Would You Like a Nuclear Nightmare With Your Cocoa
Puffs?
According to advertisers sponsoring the block of
television programming in question, there was nothing more pure and American than a little
kid scampering out of bed at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, padding to
the kitchen in bare feet, pouring a big bowl of sugared cereal and milk, and
plopping in front of the TV for six solid hours of noisy toy ads disguised as
cartoons. Yet within this idyllic scene was a tacit agreement between the
child-based industries (I call them “Kidnustries”) and parents that they could
sleep off their hangovers resulting from a debauched Friday night of heavy
drinking and wife-swapping; they’d watch your kids for you. It’s something that
would have been unthinkable a few generations ago, because there wasn’t any television,
Saturday morning or otherwise—also no refrigeration, from where could be
procured fresh milk; no proliferation of Baby Boomer children that could handle
the Friday evening babysitting duties; no kitchen floor linoleum that would be
comfortable to walk upon in bare feet. Saturday morning cartoons were purely a
mid-twentieth century invention, and they reflected the attitudes and fears of
that time. And you know what? A lot of those attitudes and fears were pretty
fucked up. Since television was essentially my third parent, let’s have a
little therapy session and discover which of our anxieties can be attributed to
Saturday morning programming, shall we? We shall! Read on!
