Archie, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Asterix, Tintin... Old comics, from the 1980's or earlier are pretty safe. These days the audience is 15+ guys. Soft porn and hardcore violence. Why would he take his 7 year old daughter and 5 year old son to look at that?
For kids that young seeing is believing. My nephew at 6 watched Star Wars over Christmas. You explain that it isn't real, they are actors in a play, playing characters - he's been in several plays himself - and then later on he says 'but it must be real, because how could they make a whole planet?'.
Cartoons are typically put in front of kids without any context. If you’re going to show them without cutting the stuff that was okay in the 1940s but won’t fly in the 2020s, then you had damn well better surround it with context, and mark it as something kids shouldn’t be watching by themselves. What’s a six year old kid now gonna know about the forties? Nothing, that’s what. They’re gonna see gags from a time when we were actively engaged in constructing negative stereotypes of the Axis powers and when second-hand caricatures of minstrel shows was the only way anyone knew how to draw black people and just assume that’s what those people are like.
I love the medium, I trained to work in it. I have watched a lot of old cartoons. There is some stunning work by masters of the form at the peak of their powers that is also incredibly racist by today’s standards; it’s worth preserving this work, but Cartoons Are For Kids, and if something needs context you have to scream about this to keep distracted parents from just putting it on for their kids.
And that's why only let my kids watch my kid friendly curated collection:
Gummi Bears, DuckTales, Conan the Adventurer, Darkwing Duck, The Legend of Prince Valiant, Talespin, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Defenders of the Earth, He-Man, Tintin, Dungeons and Dragons, Captain Planet, Batman The Animated Series, Avatar and Korra.
I wonder what the author would say if he would view now a couple of the cartoons he saw as a child. When I stumbled upon an old cartoon I was seeing I was kind of amazed/put-off by how stupid it felt and how many "bad messages" (according to my standard now) I would see.
I do not have much experience with the topic but my impression is that toddlers/kids experience things quite differently (ex: liking to see the same cartoon N times, with N rather large) so we should be careful when trying to draw conclusions about good and bad.
Why are you bothered by a child’s opinion on children’s movies? You’ll likely never meet the kid, and one’s sense of taste at that age is hardly definitive.
For someone that young, visuals tend to take precedent over story. I, for one, am glad to see a younger generation appreciate 2D animation (which still looks acceptable in Space Jam) over 3D (which looks dated in Toy Story).
20 years would be culturally terrible. That would make it so just around the time your kids are old enough for you to introduce them to the great comics, cartoons, movies, music, and books of your childhood it would enter the public domain and become widely used in advertising and low budget productions. You are not going to be able to share the magic of, say, Calvin & Hobbes, with your kids if your kids have already been saturated by those characters as TV pitchmen for toys and junk food.
> And maybe there's more a percentage of "childish things" enjoyed now
At some point we have to adjust the scales and say that since so many adults are enjoying "childish" activities and media that those things are just for adults now, and maybe always have been if there wasn't so much shame around it. Adults enjoy Bluey more than their kids do. Craig of The Creek and Gumball are some of my friend's favorites. Ted Lasso took all the formulas from children's media but put them in adult situations and it won like every award. Marvel is now more a hit with adults than kids.
The toys are appealing even to children that never saw the anime.
Actually I wouldn't let my kids watch it until they were at least 13 or so, maybe more depending on the child. A lot of war and mass-scale death there, and frankly, a lot of adoration for fascism - the space nazis turn out to be right.
As a child, I thought Dungeons and Dragons, X-Men, Spider Man (the 90s version), and the DCAU series (Batman, Superman, etc.) were really fantastic cartoon series. I've seen some of them since then, and they still hold up really well.
Most of the comic book and related shows today, including Marvel's, seem comparatively unwatchable and immature. They are definitely not designed to be for anyone but the youngest children. Young Justice is a notable exception.
This is funny to read. Kids stuff has been getting tamer and tamer over the years. Check out the early 2Oth Century Disney cartoons, the original Popeye, etc.
It is hard to know. My old work colleague took great efforts to keep his son from watching any TV, films or cartoons - they did loads of art, listened to music and went to the theatre a little. He was a pretty chill kid when I met him.
One day his son played at a friend's house when he was 3, nearly 4, and ended up watching a hulk cartoon. He spent the next 3 weeks running around the house screaming 'hulk smash' and hitting things with pillows.
Did the cartoon make him that way, or just tell him it was OK to act that way?
> It doesn't shoehorn in political messages that don't belong and largely harkens back to a time where childrens television didn't require scrutiny of the publisher just to see if it fit the parent's flavor of morality.
As a child of the Captain Planet and D&D moral panic era, when was this time you harken back to?
For kids that young seeing is believing. My nephew at 6 watched Star Wars over Christmas. You explain that it isn't real, they are actors in a play, playing characters - he's been in several plays himself - and then later on he says 'but it must be real, because how could they make a whole planet?'.
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