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For Immediate Release
February 8, 1999
Reared on Bugs Bunny, Jonny Quest, and Super Friends
Book by Swarthmore Professor and Brother Analyzes Saturday Morning Cartoon Culture
Cultural observers sometimes contend that today's twenty- and thirty-somethings lack the common experience that binds previous generations. But a Swarthmore College professor and his co-author brother take exception in a new book. The members of Generation X do have something in common, Timothy and Kevin Burke claim -- Bugs Bunny, Super Friends, Jonny Quest, Scooby-doo, and the other Saturday morning cartoons they devoured with their Cap'n Crunch back in their childhood.
"A lot of Saturday morning was crap. But it was our crap, and we're tired of smug folks twice our age telling us their crap was better," the brothers write in the introduction to Saturday Morning Fever (St. Martin's). Timothy Burke is assistant professor of history at Swarthmore College; Kevin Burke is a former editor at Cartoon World magazine and now works for the movie production company A Band Apart.
In addition to reliving the highs and lows of Saturday morning animated programming, the book skewers "sanctimonious intellectuals" who decry cartoons as violent, inane, and generally harmful to young minds. Just as bad, the Burkes contend, were the more wholesome shows that came along in response. "Bugs Bunny cartoons were hugely superior to Mister Rogers," they write, "not only in terms of entertainment, but also because their value system -- centered on Bugs, a quintessentially American wise-ass and all-around champion gender-bender -- was massively preferable to Fred Rogers's goody-goody vision of the world."
With origins in the 1950s, the Saturday morning cartoon ritual came into its own in the mid-'60s with the immensely popular Beatles cartoon. But the '70s were the true golden age for Saturday morning cartoons, according to the Burkes. Millions of kids were glued to shows like Josie and the Pussycats and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, with the advertisers and television executives taking maximum commercial advantage. The decade also witnessed the rise of advocacy groups like Action for Children's Television, which lobbied for advertising and content reforms aimed at protecting the supposedly impressionable young viewers.
Timothy Burke -- who as the elder brother exercised a dictator's control over the TV dial when he and Kevin were kids -- scoffs at the notion that watching Wily E. Coyote getting blown up, squashed, and otherwise abused can warp a child. But nor would he contend that the cartoon experience was insignificant in his, his brothers', and his generation's growing-up experience.
"There was an intensity in seeing Jonny Quest week after week. It gave us a common set of experiences and cultural reference points," says Burke 34. "It's the same thing, really, as radio shows or movies were to earlier generations."
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