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Opinion

Is Lil' Red better than Pikachu?

James Davis
Opinion Columnist

Teletubbies, the Harry Potter books, the Goosebumps series, Mortal Kombat, SpongeBob SquarePants, Pokémon -- what do these have in common? Did they all come out in the past decade? Are they all works of fiction? Do they all entertain children?

No. They are all evil.

It sounds ridiculous, but there have been protests against all the aforementioned examples -- some more organized and publicized than others, and, like it or not, the same will probably happen again.

It's understandable, maybe even inevitable. We all want our kids to grow up happy and healthy, and maybe this reaction against children's entertainment rises from that instinct of protection. Why, though, is the reaction so focused and vehement toward these fictional forms? Children entertain themselves in so many ways, and taking a look outside today's books, television shows and video games does more to validate their existence than prove their need to be eliminated.

Violence, for instance, has fascinated children since long before Grand Theft Auto. As much as we want to caricature our kids as cherubs, they acknowledge the reality of passion, rage and vengeance with stunning enthusiasm. The ubiquity of the toy soldier is no coincidence. (And, by the way, I've never seen a bucket of Army Men that was "rated T for Teen.")

For that matter, think about children's sports. Peewee football, or any team sport for youngsters, presents a compelling example of the way children are drawn to aggression. One team of 8-year-olds is pitted against another set of 8-year-olds in a mock battle. For hours, these children test the limits of their ability while listening to their parents scream from the stands, and rarely does everyone win. Before these kids can count by fives, they are comparing their stats and determining who's better.

No wonder that this raw competitiveness works its way into video games. Just as it's fun to win a baseball game, it's fun to beat the crap out of a computerized martial arts expert. Sure, the juvenile gushes of blood released from a punch in Mortal Kombat II exaggerate violence, but at least the game displays the courage of its convictions: When you get punched in the face, it hurts. 

Why do you think the Rock'em Sock'em Robots' heads pop off when you win? A few short decades ago, kids chose between cowboys and Indians, between shooting a toy rifle and throwing a toy tomahawk. Now they choose between Reptile and Scorpion, between shooting imaginary acid and throwing an imaginary harpoon. Why should the former evoke nostalgia and the latter portend doom?

I use Mortal Kombat as an example because it's fresh in our memory. By no means am I suggesting this protectionism is a novelty. Distrust of children's entertainment has a weighty history. Look at the fables of Jean de la Fontaine, which predate video games by about 300 years. Now considered among the greatest works of world literature, these folktales set in verse -- notably, Aesop's fables -- were not always so well received. Jean-Jacques Rousseau deemed them unfit for pedagogy, and he may have had good reason: It's tough to find the moral of these stories. They're not just playful; they're almost cynical.

The moral ambiguity of la Fontaine's "La Cigale et la Fourmi" (The Cicada and the Ant), for instance, seems pretty dark even by today's standards: The cicada, who spent the whole summer singing, begs for food from the ant come winter, and the ant tells the cicada, in short, "You sing? That's great! Now dance." Who's the good guy here: the lazy bug or the manipulative one?

If that example is too esoteric, look at "Little Red Riding Hood," one of the most widely circulated folktales known. Sugarcoat it as much as you want; at its core, this story is far from innocent. The wolf in this tale isn't a wolf at all; he is a stalker. He walks on two feet. He speaks. He starves. He follows a little girl through the woods like a shadow and cannibalizes her grandmother. He puts on the grandmother's clothes. He puts Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter to shame. And in several versions of the story, Red herself doesn't fare too well in the end.

And we teach this stuff to kids! Do I smell a book burning?

So why do we read these tales to kids? Why do the same people who fear the story of a cross-dressing sponge embrace the story of a cross-dressing wolf? I don't have the answer, but I suspect the difference has something to do with time. No matter the criticism, la Fontaine's fables drew from centuries before and have stuck around for centuries later. There have been "Little Red Riding Hood" stories since before the Brothers Grimm and in far more societies than our own. Moral ambiguity or not, children — and adults — understand these stories profoundly.

Maybe some centuries from now, when our progeny has a more objective view of their progenitors, the Harry Potter series will share space with Aesop's fables on our bookshelves. Maybe Grand Theft Auto will be as cherished as those plastic soldiers or tomahawks. Our children's engrossment may alarm us adults, but the popularity of these stories and games is, if nothing else, a sign of their tenacity.

And if you suspect your kids' entertainment, don't whine to the producers; talk to your kids. If their fascination confuses you, ask them why they're fascinated. If you doubt their ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, help them draw the line. Odds are they already know. They may be young, but they have a remarkable ability to figure things out on their own.

Davis, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at jpdavis@uh.edu.