Becoming a father incurs a lot of responsiblity and challenges, but the most rewarding aspects of fatherhood outweigh anything else. You notice that through your own children you’re able to become a child again and that’s an amazing turnaround since becoming an adult means having to tone down or leave behind certain aspects of your childhood.
Lately my daughter Zoe and I have been spending time watching cartoons, mostly because at 15 months she’s starting to enjoy them moreso than when she was younger. Her favorite prime-time cartoon is The Simpsons and whenever that familiar Danny Elfman tune carries itself through our apartment she’s immediately attentive. She dances to the theme song and then for the next half-hour (or 15 minutes, thank you Tivo!) she just sits there quietly and smiles, occassionally pointing to the television and bobbing her head up and down like a baboon.
A co-worker of mine shared with me that he enjoyed watching a show called The Backyardigans with his daughter, Maddie. He mentioned that the show, which stars a bunch of computer-animated animals (and one alien named Uniqua) depicted various pretend situations like pirate adventures. At that point I programmed Tivo to pick up on a season’s worth of episodes hoping it was as cool as my co-worker had described. The fact that it promoted imagination was an immediate attention grabber for me since to this day I still tend to sway towards my creativity to carry me along, especially when life throws it’s curveballs.
To me, it’s a wonderful thing to be spending time with my daughter watching these shows. It makes me happy to see her dancing along with the music and casually glancing back to me waiting for my reaction. Through her I am able to revisit certain parts of my childhood and that in turn makes me nostalgic for the past but appreciate the future.
It’s nice how a lot of animated shows can appeal to all ages. The cool part is that as kids get older, they can continue to appreciate and revisit the same old shows, because they’ll understand them on a whole new level. At least that has been my experience.
When I think about having kids, I think about how lucky they are going to be that I already know all the fun stuff to do. Like watching King of the Hill, and avoiding purple dinosaurs.
The Simpsons is one of the best examples of a cross-generational cartoon: Toddlers (like Zoe) watch it for the big, bright, almost garish colors and -for what you say here- the music, older kids watch it…well, because they watch a lot of TV anyway, and older-older kids trapped inside adult bodies (us) watch it because of its twisted humor and sociological jokes.
The Backyardingans look like something that could pop out in Discovery Kids channel… BTW, hasn’t your daughter fallen prey of the Purple Menace yet? :D * crossing fingers *
Greg : You’re right. Just the other day I had Tivo tape a Ducktales movie and despite certain descrepencies (no doubt because of the fact I’m older and have more of a critical eye) it was even more enjoyable because I understood various jokes that I might’ve missed as a kid. Let’s face it, as a kid you’re paying attention moreso to the colors, as Beto pointed out, the music and the overall story.
However, as an adult watching cartoons you pay more attention to the character interactions, inside jokes and dialogue. The overall story is just the icing on the cake.
Beto: Thankfully she hasn’t fallen prey, nor will I allow it to happen. Instead I’ll divert her attention to Sesame Street and The Backyardigans, shows that I feel offer more value in the form of education and entertainment.
Oh man, I had forgotten about Duck Tales. That was a good cartoon. I’m going to have the theme song in my head all day now…
Max: Well hey, if it’s going to stick like that, might as well have the right lyrics:
Life is like a hurricane
Here in Duckburg
Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes
It’s a duck-blur
Might solve a mystery
Or rewrite history
Duck Tales (oooh oohh)
I still can recite the entire “Duck Tales” song. Great post my friend.
Lets not forget about Darkwing Duck, I mean he was like one of my first superhero memories. Me and Kartooner would run home after school and turn on Friday afternoon Cartoons. Then one of us would piss the other one off, we’d throw something, our grandma would come in, yell at us and PERFECTLY without a doubt our dad would come home the exact second it would all end, just for us to get in BIGGER trouble.
Aaaah.. Life was good. Ooo oo.. Remember pulling out the bed Erik/Our Forts? Haha.
Donnie: I take it you were a fan of the Disney Afternoon as well? Along with Ducktales, my brother and I also watched Talespin, Gummi Bears, The Smurfs and a slew of others that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Matt: Oh yes, add Darkwing Duck to that list. Here’s a bit of trivia: One of the voice actors on Darkwing Duck, who did the voice of the Liquidator and Bud Blood, was also the voice of Teddy in Stephen Spielberg’s A.I.
Right now I’m not big into these 3d animated cartoons, and oddly enough my daughter doesn’t respond to them with as much interest as ‘reality’ based shows like ‘Balamory’ (Still love the 3d intro though) and ‘The Fimbles’, but I guess you probably don’t get them in the states. :?
Great cartoons, Does anyone know where to find the lyrics?