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As you gather around your children tonight, and they ask you to either read to them or tell them a bedtime story, prepare yourself for what is about to happen. In the late 1959’s and early 1964’s a children’s show featuring a flying squirrel and a not-so-intelligent moose used its influence to create an ensemble cast of cartoon characters each with their storylines. This was the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. It was a twist on the traditional cartoons because it used situations of the time to convey a message to the kids. Always with a moral lesson. Unless, that is, the lesson came from the satirical side of the characters and they all had that.
If you are one of us born in the boomer generation you will not need the aid of a book to tell your bedtime story. You need only open the place in your mind that stored all of those dark, witty, and sometimes depraved tales from places like the antics of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale who under the direction of Fearless Leader were always trying to harm, torture, or even kill Moose and Squirrel! As Boris called them. Needless to say, the two Russian spies never succeeded. Then, if your children are truly adventurous, you could go to our neighbors to the north and call on the courage and dashing handsome Dudley Do-Right of the Canadian Mounties to come galloping in on his steed, he simply called, Horse to regale your offspring with stories of daring, harrowing close calls and romance. Dudley had an almost unhealthy crush on his boss's daughter Nell. Unfortunately, Nell had an equally troubling interest in Horse. Very odd. Even more disturbing was a character called, Syndley Whiplash, who was obsessed with Nell and tying her to railroad tracks, attaching a bomb to her backside, or dangling her over a raven, just to get Dudley to fall into his trap of certain doom for the both of them. That was a truly dysfunctional bunch of animated misfits.
If the Mounty lifestyle is not your kid’s cup of tea, then fear not. Sleep is on the way! You could try a time-traveling little boy who gets lost in ancient times, midcentury times and just yesterday. Oddly enough, the boy, Sherman never goes into the future. It is always the past. Could have something to do with the name of the machine he is using. Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine. Always back. Peabody is a highly intelligent dog who adopts a down-on-his-luck human boy, Sherman and together they have one adventure after another using Mr. Peabody’s time machine. You could really capitalize on this one, they must have visited at least a hundred people of the past, and you could take yourself and your kids so much further back into this fractured past.
Speaking of fractured. Now we get to the meat and potatoes of the bedtime story repertoire. This cartoon show, and remember it was intended for children, included a segment called, Fractured Fairy Tales. This was an irreverent, satirical, and comical look at the classic tales you heard as a kid. Twisted, demented, disillusioned and downright weird fairy tales that Once Upon a Time did not do them any favors!
‘All right little ones, here’s one I bet you never heard before….’you begin the next one hour. You proceed to tell them about the three little pigs, only in this one, they are sisters, and they live in three mansions, straw, sticks, and bricks. There is a wolf, but he doesn’t huff or puff, but he wants to live in a mansion not blow it down. Oh yeah, and he wants to marry one of the pig sisters to do it. Eventually, he gets one of the pigs and he gets to live in a mansion, but there is a twist, or a fracture, and you have to reveal that to the kiddies. This isn’t easy, but you cvan do it, and they, your children will survive as you did.
There is a caviat to all of this, most of what was on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show was pretty kid friendly. Some of it however would probably not be allowed to be shown to the little precious babies today. Too violent, too many innuendos, and too much not-so-inclusiveness. So, what is in its own right a classic, would probably be banned today. We have progressed so much, haven’t we?
‘…and they all lived happily, unquestionably, acceptably, and uniquely ever after..’
THE END
