Wednesday, February 27, 2008

POP CULTURE: Fairly Oddparents

FLOATY CROWNY THINGS

You need to understand my obsession with this TV show.

The point I'm making is I swear there is a Cincinnati connection in the show... The superhero in Timmy's comic books is called the "Crimson Chin" and lives in "Chincinnati."

Eh, not a big deal, except in the episode The Masked Magician, where Timmy goes from being just a side-kick to the Crimson Chin (Cleft, boy-chin wonder) to his own superhero, guess where they are sitting? In a Chincinnati Chili parlor. Unfortunately, searching on wikipedia there seems to be no specific connection to Cincinnati. But it was fun this morning while watching it this morning.

Meanwhile, there is an interesting link on the wikipedia article -- well, two of them actually:

1) The depiction of mental illness in children's programs, by Otto Wahl, et al, from the Journal of Community Psychology

2) The same thing we do every night: signifying same-sex desire in television cartoons, by Jeffery Dennis, from the Journal of Popular Film and Television

I mean, I live in a homonormative world, and even I wonder if that might be stretching it -- lol, oh this is what they are talking about: "that heterosexual union is essential to the fairy godparent business: Cosmo and Wanda are ineffectual as fairies unless they combine their male and female energies."

They bring up a lot of points, but I'd also like to point out that a lot of cartoons use effeminancy as evil. Need we remember HIM








Like the article points out, HE always seemed really homophobic to me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHOA I totally watched this with the kids I babysat this morning FREAKY! I was laughing with it, actually; there were a bunch of double-entendres and satire than I expected.

Also, I watched Dora the Explorer and The Backyardigans. The little girl I watched (2 or 3yo) sang along, danced, and had the official backyardigans plastic guitar.

Precocious comsumerist quiescence.

Barry Floore said...

ISN'T IT A GREAT SHOW? I love the Fairly Oddparents and Jimmy Neutron.

Hrm. It's on right now, JN... and FO will be on in 30 minutes. Cho or FO...

hrm.