My Blog Is My Brave Hat

The Halloween videos came out today.

Blame my father. He was over helping me watch the kiddos (read: coo over Madeline like a crazy person; actually, he was an enormous help as I'm feeling several feet under the local meteorological system) and since there's the slightest bit of crispness in the air (at 62 degrees; what a sad overwarm place I live in), he suggested that they emerge. Of course, once the monkeys heard the words mentioned, they would brook no substitute.

I kind of like the Halloween videos we have, but there is some weirdness there. Take Rolie Polie Olie, a cute little computer-animated romp starring Olie and his family in generally genial stories that aren't too syrupy, all taking place on planet Polie, which is entirely populated by robotic citizens of various stripes and segregated by their shape. I assume they're segregated--we never see a round robot married to a square robot, for instance. Maybe they have mechanized miscegenation laws. Also troubling is the fact that the family shares the same name as the planet. Are they the autocratic rulers of the entire globe? This is not explained.

However, somebody really blew a cog when it came to the Halloween show. The main character introduced is called Spookie Ookie, a large pumpkin-headed robot with sharp teeth and cockeyed, cruelly arched eyebrows, and long, dangerous-looking fingers. He howls like a lunatic running naked with the wolves and chases children. Oh, and because that's not enough so scare the weewah out of you, he can also fly. I was a bit nervous about Spookie Ookie when I first saw him; I have no idea how he's warped the boys' minds. Spookie Ookie wanders the Polie world seeking his lost Universal Remote (which, on the mad planet Polie, controls anything) and can't get back into his pumpkin house. So he attempts to steal the remotes of other, mechanized-God-fearing robots, resorting to assault to achieve his evil aims. What, precisely, he does in his pumpkin house is left to the imagination, but I suspect a whole Ed Gein/Spike from Toy Story thing going on, with the dismembered pistons and torn-out sprockets of a dozen innocent droids melded into horrible new forms to satisfy his own sadistic impulses. But maybe that's just me.

We also have The Book of Pooh, with an episode called "Just Say Boo!" This is a thorougly delightful progam which makes even me laugh. The characters are all puppet versions of the Disney versions of the A.A. Milne characters, and the writing just sings. The title of this post is a reference to a story in which Piglet discovers a hat which Pooh suggests may make Piglet stalwert. His explanation:

Pooh: "It must be a brave hat!"

Piglet: "A brave hat? Really? What's a brave hat, Pooh?"

Pooh: "Well, I believe that it's a hat that makes the hat wearer... brave. Hence the name."

His proof? Upon looking through a book of heroes, he notices that Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Joan of Arc all wore hats. Impeccable logic, really.

My very first post back on Wordhord (since deleted, as the whole blog ought to be) mentioned that this episode contained a dialogue exchange which should have won the writer an Emmy for the Most Wonderful Exchange Written for a Children's Show but Which Makes Adults Laugh. The scene involved Tigger and Piglet housesitting for Owl. It turns out that Owl's house is unexpectedly drafty and noisy, resulting in the two being scared out of their wits and hiding behind a fort built of an overturned coffee table and stacks of books. Upon hearing the fluttering of a curtain in the wind, Tigger posits the following cause:

Tigger: "It's like some great wavoniferous heffalump beating its terrifying, fleshy wings against the icy fog!"

Piglet: "Wait, Tigger! Heffalumps fly?"

Tigger: "The ones with terrifying, fleshy wings do!"

Man, that's great.

There's also an episode on the DVD of Out of the Box, which I won't touch, since two unmarried adults luring children into their "playhouse" to make crafts and sing songs seems sadly creepy in our day and age. You just know someone would report them to the police. They're not as terrifying as The Wiggles, but still...

We have the old standby It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which we didn't get to. And really, Linus' personal delusions about anthorpomorphic spirits of Halloween also serves as good old-fashioned nightmare fuel in my mind (and thanks to MST3K for the quote, one of my favorites). If you need to know more, look here. (Warning: this link does contain some graphic content. But it's really funny.)

Finally, we have the imaginatively named Dora's Halloween, which is kind of a rip-off as the series of three shorts features only one that is vaguely connected to Halloween at all; the other two are just repeated episodes of the show, tossed on the DVD because no one would buy it if it were only 15 minutes long.

Dora the Explorer is pleasant enough, but it grates after a while. I know repetition is good for children, but if you're not chanting, "Bridge, mountain, Crocodile Lake" before the end of an episode, you're a stronger person than I. Dora's adventures are amazingly linear (and you thought that an adjective like "linear" couldn't reasonably take qualifiers, didn't you? Just watch the show and you'll see what I mean), and the pretense that it's all a kind of video game comes and goes but always slows things waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.

I also have issues with Dora's parental supervision. Of all the shows featured here, only the Peanuts have less direct contact with adults, and at least they stay close to home and occasionally consult the Great Wah-Wah Masters who rule over them. Dora, on the other hand, appears to be left to her own devices all day and night and spends her time dodging child-eating crocodiles, daring the wrath of witches and giant chickens, and treking cross-country while being stalked by a kleptomaniacal fox who steals, not for profit, but for the pleasure of hurting others. Don't her parents care? She has parents and grandparents--we've seen them, and they seem nice enough--but they take almost no interest in her constant ramblings, leaving her in the charge of a child monkey, a dim-witted backpack, and a possibly psychotic map that displays only the vaguest of directions. Something isn't right here.

Won't someone please think of the children?