Friday, June 29, 2012

Fingers aren't Sausages

Some of the cartoons being fed to children as entertainment these days disgust me. They seem to be celebrations of violence, and of the grotesque and macabre. A deformed character with extremely anti-social behaviour, a sick looking beast of some sort with uncontrollable anger, a morbidly obese animal having its blubber filmed in slow motion, and a ghoulish looking chef practicing cannibalism. Oh, it's good stuff. Very uplifting, and morally strong viewing indeed.

The shows to which I have referred, and which you may recognize, are relatively new shows, but violent cartoons are not new. I watched Tom and Jerry as a child, and I saw Wile E. Coyote get blown up and squashed more times than I can remember. It's the same thing isn't it? Not in my book, but you can make up your own mind. The disturbing trend towards increasingly graphic depictions of heinous acts is of course not limited to children's cartoons. How funny is it when Homer throttles Bart, causing his eyes to pop out of his head as he struggles for breath? Children watch a hell of a lot, and I don't use the word 'hell' lightly, of shows that they shouldn't be watching: shows which promote values which most people find abhorrent. Breaking the law if it suits your purposes. Using violence to solve problems. Disrespecting parents and authority in general. The list goes on. Here are the lucky few children's cartoons to be named and shamed in Square Pegs.

Spliced is a show about mixed up, freaky animal mutants and their mixed up freaky animal mutant friends. The happy sounding theme song talks about the animals having been constructed in a lab by being spliced, and diced and regurgitated. In one episode, a large animal eats all the other animals who I thought were his friends. They escape from inside his stomach by detonating an explosive. The result is their liberation while the large animal is stripped off all its skin and stands with its internal organs on display. It's so funny.
Horace in Slow Motion features a lovable, portly pig who performs his greatest bodily acts in slow motion. In one episode, thankfully they are all short, we have the hilarious pleasure of watching this corpulent pig stuffing his face with cake while attempting to run on a treadmill. In Monsterchef, the cook chops off someone's fingers and puts them inside pastry to serve, before ripping our his own intestines and adding them to a soup he is casually stirring. Yummy!


Let your children watch these sick and twisted shows by all means, and call it harmless fun if it makes you feel better, but don't forget to pray that we don't end up with a society swollen with sick and twisted individuals. We've got enough of them already, don't we?


1 comment:

  1. I agree DA. Cartoons these days are just to violent. The violence in children at the cartoon watching age is increasing, when is society as a whole going to make the connection. I have.

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