Paul Armstrong Dudikoff responds to Phyllida Archer-Dowd

Originally published April 23, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1327

Well, somewhat to my surprise—and, at the same time, my lack of surprise—the opinions of one Phyllida Archer-Dowd have prompted an assorted of responses. Ms. Archer-Dowd originally weighed in on Mulan and, a few weeks ago, supported the ostensible “outing” of the Teletubbies’ Tinky Winky. Since then, there has been any number of letters in response (“any number” being my shorthand for being too damned lazy to count.) After sorting through them, I’ve decided that the following—written by a Mr. Paul Armstrong Dudikoff—was likely to receive the most interest from the readers. I’m almost tempted to lock the two of them, Ms. Archer-Dowd and Mr. Dudikoff, in a room together and let them slug it out.

The missive is as follows:

I’m all too familiar with the mentality displayed so overtly by Miss Archer-Dowd and, to a lesser degree, by Mr. David. It’s this remarkable knack for overanalyzing anything that has to do with children. What will children take away from Mulan? How will children be affected by Tinky Winky? There’s nothing new in this mindset. We’ve been seeing it for years. Protect the children. Insulate the children. Guard them from anything and everything that might have any sort of harmful effect. Back in the 1950s, it was exactly this kind of attitude that led to the destruction of EC Comics and the creation of the Comics Code. Pompous senators sat in their pompous chairs and browbeat poor Gaines and others about what their comics were doing to kids. It was disgusting.

It’s softening up America’s youth.

Then you saw it again the late 1960s and early 1970s when it came to Saturday morning cartoons. You had all these parents complaining that the classic cartoons, like Bugs Bunny and his pals, were too violent. That they were destroying kids’ minds. Except that these cartoons were the same ones that the same complaining parents had grown up with. It made no sense! Am I the only one who saw it made no sense? Because if the complaining parents grew up with the cartoons, then either the cartoons hadn’t destroyed their minds—in which case, what were they complaining about? Or else the cartoons had destroyed their minds—in which case, why should we listen to them because, y’know, they’re nuts. But no. They complained and crabbed, and not only did they get rid of all the great superhero Saturday morning cartoons, but they managed to get the great violence and action cut from Bugs Bunny cartoons.

We’ve finally managed to recover from that kind of animated destruction, thanks mostly to the efforts of the Warners cartoon unit with everything from the deliriously violent Tiny Toons to the hard-hitting Batman adventures. But still, the damage was done to an entire generation, and who knows when the pendulum might swing back again. If network executives allowed the butchering of classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, don’t think for a minute they wouldn’t hesitate to slice up more recent masterpieces if the pressure came down.

And why would this pressure come down? Same reason: The deliberate softening up of America’s youth.

There’s this crazy idea that kids need protection from violent images. It’s crazy. It’s nuts. Kids are made of tougher stuff than that, and overprotecting them is exactly the wrong thing we should be doing. It goes against nature itself, because nature is all about survival of the fittest. We want the fittest, toughest kids to reach maturity.

Parents—especially molly-coddling people like Archer-Dowd—complain that violent cartoons and comics have a negative effect on kids. That when they see people slugging each other, kids start to imitate that. Damned right they do, and they should! The bottom line is that it’s a tough, violent world out there, and the sooner kids are prepared to live in it, the better. If you ask me, cartoons need even more violence. And comic books have entirely too much talking. There should be more violence, more hitting, more destruction. Because that will breed three types of kids: The kids who are violent and hit. The kids who get hit and survive. The kids who get hit and don’t survive. It’s a win-win-win situation all around. The kids who become the most violent and destructive… these kids grow up to become your grunts, your ground-pounders. The tough guys, the guys who can handle the really awful jobs that no one else wants to do. The kids who get hit and survive, these become the leaders.

The ones who can take a hit and roll with it, defend themselves, and not let themselves get beaten down. As for the kids who get hit and don’t survive… who needs them? I mean, really? The wimps, the wusses, the lame-o’s, the losers. The future unemployed wasteoids who are going to spend their lives unemployed and on food stamps, draining our resources. If as kids they can’t handle a tussle, if they can’t defend themselves, if they just lie on the sidewalk and bleed, then we’re well quit of them when they’re still just kids.

Maybe this sounds cruel or harsh, but it’s nature’s way. Survival of the fittest, natural selection. And like it or not, we’re part of nature. So why aren’t we doing more to imitate nature’s ways?

It’s not just cartoons and comics, either. When I was a kid, we didn’t just have toys. We had toys that tested our very ability to survive.

Like Mr. Potato Head.

I look at Mr. Potato Head now, and it’s pathetic. You’ve got these little plastic slotted pieces that slide easily into this little plastic potato that comes with the kit. The protectors-of-children have taken a once-proud testing device of a child’s right to survive and reduced it to a baby toy.

When I was a kid, Mr. Potato Head was a lethal weapon. No self-respecting kid would have used some stupid plastic toy potato. We used real potatoes, dammit. You got a big baking potato out of the refrigerator or wherever your mother stashed them, and you stuck the eyes, the nose and the other parts into them. And the parts weren’t these wussy flat-edged things they are now. They were sharp. I mean sharp. The points on these things were lethal. When I was a kid, we had roving gangs of Mr. Potato Head freaks. We called ourselves the Tater Tots, and nobody messed with us, because if they did, we would yank out our Mr. Potato Heads, pull out the eyes or the mouth or the feet, and we’d use the pointed ends to great effect. We’d use the eye points to gouge out eyes, or the mouth points to nail someone’s tongue to the roof of their mouth, and so on. It was instructive and educational, and gave us a great feeling for anatomy. And we carried our Mr. Potato Heads with us until the things sprouted roots that were a foot long. And when I think of the cherished symbol of my childhood, and what they’ve done to that great toy… it makes me sick.

And Etch-a-Sketch. We had men’s Etch-a-Sketches when I was a kid. Nowadays the screens are made of this cheap and super-safe plastic. Not when I was a kid. No, we had screens made of glass.

Not only did the glass screens give us a better image, but if you broke the thing, there were shards all over the place. You could slice up yourself something fierce. You could die from that toy. And you know what? That which does not kill us, makes us strong.

Nowadays, there are special safety regulators who make sure that toys which shoot projectiles can’t put out a kid’s eye. They make sure that toys are made big enough that they can’t block a kid’s windpipe. Dammit, when I was a kid, we bought our toys and we took our chances! We learned to survive! We navigated the risky shoals of childhood and came out of it tougher and stronger for it.

But today’s parents are systematically depriving their children of those opportunities. Too many kids are surviving to adulthood without the toughening up that made us the superb generation we are.

More violence in cartoons and comics, the more brainless, the better.

More lethal toys to act as a means of weeding out those who are simply too stupid to survive.

That, my friends, is the ticket to a better and stronger America, and the Archer-Dowds of this country will never understand that. I can only hope that you do… before it’s too late.

(Paul Armstrong Dudikoff can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)