A Saturday, 1970ish :
(To be read in comic-book, monologue style)
Now, crawl I, a blanket-covered smallish Horta, across avocado green hi-lo berber, past coffee table with glass grapes and tarry ashtray, to our faux-wood, semi-baroque color Magnavox.
The static electricity from its huge cathode tube raises the peach fuzz on my face. The hairs on my arm stand up as I turn the UHF dial past snowy oblivions, past any crappy stuff like Josie and the Pussycats (I had a thing for that blond, ditzy drummer, though). Where is it? Where! FOUND IT! Jonny Quest!
Hoyt Curtin’s opening jazz is unmistakable, timeless and very, very cool.
Hanna Barbera only made 26 episodes of Jonny Quest in 1964-65 and then abruptly canceled it, despite high-ratings, blaming the high production costs. It was one of the first prime-time cartoons and never meant for Saturday mornings. However, Saturdays or Sundays were the only time a kid could see it in the early 1970s.
The Robot Spy episode scared me, but I could not look away. I was about five when I first saw that frightful beast arise from its shuttle, infiltrate a desert Army base and paralyze a soldier with one of its antennae. The arch villain Dr. Zinn designed it to do that, and other things, all to steal the secrets of Dr. Benton Quest’s para-power ray gun.
That iconic episode of Jonny Quest stuck in little Harry’s mind for two reasons:
1. The Robot Spy is totally boss and,
2. Jonny and Hadji are homeschooled.
This was the first time I understood that some kids never go to classroom school. Adventurous kids, with adventurous lives, don’t have time for busses, bullies and bullshit.
To burnish that homeschool epiphany, I also saw Sam Waterman’s National Geographic special, Polynesian Adventure, around the same time. In 1965, Waterman, SCUBA diver and cinematographer, took his wife and three kids to Polynesia for year. He filmed everything while the kids explored, swam, dived, laid in the sun and… were schooled by their mother under palm trees. (See the film below; schooling at minute 15.)
I remember feeling physically ill about it. A quivering nausea and it would return each time I saw Polynesian Adventure, which was often (networks repeated shows all the time). In retrospect, it was much like the butterfly feeling I would get when falling for a girl. An unsettling anticipation.
I hated School thereafter and School hated me back. Somehow it knew I wanted to learn without it and pursue a life of eclecticism and autodidactics. OK, I was five, so I didn’t use those EXACT words, but I felt them in my guts. School hates such sentiment in kids and seeks their demise. I fought back.
I mean, I really HATED school. Unwary swallow of sour milk hate. Stepping in dog poop bare-footed at night hate. Spider web in the face hate.
Oh, I didn’t hate LEARNING, which I loved and still love. I just hated that I didn’t have a super-scientist father, a CIA bodyguard and could not travel the world dealing with danger and intrigue. Instead, I had to endure Chompskian public school follies and a broken family.
Silly as it seems, Robot Spy and Polynesian Adventure were truly formative for me, a little boy from Bakersfield, California. More so than any teacher.
This was also the same time I learned to despise Scooby Doo. The show, I mean, not the dog. That makes me a freak of American Culture, but I bet you will understand after I explain, you all being classicists and such.
This was all going down around 1971 or so. Kids then were not as innocent and uninformed as some might think. In fact, we were informed more than we should have been and we were all scared sheetless. We still did nuclear, “dive under the desk and kiss-yer-butt goodbye” drills at school.
I remember the TV news and the adults talking: Charles Manson, Vietnam, rising crime, drugs, hippies, bombings, streakers and Satanic themes in music and film. California was sprouting serial killers and radicals faster than pot plants in a Santa Cruz dorm room.
A van with happy truant teens driving around the country solving mysteries just didn’t squeeze the zit-ghost of the Seventies. A dark, oily acne was covering the flowery face of the warm San Francisco night. Scooby Doo arrived just as the optimism of the 1960’s was dying.
In those days, networks often reran cartoons long since-canceled, thus I could watch Scooby Doo and Jonny Quest the same day. The contrast was jarring. Jonny and his adopted brother Hadji lived lives of intellectual discipline and physical challenge. They faced real danger. They witnessed geopolitical intrigue and vengeful evil at work, sometimes directed at their father. The show also possessed a thinly veiled anti-communism and an overt paternalism. There was even an episode where Jonny and Hadji prayed together. I am pretty sure Bill and Bernadine didn’t allow little Chesa Boudin to watch Jonny Quest or any of its later incarnations.
