well intended people to ensure that kids were getting something out of that vacuum their parents left them in front of so they could concentrate on EST and self-improvement and other things that single people without kids should do.
Is it possible that, despite their intentions, these groups of educators went off the track a little by incorporating their own sense of "what is hip" into the education process? How necessary was it to the lesson that Morgan Freeman should grind his dick into Rita Moreno's backside?
And the fact that, in the next clip, they are reading the sentence "STOP THE COPS, POP" and Easy Reader is trying to hustle the girl for something to read as if he is a dope fiend looking for a fix is complete irresponsible bullshit really. Although it's unintentional, it's subliminal suggestion. It's a bunch of counter-culture psych majors sitting around smoking grass and writing sketches for themselves first and children's television second. It was 1970. There hadn't been many studies and they were in the process of data gathering. We were gonna be it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX-zwBic89g&w=440&h=385]
The Electric Company served as a great springboard for a lot of comics' careers but was more representative of the ideas of the "me generation" than the ideals of The Children's Television Workshop (see THIS POST). It strikes me that these were comedy writers on the kids tv "bandwagon" - writers who had somehow gotten their hands on grant money and very wisely hitched their wagon to the wave of childrens television - which went from people with looms and b.o. sitting in a circle like Indians to offices on Madison Ave in a very short time. Soon everyone in New York wearing a dashiki and taking a child psychology course was cashing in. I think that as retrospectively funny as The Electric Company is, it's really no more than the Phillip Morris of early children's educational tv and we probably would have been better off with our parents.
Sure I'm casting a broad net here but I DID say "constant opinion". Write your own god damn blog.
This little clip from The Electric Company makes me wonder if some of us never had a chance. I mean take a look at the message and remember - the target audience was 7 - 12 year olds:
Kids, it's cool to read when you're on the street smoking cigarettes and living without boundaries and feeling each other up and acting loose which should come easy to you but if it doesn't for some reason and you aren't cool like everyone else (which everyone will notice and you'll be a social outcast) don't forget where you are: the street! You can get drugs that will help you loosen up and fit in! Don't forget to read!
Children's television made huge strides in the late 60's and early 70's and a lot of research was going on by very well intended people to ensure that kids were getting something out of that vacuum their parents left them in front of so they could concentrate on EST and self-improvement and other things that single people without kids should do.
Is it possible that, despite their intentions, these groups of educators went off the track a little by incorporating their own sense of "what is hip" into the education process? How necessary was it to the lesson that Morgan Freeman should grind his dick into Rita Moreno's backside?
And the fact that, in the next clip, they are reading the sentence "STOP THE COPS, POP" and Easy Reader is trying to hustle the girl for something to read as if he is a dope fiend looking for a fix is complete irresponsible bullshit really. Although it's unintentional, it's subliminal suggestion. It's a bunch of counter-culture psych majors sitting around smoking grass and writing sketches for themselves first and children's television second. It was 1970. There hadn't been many studies and they were in the process of data gathering. We were gonna be it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX-zwBic89g&w=440&h=385]
The Electric Company served as a great springboard for a lot of comics' careers but was more representative of the ideas of the "me generation" than the ideals of The Children's Television Workshop (see THIS POST). It strikes me that these were comedy writers on the kids tv "bandwagon" - writers who had somehow gotten their hands on grant money and very wisely hitched their wagon to the wave of childrens television - which went from people with looms and b.o. sitting in a circle like Indians to offices on Madison Ave in a very short time. Soon everyone in New York wearing a dashiki and taking a child psychology course was cashing in. I think that as retrospectively funny as The Electric Company is, it's really no more than the Phillip Morris of early children's educational tv and we probably would have been better off with our parents.
Sure I'm casting a broad net here but I DID say "constant opinion". Write your own god damn blog.
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