Okay, I stole the thread title from a Harvard Lampoon publication, the "People Parody" which is a great fake "People" magazine from the early 1980's. I bought an original copy when it first came out because it was hilarious and also because it was so well done that very few of the target audience of the real mag could tell the difference. I would leave it out on a coffee table and watch what would happen when a guest would pick it up and flip through the pages. If you've never seen it, well, it's worth getting a copy if you can find it (check eBay).
Getting back to the subject at hand...
I guess that someone besides myself has noticed that the Disney Channel is a virtual slut factory. Not a little bit surprising is that this someone isn't in the conservative media, this comes out of "LA Weekly" from about a month and a half ago and that is a bit stunning and sort of newsworthy in and of itself. Here is a quote from
the article...Disney Channel and Teen Nick preach the merits of being a brat by creating fictional worlds in which kids operate without -- or without any regard for -- adult supervision. Embracing the example set by the otherwise more wholesome granddaddy of the genre, Saved by the Bell, grown-ups are either altogether missing in these shows or, in the case of Wizards of Waverly Place and Good Luck Charlie (and the superior, now-canceled, iCarly), infantile sidekicks with no legitimate influence on their mischievous charges. When adults are around, they're depicted as buffoons, and their threats of punishment are toothless, mere narrative devices designed to provide drama while also underscoring the kids' awesome and lionized do-what-I-wanna-do behavior.
Wizards, for example, pivots itself around the har-har disobedience of Selena Gomez's hottie, regardless of any problems it causes or parental castigations it engenders. Still, that's preferable to Jesse, How to Rock, Victorious, Austin & Ally and Shake It Up (and even boy-band dreck Big Time Rush), where the general absence of mother and father figures -- the kids live more or less on their own, in lavish houses or apartments, without having jobs or any notable sources of income -- conveys the idea that, with a lot of self-satisfied smirking and pratfalling ingenuity, teens can accomplish everything and anything they want, by themselves, because they always know best.
Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan are only the two most visible and most infamous graduates of the Disney slut factory. Miley Cyrus warrants mention, as well. The article indicts Nickelodeon, too, which is well deserved.
I noticed this trend of kid targeted television, that of making children appear to be hip and intelligent while simultaneously making adults/parents look moronic, many years ago. I saw it first on the animated fare offered by Nickelodeon, specifically "The Fairly Oddparents" and "Jimmy Neutron" franchises. These shows (and the channel) were ultimately banned in our household and both of our children have been infinitely the better for it.
I don't know what happens at these channels (or to be more precise, at these productions companies) but it must go something like this: They hold auditions, identify talented youngsters, somehow manage to separate them from their parents and then proceed to corrupt them on every level imaginable. Now, there's nothing new about this strategy. H'wood has been trying it for years and there are many horror stories of child actors of years gone by that detail abuse by H'wood pedophiles and other various child exploitation artists too numerous (and infamous) to go into.
Disney and, to a lesser degree, Nickelodeon, have somehow either perfected this technique or today's parents of aspiring actors/actresses are less protective and more willing to be bought off/bribed and corruptible themselves. Then they broadcast this utter garbage as pre-teen entertainment and without responsible parental intervention it is pumped directly into the minds of impressionable and naive children. The societal results speak for themselves.
I loathe people who do this to children. I would no sooner leave my thirteen-year-old daughter alone with one of them than I would a pedophile or rapist. And yeah, that
especially includes leaving them to watch this type of television programming.
(Full disclosure: I did once, in spite of my better judgement, allow my daughter (who begged and pleaded) to see the "Hannah Montana Movie." I went with her to see it and then afterwards I forced her to discuss with me all of the wrong things she had witnessed in the movie and why they were wrong. It was a painful and yet extremely necessary exercise.)
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Side note: The most famous work of The Harvard Lampoon is
"Bored of the Rings" which, if you are a LOTR fan and have never read the parody, is an absolute must read. It has the distinction of being the only parody book to be continuously in print since its debut back in 1969. It's that good.
