I have been spending quite a bit of time studying fast paced cartoons and the one that I keep coming back to is SpongeBob Square Pants. I have read a few articles that have mentioned other cartoons but SpongeBob is the one that keeps popping up. It is quite obvious that SpongeBob is not intended as an educational program for children, but rather simply entertainment. I understand entertainment. When I was young I watched cartoons that contained content that was very different than what is in cartoons now. I watched cartoon characters have guns, smoke, drink alcohol, be deceptive, be sexually seductive and often depict both racial and gender stereotypes. I don’t remember thinking that what was in the cartoons was weird or bad or simply not for kids. While I was growing up, although I did love Sesame Street, I was more interested in seeing whether or not the coyote caught the roadrunner. To me, Tom and Jerry or Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner were characters I found more interesting than Big Bird or Oscar the Grouch. The interaction between the characters in Looney Tunes was far more appealing than the Sesame Street characters. I feel that this is very similar to why children are drawn to SpongeBob. SpongeBob is fast, dumb, and silly. His friends are the same way and they laugh and have fun. Although the issues with the fast paced television do not revolve around the content of the shows, I think kids just simply want to be entertained sometimes.
Attached is a clip from YouTube interviewing some people that voice the characters on SpongeBob and their thoughts on the show. The article attached gives a more in depth description of some of the tests that were issued to children after they were shown the SpongeBob cartoons and then tested in different areas.
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