acroyear | Nov. 18th, 2007

...was yet another repeat, June of '88. This marks the 3rd time I've gotten to hear the story of how The Church was dropped by their label, broke up, reformed, and was forced to work with a producer they hated in order to suddenly make it big with "Under the Milky Way". Also the third time I've gotten to hear that bands from Sidney were back-to-back-to-back-to-back - yes, four in a row with The Church, followed by INXS, followed by Midnight Oil, followed by Ice House.

I got to hear that (yet again) whilst driving throughout Bethesda during a lunch break from Revels Rehearsal (hence not being online) only to discover that the River Road McDonalds (once a Roy Rogers) is the ONLY fast food place not inside a mall in the entire city. Sheesh.

Anyways, I'll plug it more later, but Revels is kick-ass this year. I'd better see some of you (who aren't already performing it) there. I'll put up more of a shameless plug later.

BTW, I am NOT doing Dec 8th because of the Dickens Tea from Team Wench.

Dungeons & Dragons:

Dungeons & Dragons was a series about six kids who were transported to a dimension filled with wizards and fire-snorting reptiles and cryptic clues and an extremely-evil despot named Venger. The youngsters were trapped in this game-like environment but, fortunately, they were armed with magical skills and weaponry, the better to foil Venger's insidious plans each week.

The kids were all heroic — all but a semi-heroic member of their troupe named Eric. Eric was a whiner, a complainer, a guy who didn't like to go along with whatever the others wanted to do. Usually, he would grudgingly agree to participate, and it would always turn out well, and Eric would be glad he joined in. He was the one thing I really didn't like about the show.

So why, you may wonder, did I leave him in there? Answer: I had to.

As you may know, there are those out there who attempt to influence the content of childrens' television. We call them "parents groups," although many are not comprised of parents, or at least not of folks whose primary interest is as parents. Study them and you'll find a wide array of agendum at work...and I suspect that, in some cases, their stated goals are far from their real goals.

Nevertheless, they all seek to make kidvid more enriching and redeeming, at least by their definitions, and at the time, they had enough clout to cause the networks to yield. Consultants were brought in and we, the folks who were writing cartoons, were ordered to include certain "pro-social" morals in our shows. At the time, the dominant "pro-social" moral was as follows: The group is always right...the complainer is always wrong.

This was the message of way too many eighties' cartoon shows. If all your friends want to go get pizza and you want a burger, you should bow to the will of the majority and go get pizza with them. There was even a show for one season on CBS called The Get-Along Gang, which was dedicated unabashedly to this principle. Each week, whichever member of the gang didn't get along with the gang learned the error of his or her ways.

We were forced to insert this "lesson" in D & D, which is why Eric was always saying, "I don't want to do that" and paying for his social recalcitrance. I thought it was forced and repetitive, but I especially objected to the lesson. I don't believe you should always go along with the group. What about thinking for yourself? What about developing your own personality and viewpoint? What about doing things because you decide they're the right thing to do, not because the majority ruled and you got outvoted?

We weren't allowed to teach any of that. We had to teach kids to join gangs. And then to do whatever the rest of the gang wanted to do.

What a stupid thing to teach children.

Now, I won't make the leap to charge that gang activity, of the Crips and Bloods variety, increased on account of these programs. That influential, I don't believe a cartoon show could ever be. I just think that "pro-social" message was bogus and ill-conceived. End of confession.

In the early 90s, the Newsweek and Time magazines were all noting the same trend, especially with regards to that damned purple dinosaur that will go unnamed on any blog entry *I* write. The kids would always disagree on what to do until IT showed up and then magically, everybody would want to do exactly what IT told them they wanted to do. If one disagreed, he or she was always easily talked into joining, almost magically. It didn't teach about real conflicts or realistic conflict resolution (something CONSTANTLY brought up in classic 70s Electric Company, to give an example). It taught compliance, submission, surrender to the goals of society.

The Prisoner all over again, this time indoctrinated from the very beginning.

Be Seeing You...