Saturday Morning Cartoons

I grew up with Saturday morning cartoons. They were an important part of my childhood. I, and all the other kids my age, looked forward to them all week long. We would get up early, even though we didn't have to go to school, and watch cartoons literally all morning long until wrestling or The Lone Ranger or kung-fu theater or rollerderby, or whatever else, came on around noon.

When I was a teenager, they quit showing Saturday morning cartoons; cartoons were replaced by talking heads and local news shows.

I honestly think this has had a dramatic effect on American society. We looked forward to Saturday mornings all week long. The Smurfs were a cultural phenomenon that we were all a part of. Now, kids get to choose between To Catch a Predator and Jonestown: Behind the Massacre. 

Saturday morning cartoons are just one more thing they quit doing in favor of edgier and more "hard-hitting" content -- after all, kids don't buy products, parents do. It's one less magical thing in an increasingly cynical world where we are constantly being confronted with the same issues on all fronts. It's one less positive thing to look forward to and cherish, one more thing they sold out.

The way they did comic books; the way they did Christmas; the way they do sex.

Everything good and simple and pure is being pushed aside and trampled on to make room for more opinionated and generally useless "coverage." And there's just not that much news, so we end up hearing about the same news story on every program we watch for weeks on-end. 

We hear about it on the morning news, then they discuss it on the morning talk shows, then the soap operas do a storyline based on it, then the evening news updates it, then the late-night hosts joke about it, then everyone's blogging about it the next day...

Unlike most countries, the United States has dismissed all efforts of symbology by explaining everything away. We need more positive symbols and ideas that don't have a point to make -- good things that are made just to be good things, not to preach to or remind us of something.

Only CW has a good Saturday Morning block of Warner Brothers fare: New Tom & Jerry, new Batman, an updated version of Scooby Doo. They're all good, too. FOX used to have a block, and so did ABC/Disney (Jetix), but I'm not sure they're still on. If they are, I haven't noticed them. 

Cartoon Network shows its afternoon block, then whatever fight anime is popular at the moment -- Dragonball or Naruto, et. al -- but only CW captures the real spirit of the Saturday Morning Cartoons: Plain, fun, predictable cartoons with good sight gags and familiar characters. Nothing too flashy or modernized, no episode-spanning story arcs or lengthy character development.

We've convinced ourselves that every moment not spent getting ahead is a waste of time, and that's just not true. Joy for the sake of pure joy is just as valid a way to spend your time as any other.