I admit that I may be biased, but there was nothing better than Saturday morning cartoons and television shows during the 1970's! Some of my personal favorites were Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (I especially liked "Peabody's Improbably History"), Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (particularly Commander McBragg) and Schoolhouse Rock!, The New Adventures of Flash Gordon, Land of the Lost, Scooby's Laff-A- Lympics, and Shazam! (and the Shazam / Isis Hour). I'm sure there were more, but these were the ones I can still vividly remember. Land of the Lost was surprisingly complex in some of its themes, and I think I learned from Schoolhouse Rock! at times than I did at school. Many of my favorite shows often had a moral at the end, where characters would break the "fourth wall" and speak directly to the television audience about the show's lesson.
I'll admit that I've watched a few episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! on Amazon Prime recently, and I've found all of the episodes of The World of Commander McBragg on YouTube. I'd love to find all of the episodes of Land of the Lost somewhere (the 2009 Will Ferrell movie was a travesty in my opinion - the Saturday morning television series was never meant to be a comedy). There were of course some forgettable shows, but overall, I just think the shows were better than what was on television when our own children were growing up (they may argue with me on this point)!
While looking for old episodes of some of my favorites, I came across a television show that I hadn't remembered, until reading about it. The show was called Ark II, and it was a live-action science fiction show about four scientists (well, okay three scientists and one chimpanzee) named Jonah, Ruth, Samuel, and Adam (the chimpanzee - who apparently talked, but I don't remember that) who drove around in a highly specialized vehicle set in a 25th century post-apocalyptic Earth. Earth had been decimated by the effects of waste, pollution, and warfare (sound familiar?), and the surviving scientists pooled their knowledge and resources to send the Ark II (Get it? The first Ark was Noah's Ark) to search for remnants of civilization. Every episode started with Jonah, the leader, introducing the backstory:
"For millions of years, Earth was fertile and rich. Then pollution and waste began to take their toll. Civilization fell into ruin. This is the world of the 25th century. Only a handful of scientists remain, men who have vowed to rebuild what has been destroyed. This is their achievement: Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people. Their mission: to bring the hope of a new future to mankind."
The show would end with Jonah submitting his captain's log, which contained the episode's lesson (thus not breaking the fourth wall). The show was revolutionary at the time for introducing a racially mix cast, though unfortunately there were also concerns expressed by the actors about how the chimpanzee was treated during filming.
They say that "art often imitates life". Well, art also plays a major role in shaping culture, challenging societal norms, and influencing social change. As I look back on many of the television shows that I watched as a child, I find they did have an impact on culture and social change. I'm not sure that today's popular television shows (mostly reality TV) do that, which is unfortunate. And at some point, most Saturday morning cartoons (which aren't even a thing anymore) were more geared to marketing a product versus providing any kind of moral lesson. It would be hard to go back to the 1970's, but maybe there are some things that we can learn from that decade.
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