Over the years, I've heard stories of a lot of parents who restricted their children's television viewing due to the nature of the cartoons. And I'm not talking about like Tales From The Crypt or the Simpsons or Goosebumps, because those are pretty obvious. But I've heard many stories of friends who's parents banished the Smurfs and Carebears and Gummi Bears and various other serieses (sp?) from their houses because of their inherent supernatural/magical powers.
I began trying to understand this and also trying to decide whether I was any better or worse for having spent my childhood surrounded by these cartoons. Because nearly everything I watched growing up had something to do with somebody having supernatural powers. It started with simple things, like Carebears, who defeated evil with their united Carebear Stares, then there was My Little Pony-- these horses covered in glitter and bows who could talk—and sometimes fly. Then there were Ninja Turtles—ordinary turtles who got covered in extrordinary ooze and became fierce fighting machines.
When I was older, things got more realistic (Hey Dude, Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, Punky Brewster) but there was still crazy mess like *Out Of This World and Power Rangers & VR Troopers that made me think/wish that I could be getting more out of life by being some form of superhero.
*(Being able to freeze time doesn't make you a superhero, but there are still moments in life where I wish I was Evie-- sans the whole Father In the Purple Cube thing.)
The older I got, the more interested I became in more classic superheroism. When I was 13, I saw Return of the Jedi for the first time (I saw them completely out of order Episode 6, then 4, then 5.) and got hooked. You have no idea how bad it was. And I'm not going to elaborate. Not in this post anyway. :)
When I was about 14, I ran in a circle known throughout my youth group as the CRASH girls. This acronym stood for Cosmic Radioactive Almighty Super Heroes. (Justice League, WHAT?) There were four of us. We had matching shirts and matching crushes on the guy who was our youth group intern. I was Batgirl.
It wasn't long after that, the first X-Men movie came out and I started hounding my comic book-reading boyfriend for various backstories on the mutants. I even named my first truck after one of Cyclops and & Jean Grey's kids. And starting way back in 1993 or so, when Tom Welling was still a bachelor and Michael Rosenbaum still had hair on his head, there was an un-desperate woman named Teri Hatcher and a devastatingly handsome man named Dean Cain who occupied the 7 o'clock hour of my Sunday nights. For it was never the cartoon or even the old movies that caught my attention (Superman 3 actually really freaked me out), but Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, that spawned my lifelong affection for/ attraction to the Man of Steel. Smallville just made it worse. (I actually just purchased Seasons 4 & 5 today for $19.99 a piece. My collection is nearly complete. Thank you, Target.)
And nowadays, when shows like Heroes and Who Wants To Be A Superhero? (which I've still never seen) and movies like Spiderman, Batman and Fantastic Four and The Incredibles come out and splice superheroes so simply into everyday life, it makes me very happy. To this day, anything superhero related is intriguing to me.
Now for whatever reason, I was never particularly mesmerized by witches or vampires. Shows like Charmed, Angel, Buffy, even Harry Potter never really grabbed my attention. Maybe because Ouija boards and spells and vampires and Ursula and Maleficent always kind of made me nervous as a kid. In fact, I still don't do vampire or zombie movies, but that's because I don't like people bleeding everywhere. (Actually, that's another great thing about superhero shows and movies. People get hit with steel bars and smashed into brick walls and hardly ever get bloodied. Unrealistic? Yes. Less stressful? Also yes.) Maybe it's because the old school magic of casting spells and biting necks seems more probable, more doable, more explainable. Superhero stuff (flying and being made of steel and laser vision and x-ray vision and super speed and telekinesis and mutated genes, etc.) is a little more ridiculous, a little more imaginative. And therefore, in my opinion, cooler.
So letting your kids watch cartoons where people have superpowers won't corrupt them for life—it might make them jump off the roof into the pool though. Or spend at least 5 minutes once a year sitting in bed trying to turn out the light with the Force. Or occasionally tape three pencils to each fist and spike out their hair all weird and growl at people.
Or, as in my case, they might just still wish that they were superheroes-- when they're 23.
(i just couldn't resist.) :)
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