THE PBS PARADIGM

As I have begun to consider a career in the film industry, I have found myself drawn to the fascinating  paradigm of the programming that gets done on Public Access/Public Broadcasting Service Channels in the United States. I have always been amazed at shows like Arthur, for example, which have been able to both appeal to a young audience with messages like this....

And this....

As well as appeal to the adult audience who sits with their kids to watch the show with things like this...

Which is a reference to Citizen Kane and it's titular sled Rosebud, something that no kid would understand but an adult watching would be able to peg down as a reference to pop culture, and this... 

Which is a reference to to the Charlie Brown Christmas special, something that has become quite a fixture in the popular culture zeitgeist, and something that most older viewers would be easily able to identify with, and this.....

In which this character is talking about something that has become a fixture in our generation: blogging. 

Additionally, this show has referenced adult-topics and pop culture references, including, but not limited to, "South Park,Jeopardy!, The Sopranos, Beavis and Butt-head, the Indiana Jones adventures, the James Bond series of films, The Adventures of Tintin, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, The Jerry Springer Show, Oprah, Law & Order, Charlie Rose, Antiques Roadshow, Mystery!, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Macbeth, and That '70s Show" (Arthur [TV Series], Wikipedia, 8/31/14). Some specific examples of these moments in episodes are....

1. Desert Island Dish: One of the characters holds up a cage containing a swallow and then holds up a coconut saying that the swallow had the coconut in mouth. This is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

2. Buster Baxer and the Letter from the Sea: One of the characters writes a message to what he believes is an Atlantean civilization and one of the questions that he poses to them is, do octopus really have gardens? This is a reference to The Beatles 

3. Meet Binky: In this episode one of the characters finds out that a band that another character likes is composed of holograms because the members of the band are not attractive enough to be seen onstage. This is a reference to the Milli Vanilli scandal from the early nineties.  

All of these pop culture references would be only likely to be picked up on by the audience of older viewers.

Ultimately, this kind of clever and subtle reference makes this kind of program both interesting and compelling to a multi-generational audience. One of the reasons that I would love to end up as a program director for PBS is because of the level of sophistication and skill that it requires to create content for both adults and children simultaneously. 

You're Almost 50 Years Old, Charlie Brown

A longstanding tradition in the Colleran household is the annual watching of Charlie Brown Holiday specials. While I enjoy the slightly mediocre (but still heartwarming) Thanksgiving episode and love the anti-consumerism, holiday-spirit fueled Christmas episode, the Halloween special may be my all time favorite Peanuts cartoon. In the spirit of Halloween (and the 47th anniversary of its release in 1966) I decided to keep the family tradition alive and watch the special yet again.



Upon first glance, there's really not a whole lot to "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." The animation is extremely crude and doesn't hold up at all to what we're accustomed to today. The voice acting is weird and awkward. And the story is kind of all over the place, splitting the 25 minute episode into Linus desperately waiting for the Great Pumpkin to visit his pumpkin patch, Charlie Brown trick or treating with the rest of the gang, and Snoopy...taking off on his dog house and fighting the Red Baron.

However, the Great Pumpkin is so much more to me than that. The animation is beautifully simplistic, with solid colors hilariously being used as backgrounds 50% of the time and Linus' hair shooting straight out from his head whenever he's excited or scared. The voice acting is weird and awkward, but it's also authentic, because all of the voices were recorded by real kids. And the story. In part, it's the story of a naive child who gets his expectations up over something that's not real, only to have them coming crashing down around him later on. For the most part, though, it's simply the story of kids celebrating Halloween and being as mean as possible to Charlie Brown.

Poor, poor Charlie Brown. The guy just can't catch a break. Whether he's being forced to use the back of his head to model for a pumpkin carving or getting a rock at every house he trick or treats at (the line "I got a rock" gets me every. Single. Time. The delivery is just so deadpan and perfect), Charlie Brown ends up having just as bad of a Halloween as Linus does. This in and of itself says a lot about the time period; Charlie Brown is just mercilessly bullied the entire special without any consequence. At least in the Christmas special he gets his tiny, pathetic tree decorated by everyone, but there's just no redemption for him this time around.

Anyway, there's so much more that could be picked apart and analyzed about this particular holiday special (Snoopy's weird, PTSD-esque fantasy/dream being a big part of that) but I'd much rather just take the Great Pumpkin at face value. It's fun, it's mindless, and to me at least, it encapsulates everything that the Fall season should be. In the words of Linus: "I don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far at the eye can see."