A lotta old TV programs used to actually try to put across a message...ya know...like GUNSMOKE, or OUTER LIMITS, on aa weekly basis.What were your favorites-and did they really have an influnce on your thinking?
Quincy springs to mind, at least the later ones, after he gave up solving murders and started beating us over the head with socially relevant issues. Can't say it influenced me too much, Quincy climing on his soapbox and whacking me with a two-by-four each week, except maybe to change the channel. Still, the preachiness is part of what makes Quincy cheesy fun today. Who can forget the time he educated us on the dangers of punk rock?
Alferd Hitchcock Presents The intro and epilouge, always funny and witty. I guess it somewhat influenced my dark humor. The Twillight Zone didn't really have that comedic edge that Hitchcock had, but was still very good.
The only other that comes to mind is that stupid Jerry Springer show..the quinticential message at the end of the insanity we just witnessed!
JERRY SPRINGER! Now there's a commentary on an era in which people nowadays get a clue. Sad, but very true.
Every week the Brady Bunch tried to show us what being good and making the right decisions would do for us. I think I saw that show too much and rebelled as I always wound up making the wrong decisions and not being too good.
DAMN YOU BRADY'S!!!!!!!!!!!!
How about Full House?
What's his name (Bob Saget's character) was always trying to get a message across to his daughters and the audience in pretty much every episode.
Pretty much every 80s and early 90s cartoon had their own messages. Such as the fantastically stupid Captain Planet and saving the environment, to Thundercats with the 'If we work as a team nothing can stop us!' Conveniantly I have both those theme songs as two different ring tones on my mobile phone, so that works out nicely...
Oh yeah...I use to watch He-man when I was little...what was that ghost things name with a big on on his red s**t...a hat and a scarf? I vaugly remember lol. Boy, I guess I was a tom boy when I was little. You didn't see me watching My Little Ponies. Although I totally digged the smurfs...lol.
QUARK (http://imdb.com/title/tt0077066/)..............now there was a TV show with a message. Guess I just could think of anything else.
The Superfriends had a message every time. Like, "Aquaman says, don't swim for an hour after eating, or you could cramp and drown." Or don't play with matches.
Also, the new Battlestar Galactica has a great message, which is, Cylons want to kill us all, and we probably deserve it. =) Can't wait till the new season starts. Twitch. Twitch.
DRAGNET. Hippies took a beating on that show. " Smack. Horse. The big H. Any way you look at it, its the same old garbage. C'mon Let's get some coffee. These people make me sick."
Zapranoth wrote:
"The Superfriends had a message every time. Like, "Aquaman says, don't swim for an hour after eating, or you could cramp and drown." Or don't play with matches."
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Did you make up that Aquaman crack or is that real? That has to be the lamest lesson for Aquaman, a man who can breath underwater. If it was real, then nobody liked Aquaman. You never heard anyone say "now Superman, wait 30 minutes after eating before flying or you'll get a cramp and fall from the sky!"
"But I have someone to save someone dangling from the empire state building!"
"No Superman, you'll get a cramp. Your super powers have to wait 30 minutes."
Waiting any amount of time would greatly hamper any super power. Crippled by waiting in a bank line! Powerless against the mighty DMV! Unable to withstand the lines of the gas station! (this was the 70's Superman)
It was real. Don't you remember? There was this little teaching moment carved out of the middle of the show, and often Zann and Jayna or some of the superfriends would deliver a public safety tip of some kind. Fourth wall violations in my Saturday morning!
loyal1 Wrote:
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> Oh yeah...I use to watch He-man when I was
> little...what was that ghost things name with a
> big on on his red s**t...a hat and a scarf? I
> vaugly remember lol. Boy, I guess I was a tom boy
> when I was little. You didn't see me watching My
> Little Ponies. Although I totally digged the
> smurfs...lol.
That would be Orko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orko).
How about this? "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle."
Personally, I hate kids shows with a message. I think it reached new heights of obnoxiousness right around the time of CAPTAIN PLANET. Maybe I'm looking through rose colored glasses here, but I remember cartoons as being mindless entertainment.
We need Roald Dahl back. Damn you, Death! Play your chess game elsewhere!
Yeah, the lesson *I* learned from cartoon was "Never..ever...mess with Buggs Bunny!"
Mofo Rising Wrote:
> Personally, I hate kids shows with a message. I
> think it reached new heights of obnoxiousness
> right around the time of CAPTAIN PLANET.
That was about when they crossed the line between messages and outright brainwashing. Captain Planet exemplified a particularly obnoxious period of the early 90s.
I used to love the little GI Joe segments. Kids old enough to know better would be blundering into the dumbest danger situations imaginable, just to set up the safety tip.
"I don't feel so good."
"Here, take some of Mom's medicine!"
Of course, the scariest thing about that one was that Doc just happened to be eavesdropping outside their bathroom window. What the heck was he doing out there? Pervert.
Almost as funny was the one where a couple of kids were planning to do something stupid next to a lake, when suddenly Deep Six comes strolling out of the knee-deep water in his full deep-sea diving suit.
Well, I can tell you that watching Daffy Duck get shot in the face all those years helped me realize that don't work in real life. You can hardly see my scars.
Oh, how I hated those messages. I wasn't a particularly bright kid, but I could notice how irrelevant and tagged on those "message" scenes were. And how hypocritical, in many cases. I mean, I learned that violence doesn't solve problems from Rambo, GI Joe and He-Man. Hey, thanks.
BTW, I've noticed many people remember shows with liberal rants, but there were a lot of shows with conservative messages as well. I remember watching "Ironside" on a rerun and being surprised how hostile it seemed to be against the hippy movement, something specially shocking for a show set in San Francisco.
Now that I think about it, all those "hillbilly" shows,like the Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction,Andy Griffith,Dukes of Hazard,etc...had a weird city folk are cons or wise asses,and rednecks are honest and moral. Except for Mr.Haney....
yeah but there is plenty of movies on how poor city folks prey victim to strange redneck hillbillies. Texas Chainsaw and Deliverance stands out in my head the most. In defence...look what city life did to Elvis, an innocent and pure country boy to a fat drunken Vegas entertainer.