More importantly, their world was one of wonderment, containing the preternatural, the supernatural and the clandestine. They encounter pteranodons, neanderthals, Yetis, mummies, energy monsters, poachers, Nazis and communist spies.
Admittedly, the show is violent. Animals, monsters and people were killed, usually by their own pride but sometimes in a sad enough way to make a sensitive kid like me teary eyed (poor Turu). But what WONDERMENT!
I did not yet know Hamlet, but he was speaking to me:
“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I didn’t want ghosts to be, but I wanted ghosts to be! Prove Yetis cannot exist! Or mummies, or neanderthals, or Invisible Monsters. They all exist until proven otherwise. Bear in mind that Dr. Benton Quest (Jonny’s father) is a scientist and the show lays on plenty of rationalism. But to the writers’ credit, they never turned their backs on children’s imaginations, their fears or their need for adult protection. They wrote Jonny Quest with respect to what children ARE not what they wanted them to be.
Which brings me back to Scooby Doo, Where are You? and why it is a crappy cartoon.
It is crappy because its agenda was to be inoffensive and uninspiring, to be everything and achieve nothing.
In 1969, American television networks were under attack, justifiably so, for the amount of violence in their shows. Additionally, assassinations, riots and war were on television news daily. To parents, kids were dipped daily in a cruel tea of violence; they did not spare children’s entertainment. Parents of the day saw nothing but explosions, ray-guns, monsters and muscled heroes divided by commercials pushing candy as “vitamins” and junk cereals for breakfast. Parents joined activist organizations like the Action for Children’s Television (ACT) and in 1968 went after Hanna Barbera as the biggest bugbear. Violent “boy” shows like the Herculoids, Space Ghost and Birdman were specifically targeted by the ACT. In response, Scooby Doo was tailor-made to address the many problems that worried parents. By the end of 1970, Hanna Barbera knew they had a hit.
Scooby Doo made good business sense. It included both boys and girls, jocks and dweebs. The kids were empowered and that is what the Sixties were all about. It was comedic and formulaic; everyone knew how each episode would end. There are no monsters, just fraud. The kids best the baddies without any adult help. The few adults that are around are either in on it, afraid or apathetic. I am pretty sure Chesa Boudin was allowed to watch Scooby Doo.
The early episodes always opened with a montage: A black knight, a deep-sea diver, a ghost, a witch doctor. All scary and intriguing at first, but just masks. You didn’t have to be Vincent Bugliosi to figure out there would never be any real mummies or ghosts. For a kid, that is the TV equivalent of getting socks for Christmas. Essentially, the writers were saying, “See kids, there is nothing to be afraid of. These are not real monsters.”
Scooby Doo is a myth killer and when a myth is killed, the truths within die also. Would a Christmas Carol have much of an effect if the ghosts were just people? Or if Grendel was just a guy in a suit trying to get the Danes to sell Heorot Hall for a low, low price?
But there are real monsters. Kids need the myths of monsters and ghosts and evil scientists because they illuminate truths in the darkness of a fallen world. Consider the desperation of clever Odysseus and his men in the cave of Polyphemus. Children sit up stiff for that story. Why? Because what seemed like a hopeless situation was actually not hopeless, because the weak defeated the powerful with patience and guile and because doing the right thing cost Odysseus dearly. Alas, perplexity, unfairness abound and Dr. Zinn manages to get away. Kids will chew on it overnight. Don’t worry.
None of these lessons can be found in any episode of Scooby Doo.
We homeschool parents already understand that learning should not be a drag of constant study and endless activities; that is just another form of tortuous public schooling. Kids need silliness and mindless fun. So they are not going to be hurt by watching Scooby Doo, but they won’t be helped much either.
Jonny Quest and Polynesian Adventure however, might just make adventurers out of them.
Vale
Great post. We homeschool too. I would love to hear more. We sometimes struggle with the conflict between the allure of the freewheeling silly adventure on one hand, and the need to learn math, write essays, and practice piano,for example. We love that we can tailor the studies to each child’s interests and aptitudes (and avoid the strange philosophies filling kids minds in public school) but I think we end up losing the whimsy. Is there a way to do both rigor and whimsy, or is it a trade-off?
I don't know about there, but we've had an explosion of home schoolers here in Canada in the past four years. Over the years, the homeschooled kids I've met have always seemed way more worldly and knowledgeable than my peers from public school (no idea if they ever watched Scooby Doo, though. . . gotta say, I was never a fan).