SATURDAY MORNING NOSTALGIA BLUES
Jul. 11th, 2013 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogRecently spotted on the Facebooks:
It’s a fair question – at least if yr from the generation that actually grew up with Saturday morning cartoons and get nostalgic about it. That’s okay – I do it too.
The thing is, as always, it’s too easy to compare yr experience to the kids today and feel that something important has been lost. Just because it’s something important to you doesn’t mean it’s important to the next generation whose experience is completely different from yrs.
It pays to remember the context of Saturday Morning Cartoons, which is this:
There were only three TV networks at the time, and Saturday morning was the logical place to put new cartoon programming. A kid in the 70s had two main options for watching cartoons: (1) Saturday morning, or (2) whatever the indie UHF stations were showing after school, which in the 70s was mainly older syndicated Japanese shows like Battle Of The Planets, Speed Racer, Bullwinkle and all the Warner Bros toons that didn’t make the cut for the Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner show on CBS. Otherwise, you were more likely to be watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, Addams Family, The Munsters, and so on.
Saturday morning was when all the best and NEW cartoons were on. Sure, by the 80s you had new shows like GI Joe and Transformers and He-Man and Thundercats in the afternoons. But Saturday morning was like a ritual. We couldn’t wait for the new season to start so we could see what new cartoons would come our way. And it was a shared experience mainly because it was the only experience to be had – the only difference was which shows you watched (or which network you liked more).
What kids have today that we didn’t have is cartoons 24/7 or on-demand (provided they have cable and/or a broadband connection), and a more diverse range of toons to choose from (many of which are arguably better than a lot of the stuff they used to show in the 70s and 80s). You can get Blu-Ray box sets of full collections of various cartoon series and watch them whenever you want, or you can watch them on VOD if yr family can afford that service package. And thanks to social media, you can share yr love of them with other kids not only in yr school but anywhere in the world.
And let’s admit – if anyone from the Saturday Morning generation had been told this was the future, we would have drooled at the very thought.
So if the question is “Are the kids today missing something?” I’d say:
No. Ask them to trade the current situation for one morning a week of pre-programmed toons, and they’d tell you to go jump in the lake.
I’m paraphrasing, but you see what I’m saying.
PRODUCTION NOTE: And by the way, it's HANNA, not Hanna.
Overture, curtain, lights,
This is dF
It’s a fair question – at least if yr from the generation that actually grew up with Saturday morning cartoons and get nostalgic about it. That’s okay – I do it too.
The thing is, as always, it’s too easy to compare yr experience to the kids today and feel that something important has been lost. Just because it’s something important to you doesn’t mean it’s important to the next generation whose experience is completely different from yrs.
It pays to remember the context of Saturday Morning Cartoons, which is this:
There were only three TV networks at the time, and Saturday morning was the logical place to put new cartoon programming. A kid in the 70s had two main options for watching cartoons: (1) Saturday morning, or (2) whatever the indie UHF stations were showing after school, which in the 70s was mainly older syndicated Japanese shows like Battle Of The Planets, Speed Racer, Bullwinkle and all the Warner Bros toons that didn’t make the cut for the Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner show on CBS. Otherwise, you were more likely to be watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, Addams Family, The Munsters, and so on.
Saturday morning was when all the best and NEW cartoons were on. Sure, by the 80s you had new shows like GI Joe and Transformers and He-Man and Thundercats in the afternoons. But Saturday morning was like a ritual. We couldn’t wait for the new season to start so we could see what new cartoons would come our way. And it was a shared experience mainly because it was the only experience to be had – the only difference was which shows you watched (or which network you liked more).
What kids have today that we didn’t have is cartoons 24/7 or on-demand (provided they have cable and/or a broadband connection), and a more diverse range of toons to choose from (many of which are arguably better than a lot of the stuff they used to show in the 70s and 80s). You can get Blu-Ray box sets of full collections of various cartoon series and watch them whenever you want, or you can watch them on VOD if yr family can afford that service package. And thanks to social media, you can share yr love of them with other kids not only in yr school but anywhere in the world.
And let’s admit – if anyone from the Saturday Morning generation had been told this was the future, we would have drooled at the very thought.
So if the question is “Are the kids today missing something?” I’d say:
No. Ask them to trade the current situation for one morning a week of pre-programmed toons, and they’d tell you to go jump in the lake.
I’m paraphrasing, but you see what I’m saying.
PRODUCTION NOTE: And by the way, it's HANNA, not Hanna.
Overture, curtain, lights,
This is dF
