I am appalled. Not Apollo, appalled. One of the mainstays of
our educational system has been trifled with and I am not happy. The teaching
of Classical Music on Saturday morning cartoons has been thrown to the wayside!
I know! It’s a terrible thing! Where will our children get
their love of music from? Where will they gain the understanding of musical
nuance, timing and emotion? It certainly won’t be from some robot-driven,
animated adaptation of a bestselling ‘graphic novel’!
What is a graphic novel anyway?
The last one I saw looked
suspiciously like the comic books I used to buy at the corner store – you know,
three for a buck and they had the cool ads in the back for the x-ray glasses
and sea monkeys. The same thing now sells for $12.95 and points you to a
website that sells graphic novel t-shirts for twenty-five dollars…
Almost gone are the days of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, the Road
Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Luckily, one of my kids found a cartoon station that
still shows all the old classics, although some civil libertarians seem to have
cut out some of the best bits, so as not to “scare” the kids watching. Then
they let the kids go right back to their game consoles and ‘shoot’ everything
in sight for hours.
Makes you wonder.
Anyway, I believe we are doing a disservice to the upcoming
generation by not exposing them to classical music in a manner that they will
understand. Ask your neighbours where they learned about Mozart, Rossini, Bach.
I’ll bet that the majority will remember hearing the music while watching Bugs
Bunny foil Yosemite Sam’s plan to dam a river.
Here’s an example for you. I was about ten years old and we
were going to the hospital to visit a friend on a Sunday. We stopped in the
gift shop before heading to the room and I was looking for a little gift for
our friend. As I was perusing the shelves, trying to stretch my three dollars
for all they were worth, I heard some music playing on the tape recorder behind
the cash register.
As I wandered past, still looking for a gift, I realized I
knew this piece! I blurted out “That’s the Barber of Seville!” to the lady
behind the counter. She looked quite shocked - pleasantly shocked - that a lad
of my tender years recognized such a classic piece of music. “Very good, young
man! Where did you learn about opera?” she asked. “I heard it yesterday on the
Bugs Bunny Show!”
The expression on her face went from incomprehension to
confusion back to pleasantly shocked – after all, I still knew the music and
that’s all that mattered.
From then on, I paid particular attention to the musical
score of every show I watched (and there were a lot of them. I’m definitely a
child of the television generation). It’s amazing how many beautiful classical
scores are playing in the background. Along with the Barber of Seville
(Rossini), there was the Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), the Wedding March
(Mendelssohn) and the March of Valkyries (Wagner).
One unexpected benefit from the gift shop encounter was that
for the next couple of months, I could watch as much Bugs Bunny and Friends as
I wanted to on Saturdays. All I had to say to Mom was “It’s educational! How
else am I supposed to learn about music?”
You have to love it when a plan falls into place…
All images copyright by Warner Bros. etc, etc.
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