Media Macaroni

About 10 years ago, I was finishing up my MFA at the School of Visual Arts. I was showing my self-important video art at a whole-in-the-wall Williamsburg gallery (mind you, this is before Williamsburg became Williamsburg) and deciding what to do next, but I was pretty sure it was not making more art to show to a self-important art crowd (no offense, art crowd). Something just didn’t sit right with me. Around that same time I was doing laundry in the laundromat near my apartment, and Blues Clues came on the wall-mounted TV. A little boy in the laundromat dragged over a folding chair to stand on so he could see better. I proceeded to watch as he danced along and answered back to Steve on the TV, and something clicked. I knew I wanted to be making work for kids, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Thanks, Blues Clues.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a blogger event at PBS KIDS, to hear Blues Clues co-creator Angel Santomero talk about her latest series, Super WHY! All throughout her presentation, I was thinking about what makes a truly great kids’ TV show. Blues Clues was magic. Super WHY! is pretty good, but it definitely lacks some of that magic. 

My first impression of Super WHY! was that it was overly didactic, a Learn and Learn Learning Learner. At several moments throughout, the show comes to a halt and it’s as though the characters are at a whiteboard in front of a classroom (I still say Sid the Science Kid gets a pass on this because the show is actually set inside a classroom). The characters are constantly telling you what their reading powers are instead of just employing said powers. On Blues Clues, audience participation felt like an invitation. On Super WHY! it feels like a command. When I watch it I’m reminded of the TV Funhouse Dora parody, Maraka (warning: link not kid-appropriate, but hilarious). 

During Santomero’s presentation though, I started to think about all that the show is trying to (and needs to) accomplish. Here you have a reading show for the huge reading range of 3 to 6-year-olds, and there has to be something in there for everyone. Super WHY! is funded by a Ready to Learn grant from the Department of Education, and Ready to Learn priorities as listed on the PBS website include:

• Testing new ways for kids and parents to view programs—for example, on the Internet, or with handheld devices, mobile phone, and other emerging technologies
• Exploring new ways to ensure that children from all socio-economic levels have the resources they need to learn how to read
• Evaluating rigorously the outcomes of children’s exposure to television programming and other content to learn what works

Oh, and it should be something that people want to watch. Phew. That’s a tall order. You can see why they’re trying to pack so much explicit teaching into each episode.

In preparation for the PBS Kids event, I showed Olive an episode of Super WHY! I recorded a few on the DVR, and she’s been asking for them almost daily. She really likes the show  and now it’s growing on me. I think Red is a terrific girl character. I also really like that the show is teaching her more about fairy tales: Rapunzel, The Three Pigs, The Three Wishes, and more. As I’ve often mentioned, she knows all kinds of meta-fairy tales, but isn’t so well grounded in the real thing. Plus, these fairy tale segments are particularly well animated. 

The event ended with a homework assignment cleverly disguised as a backpack full of swag. It involves recreating the curriculum of Super WHY reading camps with Olive. I’ll have the results of that homework assignment in an upcoming post.

In the meantime, what shows do you think have magic? Can a show take on a robust curriculum and still be magical?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.