70s Cartoons

by NotFormer 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  NotFormer

  There're the obvious ones, like the Smurfs. Although why still escapes me. Was it because of the magic, that they were "magical creatures", that there were wizards, etc?

  What other ones weren't you allowed to watch? I imagine Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the Groovy Ghoulies were off limits. Heck, as a kid, I always wondered what the point of the Groovy Ghoulies was. It certainly never got a chuckle out of me, regardless of that stupid laugh track. I'd actually have been grateful if my parents had banned me from watching that one!

  What about Scooby Doo? Ghosts and monsters everywhere! But it always turned out to be a crook in a mask, perpetrating a small time local scam. So, perhaps actually teaching kids about discernment and deductive reasoning.

  What cartoons were off limits?

  This question is asked against a background that it's entirety possible that you were dragged out in field service on a Saturday morning, so you never watched those cartoons, anyway 😔
• 

  Vidiot

  “Spiiiiirrrriiitiiiiiismmm…

  …SPIIIIIIRRRRRIIIIIITIIIIIIIIIISSSSMMMM….”

  👻
• 

  Beth Sarim

  The Smurfs were hated.

  You know the connotation '' blue demon" or something like that.

  Scooby Doo,,yes that was disliked because of episodes with ""ghosts"" in there too.
• 

  GrreatTeacher

  The Smurfs were hated because of Gargamel the Wizard.

  He was the bad guy even within the episodes, so I don't know if that reasoning makes sense.

  All this despite the fact that, you know, this was a child's cartoon and clearly fiction.

  I was actually allowed to watch the Smurfs because my parents truly saw through the superstition of some Witnesses, despite being hardliners in other respects.

  And that's what it was, same with Harry Potter: superstition. A bunch of simple-minded superstitious people, afraid of their shadow and ungrounded in science. Figuratively throwing a pinch of salt over their shoulders when spooked by something.
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  NotFormer

  I'm just remembering all the Scooby Doo rip-offs. I guess The Funky Phantom would have been definitely off limits; he was literally a dead guy with a dead cat! (He was also a patriot during the Revolutionary War, so I guess there was that too).

  Goober and the Ghostchasers: more often than not, there turned out to be a real ghost somewhere in the story, even if there was some scam being perpetrated.

  Clue Club: back to Scooby Doo mechanics. The supernatural happenings and monsters were cover-ups for some local scam. The only problem I see is 13 years old Dottie is the smartest kid in the room, and often "accidentally" turns up on the scene when she's been told not to by the older kids.

  Captain Caveman: probably because of the caveman factor, but I was always more concerned by the relationship of a basically naked old man with three teenaged girls. There was definitely something implied to be going on between him and Taffy.

  The New Shmoo: the scams were always perpetrated by humans, but the Shmoo himself was some sort of magical creature.
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  TonusOH

  I remember my mother explaining to other JWs that she had done "research" into the Smurfs and discovered that they were of 'demonic origin' or something like that. My older sister loved the smurfs and had a collection of the little figurines, which she had to throw away once my mother made her 'discovery.' It was like a competition sometimes, to see who could find more demons in their homes so that they could tell everyone how they exorcised them.

  The thing is, my mother was like many parents, who used the TV as a way to keep the kids out of her hair. So we grew up watching everything, including Scooby-Doo and Casper cartoons. As long as we weren't annoying her, there wasn't much we couldn't watch during the early afternoon.
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  Diogenesister

  Great teachThe Smurfs were hated because of Gargamel the Wizard.

  He was the bad guy even within the episodes, so I don't know if that reasoning makes sense.

  I actually think it's because they were a new kids craze.

  So they hit the GB naughty list on all three scores....ie being new, popular and for the young. How much of a sad, miserable, curmudgeonly old git do you have to be, to prevent kids from enjoying a cartoon??
• 

  TD

  The "Satanic Panics" of the 1960's and 80's didn't actually originate with the JW's themselves
  

  The 1960's belief that unclean spirits could be brought into your home via inanimate objects seems to have been triggered by a 1957 book by a French Monsignor on the dangers of the spirit world. The idea spread across denominational lines and even into pop culture via movies like Rosemary's Baby. The JW's were more enthusiastic in spreading these "Demon stories" than most, but they were hardly alone.
  

  The hysteria of the 1980's was very similar, only in this case the trigger was a book by a Canadian psychiatrist entitled, Michelle Remembers. This book told the story of a woman's childhood abuse at the hands of a satanic cult using the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy. As a consequence, the idea that an organized conspiracy of satanists were targeting children via cartoons like The Smurfs also crossed denominational lines and found fertile soil among the JW's.
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  NotFormer

  TD, what was the name of the French Monsignor? I'd like to read up on him; he may be the founder of all that came after, by the sound of things.

  The satanic panic of the 80s grew out of some phenomena that started in the seventies. You had Mike Warnke, who claimed to have been a satanist high priest who converted to Christ.

  Then you had that great purveyor of Christian comic tracts, arguably the WT's rival, Jack Chick, and his Chick Publications. He had a series of comics about Satanism informed by supposed Satanist and druid, John Todd.

  Later he started publishing stuff by Dr Rebecca Brown, who claimed that churches were being infiltrated and undermined by organised witches. It was a great scapegoat at a time when the popularity and influence of Christianity seemed to be waning. It might have been tempting for the WT to lean into that one, but they already had their JCs and disfellowshipment so, credit where credit is due, they could always claim to be keeping the organisation "clean". The Watchtower was also growing and their finances were fine in the 80s, so they didn't need anything to blame their lack of growth on.

  Michelle Remembers came out in the midst of all this. Her story seems to have been popularised alongside that of Laurel Rose Willson, who claimed to be a victim of satanic ritual abuse, to the point where she was supposedly breeding babies to be sacrificed to Satan.

  Eventually the whole edificxoe came crashing down when Christian magazine Cornerstone began publishing investigative articles about these people and their claims. Whole "ministries" died overnight when their bogus claims were brought to light.

  As for the cartoons and the toy merchandising associated with them, that was definitely being berated in "mainstream" Christianity. There was a book, Turmoil in the Toy Box, about how all that was being used by Satan to usher in the age of the Antichrist. The Smurfs and He-man both got a serve in that one. I'll come back to He-man with the appropriate 80s cartoons topic. 😉

  But back to the seventies cartoons and JW kids' relationship to them. What else do you remember?

  Speaking of remembering, does anyone remember the British children were tv series, Catweazle? It was about a Saxon wizard transported forward through time, from Norman times to the Twentieth century. It often showcased his occult powers. I can't imagine it would have gone down well in JW households, or mainstream Christian ones, for that matter.
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  NotFormer

  Diogenesister: "So they hit the GB naughty list on all three scores....ie being new, popular and for the young"

  Based on the "new, popular and for the young" formula, how did Pokemon fare? 😱

  I personally didn't like Pokemon, it involved making your pets fight. To me it was the moral equivalent of cock-fighting.