This week, I wanted to talk about “SpongeBob SquarePants” again. I also wanted to talk about slapstick, but I feel like I didn’t waste enough of your time explaining exactly why I wanted to delve so deeply into a show geared toward kids. So, I’m going to explain that: why exactly I want to delve so deeply into a show geared toward kids. Let’s go.
Educational children’s television has always been pretty good at entertaining and educating. “Sesame Street,” “Little Einsteins” and “Caillou” are all good examples of shows parents should have their children watch because they teach, entertain and — most importantly — inspire creativity.
Once children enter the education system, though, it’s pretty unlikely they’re going to want to come home to more learning, especially from programs that don’t really hide their intention to teach.
So, a great way to introduce creativity and analysis is through comedy. Comedy is a creative exercise. It’s an art — it’s analysis, creative problem-solving and every other buzzword associated with art as a positive force. It’s important to understand how to encourage creativity in younger children. So, how do you kick-start creativity in younger children without trying to shove it down their throats? Make them laugh.
Comedy, to me, is inherently the most fun art to analyze because the reward for analyzing it is laughter, and nothing kicks children into high gear like a feedback loop. Comedy is such an easy way to introduce creative thinking because we actively seek comedy out. The educational system assigns us classic and noteworthy books, but the stigma of books as an assignment makes analysis feel like a chore. That’s not the case with children’s shows.
So, comedies are important for younger children, and the shows that we watched when we were young molded us. It’s important to give credit to the things that make us smile and to understand why they make us smile. For example, it makes us look bad when we cite “SpongeBob SquarePants” as one of our favorite shows, but then we see a more recent episode in which Mr. Krabs drives Plankton past the point of insanity or an episode in which SpongeBob gets a splinter so gross that it is no longer funny. If we equate what we see now with what we saw then, we completely discredit our past selves. There’s this mindset — especially in college — to mislabel elements of the past as nostalgia and throw them out the window. Certainly we were all losers back in the day, but that doesn’t mean we can discard the art we grew up with.
There’s always this weird divide that springs up between what counts as art and what’s demoted to entertainment. The mindless, animated children’s shows you see on television are usually deemed entertainment, but putting a show like “SpongeBob SquarePants” under the light of analysis raises it to the art that it is. In doing research for this series of columns, I didn’t find a single formal analysis of the show or of any other Nickelodeon shows.
Ideally, we’d go into any work of art and develop as artists as we process it and reflect on it. But surprisingly, even some of the most mature shows on television aren’t conducive to creative thinking; shows like “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead” simply serve as fodder for conversation with friends, and the exhilaration of watching the show doesn’t come from analyzing its narrative devices, but rather from simply taking in the plot.
Many of the shows children are exposed to can be mind-numbing and nothing more than high-energy roller coasters of zaniness for zaniness’ sake. The same could be said of these modern popcorn dramas and their tension for tension’s sake. Judging a work of art should extend far beyond its intended age group. This is the concluding sentence.
Michael Smith is a mechanical engineering junior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
This week, I wanted to talk about “SpongeBob SquarePants” again. I also wanted to talk about slapstick, but I feel like I didn’t waste enough of your time explaining exactly why I wanted to delve so deeply into a show geared toward kids. So, I’m going to explain that: why exactly I want to delve so deeply into a show geared toward kids. Let’s go.
Educational children’s television has always been pretty good at entertaining and educating. “Sesame Street,” “Little Einsteins” and “Caillou” are all good examples of shows parents should have their children watch because they teach, entertain and — most importantly — inspire creativity.
Once children enter the education system, though, it’s pretty unlikely they’re going to want to come home to more learning, especially from programs that don’t really hide their intention to teach.
So, a great way to introduce creativity and analysis is through comedy. Comedy is a creative exercise. It’s an art; it’s analysis, creative problem-solving and every other buzzword associated with art as a positive force. It’s important to understand how to encourage creativity in younger children. So, how do you kickstart creativity in younger children without trying to shove it down their throats? Make them laugh.
Comedy, to me, is inherently the most fun art to analyze because the reward for analyzing it is laughter, and nothing kicks children into high gear like a feedback loop. Comedy is such an easy way to introduce creative thinking because we actively seek comedy out. The educational system assigns us classic and noteworthy books, but the stigma of books as an assignment makes analysis feel like a chore. That’s not the case with children’s shows.
So, comedies are important for younger children, and the shows that we watched when we were young molded us. It’s important to give credit to the things that make us smile and to understand why they make us smile. For example, it makes us look bad when we cite “SpongeBob SquarePants” as one of our favorite shows, and then we see a more recent episode in which Mr. Krabs drives Plankton past the point of insanity or an episode in which SpongeBob gets a splinter so gross that it is no longer funny. If we equate what we see now with what we saw then, we completely discredit our past selves. There’s this mindset — especially in college — to mislabel elements of the past as nostalgia and throw them out the window. Certainly we were all losers back in the day, but that doesn’t mean we can discard the art that we grew up with.
There’s always this weird divide that springs up between what counts as art and what’s demoted to entertainment. The mindless animated children’s shows you see on television are usually deemed entertainment, but putting a show like “SpongeBob SquarePants” under the light of analysis raises it to the art that it is. In doing research for this series of columns, I didn’t find a single formal analysis of the show or of any other Nickelodeon shows.
Ideally, we’d go into any work of art and develop as artists as we process it and reflect on it. But surprisingly, even some of the most mature shows on television aren’t conducive to creative thinking; shows like “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead” simply serve as fodder for conversation with friends, and the exhilaration of watching the show doesn’t come from analyzing its narrative devices, but rather from simply taking in the plot.
Many of the shows children are exposed to can be mind-numbing and nothing more than high energy roller coasters of zaniness for zaniness’ sake. The same could be said of these modern popcorn dramas and their tension for tension’s sake. Judging a work of art should extend far beyond its intended age group. This is the concluding sentence.
Michael Smith is a mechanical engineering junior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
