Not all change is good. Sometimes they cost us experiences that can help us get beyond those barriers we create that divide. They are things that can cross generations.
At over three or four years of this blog I may have written about my sadness at the loss of Saturday morning cartoons once or twice. It’s a significant thing for me when it comes to my consumption of entertainment. This period went from my youth all the way into my early adulthood before it finally faded. It is something that I have spoken with to other people and as is often the case with geek-like moments we have made a connection. Ever speak to a tough looking biker about The Real Ghostbusters? It is weird how the right words can lead to that.
It was a time just for the children of America that many adults look back fondly on. I know that sounds a bit silly, but it was a few hours carved out of the week just for kids. That one brief period of the week there were shows like Thundarr the Barbarian, Scooby Doo Where Are You?, Gummi Bears, Blackstar (a personal favorite which I admit is a bit obscure), or even the Planet of the Apes cartoon which was a bit before my time but I have since watched. There were also some weird spinoffs of adult oriented properties like The Mask, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, or RoboCop! All of which outshine 90% of what we get today.
Even during the week right before as well as after school there were cartoons just for the young. Five days a week you got the likes of DuckTales or Transformers or G.I. Joe. These were random choices by local stations. First run bits of syndication that were actually half hour toy commercials.
But then the networks decided to scrap all that and go with simplistic teen shows like Saved by the Bell or California Dreams. And then those gave way to network news morning shows which failed to inform anybody. I’ve heard that if you can hook someone with a morning show that they more likely to stay on your channel for the whole day. And since kids generally don’t have major sources of income why cater to them when you can hook teens and adults who have jobs and will plunk money down for the latest hair care product or fat treatment or general fad? The afternoon cartoons quickly followed since the market was no longer viable.
Ultimately this loss of the Saturday morning cartoon is a loss of some very creative ideas. It was an era of experimentation. Not of things that you would necessarily go “That’s bad” but of how far you could push a concept in a different direction without breaking it. It’s a loss of elements of new pop culture which is a place we could all connect with. Smurfs. The ABC Saturday Morning Special. All things that are long gone. Not that I expected them to last forever, but where are those new touchstones? Where are those new elements to connect the next generation? Where is that common experience of a bowl of cereal being consumed in front of the television? It’s gone.
And that’s sad. Because it is something special. It’s a shared experience that several generations had that is gone forever and was something that could be connected over. We will never see that day again and I mourn its loss.
Warren Watched A Movie 