4 - Wednesday, August 27, 1986 - North Shore News

kid’s entertainment.

Just in the last year, I’ve
taken my seven-year-old son to
see Ghostbusters, Return to Oz,
The Last Starfighter, The
NeverEnding Story, 2010, Back
to the Future, Enemy Mine,
Labyrinth, Short Circuit,
Howard the Duck, and just in-
cidentally, Dune and Aliens,

A few people might think
these last two are a bit on the
heavy side, but, believe me,
they were just basically kids’
shows too. The lad didn’t have
any nightmares afterward.

In fact, he emerged from
Aliens quite proud of, himself
for having had the courage to
stick his head @ut from under
my jacket to actually LOOK at
the monster.

“That wasn't so bad,’’ he
mused later. Maybe he had ac-
tually learned something vital
about life: Be fearless! (Or at
least, show no fear.)

{In my son’s short career as a
movie buff , he has seen abso-
lutely the best animation and
special effects in history.

The boy’s first movie was
E.T. — the first lovable alien.

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JT SEEMS to be taken for granted — or it may simply
not have been noticed — but we live in the Golden Age of

He was three. | had prepared
him to see a make-believe per-
son from another planet and
instructed him to stick his head
under my jacket if he got scared
and if he wanted to leave, we'd
leave right away.

But apart from a couple of

loomed in a lighted doorway,

There, larger than life, was his
first non-Earthling!

He was agog. And, of course,
like his entire generation, he fell
in love with an extraterrestrial,
just like, in my time, we fell in
love with Bambi.

Since then, we have caught
just about every space flick and

Dark Crystal,

series, Lord of the Rines, Black
Enccunters,
Outland, Tron,
and of course, all of the Disney
stuff that has been recycled in
that time, from Snow White to

week, we saw

Bob Hunter

® strictly personal ®

come is The Boy Who Could
Fly and flight of the Navigator.

The point is, the kid and me
can hardly keep up with the
cornucopia of ineredible
movies.

And this is not counting the
endless stream of cartoons that
can be rented from the video
shop. Not all that many adults
bother to watch them, but the
fact of the matter is that the ar-
listic Renaissance which has
swept the movies has likewise
swept the world of animation.

Let’s face it, to live in an era
when you can watch virtually
every classic fairy tale or fable
or kid’s yarn ever invented — in
glowing color on a magic box in
your own home — is to be
entertained as no generation of
children has ever been enter-
tained before.

You namte it, you can find it
in an animated version, from
The Wind in the Willows to
Sinbad to Horton, with all the
Bues Bunny, Donald Duck,
Pluto, Daffy, Mickey Mouse,
Mighty Mouse, Chip n’Dale,
Tweelie and Sylvester shows
ever done...all at your fingertips.

[ am particularly entranced
by the influx of Japanese car-
toons, such as the Unico adven-

tures. **Cartoons’’ is scarcely
the word, of course. We are
talking about animated folk
ta'cs, some of them disguised as
“". -sternized"’ science-fiction,
but all of them bearing the un-
mistakeable philosophical
stamp of the Orient.

Rather than looking down on
this stuff as junk, To am
delivhted that my children are
exposed to such influences,
Whatever shape their little
minds are going to take in adult
life, they won't lack a cosmic
viewpoint,

ft is not just that the dim
stirrings of a global culture —
ual is, as trans-national set of
values — are reaching their eyes
and brains, but outer space
itself has been totally inter-
nalized. Swallowed, if you like.

If an alien spaceship was to
land tomorrow in my backyard,
my guess is that my seven-
year-old woutd be totally blase,

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no matter what kind of a
creature stepped or slithered or
beamed out. He’s seen ‘em all!

If nothing else, | am quite
certain that the experience of
seeing dozens if not hundreds
of different kinds of creatures
from other planets, albeit
make-believe, before you are
even eight years old is bound to
substantially lessen the chances
of you growing up prejudiced
against your fellow human be-
ings, regardless of race.

! don’t buy the argument that
watching TV or movie wrecks a
kid’s ability to create, read,
talk, draw or dream up stories
of their own. ft certainly hasn't
affected any of my kids that
way.

Put it this way: From = an
entertainment point of view, if I
was to pick an era in which to
be a kid, | would pick NOW.
No question.

980-8571