The impressions kids get

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 19

The impressions kids get

Ken Strongman

As it is the school holidays, thoughts sometimes turn to what the children are up to. One thing for certain is that they are doing some telegazing. Just tapping into this for one hour (longer could cause serious brain disfunction) led to puzzlement, concern and some interest. It also left several questions to be 'answered, not least of which is w’ho watches “Free Time.”

With Oily on holly and “After School” being a temporary misnomer, David McPhail is filling in. Without having double O’s effervescent warmth, he nevertheless does well to project his lines through his funny voices without an obvious curling of his toes in embarrassment. He is a natural entertainer, but what he does on “Free Time” seems to fall very much between children and adults, without the brilliance of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Imagine six year olds watching “Free Time.” What sort of impressions of the world would they be forming as they are catapulted from McPhail at his zaniest to “The »Gummi Bears” and then ’“Video Dispatch”? From *the small Mac they would -gain the image of adults |as very odd indeed, which ftof course they are. The would teach

them that it is pretty good to do unto others as you would be done by, particularly if you can cast spells. If the six year olds continue to watch at “Video Dispatch” time, still only 4.30 although it seems to be about 8 p.m. by then, they can see South Africans killing one another and scouts dressed as girls swaying on stage at a gang show.

As a respite from these excesses, there are advertisements, which are among the most viciously manipulative to come down the tube. Watch them some time. They put the pressure on like a

vice with candy-floss jaws. They run on from cartoons almost indistinguishably and there are our young innocents hooked into fried chicken and interplanetary puppets, wishing and hoping.

In a way, “The Gummi Bears” aren’t too bad. They look charming enough, although not with the other-worldly appeal of “The Smurfs.” In the usual way of Disney’s characters, they live in a magical woodland where they fight for what they somehow know to be right, in spite of having to put up with neuroses, schizophrenia and split personalities. These conditions are all there if you look for them. Meanwhile the six year olds are still sitting there forming impressions.

It must be a very strange job to be an actor who produces the voices for beings such as the Gummies. They have to be shouted, screamed, snarled or lisped, everything larger than life. If you heard voices like this in the street, you might even be tempted to say, as one Gummie character did recently, “Shut up you tower of flim-flam.” As a

social rejoinder, it has a certain something.

It is a long way from the magical Gummies to the harsh realities of Soweto and poisoned gas killing 1200 people in Cameroon. Can a six year old distinguish between a wizard’s magic wand turning someone into a tadpole, and something that looks like a magic wand turning someone into a corpse? In “Video Dispatch,” would they look with the same dispassionate interest on dead bodies (“It depended on the way the wind was blowing whether they lived or died”) and children like themselves playing Kiwi cricket?

This is not a criticism of Video Dispatch, which is a well compiled news programme for older cnudren, particularly as fronted by such congenial presenters, but it is a' criticism of “Free Time.” It seems to be aimed simultaneously at all ages, from the very young to adults, but with different parts for each of them. This means that at times it must be boring for all of them. Perhaps they have simply confused their levels.