Honestly, who doesn't laugh everytime Bugs Bunny gets Elmer Fudd to shoot someone? Who grew up with these cartoons? Many people did, myself included. And I think I turned out to be a normal person. Not some kind of crazy person who blames video games or television for their behavior.
The television and the video games do not tell you to do the things you see. But some people who are a few nuggets short of a Happy Meal get the bright ideas that it is okay to go Grand Theft Auto in their town, or that they can fly like Superman. It's a little something called common sense and parental supervision. Thousands of kids watch the same shows and play the same games, but not all of them are getting guns to show their friends or hitting each other with hammers and expecting each other to be okay.
People want to blame the television and the video games for what happens to their kids. But in reality, it is the parents fault. A breakdown in communication between parent and child has led the child to believe that cartoons and video games are "real" and that whatever happens in those things can happen in real life with no consequences. Not only is that thinking seriously flawed, I am curious to know why these parents can't get their kids to understand these concepts.
Past generations grew up with so called "violent" cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. Yet, no one blamed television for turning out violent offenders or for getting their children injured or killed. But that happens today like it's the newest fad.
Ultimately, people need to watch their kids and get them to understand that the real world is not like T.V. world.
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I can't help but to complain, but why the fuck were Looney Toons taken off the Air? I've got the Super-Extra-Deluxe Cable package and I still don't have the cartoons I grew up with. Shit, I remember when Cartoon Network would hold Looney Toons Marathons during Thanksgiving to see which character was the best. God, how I miss the good old days.
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
It is simply "old"... went off the air because they don't make it anymore.
Check out Boomerang... they play the cool cartoons like the Loony Toons and Tom & Jerry all day long.
I love some of them enough to watch 600 reruns! It should have just remained on the air.
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
Least Scooby Doo reruns still come on air. You can buy all the old cartoons on DVD's for like a 1.00 at Wal-Mart here. Popeye, Flintstones, Jetsons, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Looney Tunes, Tiny Toons. It's great.
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~Fallon~
"I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts" -Lord Byron
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You have a very good point... The whining about cartoons gets me too.
At the same time, there have been scientific studies to show that even the road-runner-just-got-run-over-by-a-train level violence does has an impact on the cognitive functions of a young child. Some scientists took two groups of children, hooked them up to wires that measured hormonal responses, and set them in front of a TV. The control group was a ton of perfectly ordinary Saturday morning kids that loved Bugs. The experimental group: kids that had grown up parental limitations whittled down to Sesame Street and similar extremely conservative TV shows.
When Bugs got blown up, the experiment kids showed extreme reactions in the "I'm traumatized" and "I'm sad" sections of the brains and in hormonal levels for the first week or so. But after that, they were unaffected and behaved on comparable levels with the control group.
Also, the shows 20-30 years ago were substantially different than today, I promise you. Even in the 10 years since my cartoon-watching mornings, the schism is gaping. When I was little, I never heard a swear word on the most intense cartoons or saw blood and gore. Now... pick a channel.
Ultimately, you are right that parents need to communicate better to their children. Good post! Thanks for the opportunity.
I think people's argument against rap and hip hop is INVALID,
the music does not tell you to go and do illegal shit, it's music--- everyone has a brain, USE IT AND MAKE SMART DECISIONS
it's music so stop hating on it :)
great blog, I love bugs bunny, "ehhh, what's up doc?"
"I leave my one and only grain of spiritual sand
to universal scales of humanity, all humanity...
forever is finding a solution to a solution." -Forever Begins, Common
http://www.progressiveu.org/231615-this-is-a-muslim-girls-plight