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Krofft
A letter to Salon about Narnia in neon, an article about the children's television of Sid and Marty Krofft (subscription or ad-watch required).
I'm part of that odd generation that grew up watching the Krofft shows. I was born in 1964. My wife is a few years younger than me, and she'd never heard of them - although she'd watched more TV than I did, as a kid.
Any time I meet anyone born in 1964, though, I always find that we speak the same language: Krofft. We all dreamed about those shows, and our imaginations were forever changed - twisted? liberated? - by them.
So I bought the complete Pufnstuf and Lidsville series on DVD for my little boy. He's going to have the same bizarre images as I have floating around in MY subconscious. That may seem domineering, but have you looked at modern television for kids? It's either gross-out animation in the spirit of Ren & Stimpy (but without the talent) or the same perky-happy-crappy garbage that has been churned out for defenseless kids practically since the medium began.
Yes, I'm talking about you, Dora the Explorer, Little Einsteins, Hannah Montana, and the atrocity of the Winnie-the-Pooh shows featuring an animated perky AMERICAN GIRL in place of Christopher Robin (who was, damn it all, ENGLISH!). I'm talking about YOU, Disney! Mickey Mouse was NEVER funny!
And every single goddamned show is backed up by millions of dollars worth of focus groups, psychological research, and products to buy, buy, buy.
It's sanitized. It's sterilized. It's televisual pap! And what is that doing to the minds of our children?
Take a look at a random episode of Lidsville. It would never be made or broadcast today. The evil Hoodoo the Magician (Charles Nelson Reilly) having lost his "zap" powers to Raunchy Rabbit (I swear to God I am not making this up) dresses up as a female bunny and seduces the hapless lagomorph out of his powers!
Adults cringe in amazement at the sight of the tutu-wearing girl-bunny-disguised Reilly rolling around on a chaise longue with a little person in a bunny costume. But kids love it.
It feels as if Sid and Marty Krofft got a gang of brilliant maniacs together, said "hey gang, let's put on a show!" and made it happen. They're incredibly lose and amateurish compared to modern shows. There are obvious mistakes; for example, take the opening of Lidsville. Butch Patrick's fall into the giant hat was visibly botched - you can see his foot kind of bouncing there as he hits the padding upside-down at the bottom of the hat.
TV executives today would fire anyone for suggesting that a mistake like that be broadcast. But god forbid that even a smidgen of the creativity and imagination that the Kroffts displayed in almost every episode get on the screen now! Our screens must remain sterile...as sterile as our children's minds. I think that the time will come when we realize that raising our children in an ideologically pure and sterilized environment destroys their mental immune systems, just as raising them without exposure to germs and dirt destroys their resistance to physical disease. Both are a cruel disservice to the next generation.
Pufnstuf and Lidsville were the purest of the divine Kroftt madness, in my book. They give us a window into a brief time when American culture was on the edge of becoming something truly, fundamentally different. Instead, that change was assimilated, digested, and eliminated.
Land of the Lost was a fun show (as a kid I loved it), but didn't have the essential Krofft craziness; that seems to have required giant-headed puppet-costumes. Sigmund & the Sea Monster verged on the weirdness, but somehow never quite reached the same level of strangeness and magic. That was probably, I think, because unlike Pufnstuf and Lidsville the child-protagonists of Sigmund were never taken away to another, magical world; their California world expanded a little to include sea monsters and other creatures, but it retained a link to reality that somehow made everything seem a little flat.
As for the Bugaloos, I didn't watch it much as a kid. And when I tried to watch it as an adult, I just couldn't take it. Yes, it seems to be the true Krofft quill...but maybe you have to have first seen it with the eyes of a child to be able to really enjoy it.
I'm part of that odd generation that grew up watching the Krofft shows. I was born in 1964. My wife is a few years younger than me, and she'd never heard of them - although she'd watched more TV than I did, as a kid.
Any time I meet anyone born in 1964, though, I always find that we speak the same language: Krofft. We all dreamed about those shows, and our imaginations were forever changed - twisted? liberated? - by them.
So I bought the complete Pufnstuf and Lidsville series on DVD for my little boy. He's going to have the same bizarre images as I have floating around in MY subconscious. That may seem domineering, but have you looked at modern television for kids? It's either gross-out animation in the spirit of Ren & Stimpy (but without the talent) or the same perky-happy-crappy garbage that has been churned out for defenseless kids practically since the medium began.
Yes, I'm talking about you, Dora the Explorer, Little Einsteins, Hannah Montana, and the atrocity of the Winnie-the-Pooh shows featuring an animated perky AMERICAN GIRL in place of Christopher Robin (who was, damn it all, ENGLISH!). I'm talking about YOU, Disney! Mickey Mouse was NEVER funny!
And every single goddamned show is backed up by millions of dollars worth of focus groups, psychological research, and products to buy, buy, buy.
It's sanitized. It's sterilized. It's televisual pap! And what is that doing to the minds of our children?
Take a look at a random episode of Lidsville. It would never be made or broadcast today. The evil Hoodoo the Magician (Charles Nelson Reilly) having lost his "zap" powers to Raunchy Rabbit (I swear to God I am not making this up) dresses up as a female bunny and seduces the hapless lagomorph out of his powers!
Adults cringe in amazement at the sight of the tutu-wearing girl-bunny-disguised Reilly rolling around on a chaise longue with a little person in a bunny costume. But kids love it.
It feels as if Sid and Marty Krofft got a gang of brilliant maniacs together, said "hey gang, let's put on a show!" and made it happen. They're incredibly lose and amateurish compared to modern shows. There are obvious mistakes; for example, take the opening of Lidsville. Butch Patrick's fall into the giant hat was visibly botched - you can see his foot kind of bouncing there as he hits the padding upside-down at the bottom of the hat.
TV executives today would fire anyone for suggesting that a mistake like that be broadcast. But god forbid that even a smidgen of the creativity and imagination that the Kroffts displayed in almost every episode get on the screen now! Our screens must remain sterile...as sterile as our children's minds. I think that the time will come when we realize that raising our children in an ideologically pure and sterilized environment destroys their mental immune systems, just as raising them without exposure to germs and dirt destroys their resistance to physical disease. Both are a cruel disservice to the next generation.
Pufnstuf and Lidsville were the purest of the divine Kroftt madness, in my book. They give us a window into a brief time when American culture was on the edge of becoming something truly, fundamentally different. Instead, that change was assimilated, digested, and eliminated.
Land of the Lost was a fun show (as a kid I loved it), but didn't have the essential Krofft craziness; that seems to have required giant-headed puppet-costumes. Sigmund & the Sea Monster verged on the weirdness, but somehow never quite reached the same level of strangeness and magic. That was probably, I think, because unlike Pufnstuf and Lidsville the child-protagonists of Sigmund were never taken away to another, magical world; their California world expanded a little to include sea monsters and other creatures, but it retained a link to reality that somehow made everything seem a little flat.
As for the Bugaloos, I didn't watch it much as a kid. And when I tried to watch it as an adult, I just couldn't take it. Yes, it seems to be the true Krofft quill...but maybe you have to have first seen it with the eyes of a child to be able to really enjoy it.