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Saturday Morning Mind Control
Posits that Saturday morning cartoons (80s/90s) have occult influences.
198 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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November 27, 2022
This book is not crazy enough to be great, but it’s also too dumb to be good.
For a healthy sixth sevenths of its page count, Saturday Morning Mind Control is just a rehash of secondary sources designed to prove that TV violence is bad for you. This is paint by numbers stuff. There are a couple dozen studies that always get trotted out and they’re all garbage; unreproducible axe-grindings with no double-blinds or responsible experimental cautions to be seen. Some of them demonstrate that violent TV leads to violent play, thereby proving that children cannot distinguish between pretend violence and pretend violence. Some of them involve teachers counting violent acts, which is always going to be an exercise in futility, because no teacher will ever count the violence of the state against the students. This is the problem: No TV-violence researcher ever got a result he or she didn’t want. No TV researcher has ever been surprised. All studies are carefully chosen to make sure the lab rats find the cheese. The fact that author Phil Phillips cites Fredric Wertham unironically is sufficient evidence that the studies he dredges up are a poorly vetted lot. Philips also has the duplicitous habit of slipping in studies that have nothing to do with children’s TV (or children’s media at all) whenever the honest data doesn’t say what he wants it to (for example the studies on alcohol consumption on pp105-6).
Worst of all, despite “stud[ying] over a thousand hours of” them, Phillips doesn’t seem to know very much about cartoons. This leads to a whole host of easily avoidable solecisms: Phillips thinks Smurfette is the result of sex change (p74); isn’t aware that the Chipmunks are brothers (82); falls for the old urban legend that Mighty Mouse sniffs cocaine (105); gets He-Man’s battlecry wrong (“For the power of Greyskyull”—that’s half He-Man, half She-Ra) (121); and thinks Hong Kong Phooey is a “spin-off” of Kung Fu in the same way that The New Adventures of Gilligan is based on Gilligan’s Island (it isn’t). He also gets the title of The New Adventures of Gilligan wrong (18). Also, his brief history of animation is nonsense (22), and should be discarded in favor of any other source, including wikipedia.
In a broader sense, Phillips’s ignorance leaves him confused every time context would be helpful. He cites Rocky and Bullwinkle as a series that would be easy to redub to appeal to a Japanese audience, unaware that the plots of Rocky and Bullwinkle primarily revolve around untranslatable puns. Any other series would have been a better example. When he quotes Joseph Barbera griping about being forced to make action cartoons “not out of choice,” he doesn’t have the context to understand that Barbera is probably griping because he cut his teeth on funny animal cartoons and is out of his element (also he’s really cheap, and the animation budget on Johnny Quest probably gave him nightmares). He drops the quote in with no context but with plenty of sinister insinuation, as though Hanna-Barbera’s programming choices were being dictated by the Rosicrucians.
At least the Rosicrucians would have been interesting. They would have been crazy. But for most of the book, Phillips is ignorant, but not crazy. He’s not even wrong. I mean, despite the nonsense that pass as studies, it’s pretty clear that TV has had an inimical effect on the American public; that it has made people gullible, dissatisfied but complacent, easily bored, prone to retreats into fantasy. I mean, something happened to America, and before the rise of social media, TV was the most obvious whipping boy. Phillips has stumbled backwards into an approximate truth, but it’s a tedious and cliched truth. This book so full of nonsense that it almost makes me want to doubt the evidence of the last half-century of history.
Let’s look closer at that nonsense, because Phillips’s gaffes are hardly limited to the realm of animation. He really doesn’t seem to know very much about any of the pop culture he’s dealing with. He lists the Star Wars movies out of order (161), consistently mistypes the company TSR as TSI (152), and lumps underground and adult comics (such as Young Lust and Justin’s Green’s Binky Brown) together with kids’ comics (“Lulu and Jughead”) indiscriminately. This is like writing a critique of children’s movies after watching Jodorowsky and Bunuel films. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the films are—you’re still not going to learn anything about kids’ movies by watching them. Phillips’s whole concept of what comics are like is opaque to me; he says at one point, “Elektra: Assassin is perhaps the landmark comic of the overtly sexual genre” (156), and I’ve been running this sentence over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it. It’s not a true statement about Elektra: Assassin; it’s not a good description of “overtly sexual” comics; it’s not a good use of the words “genre” or “landmark.” I’m curious what he was trying to say here, because no theory I’ve come up with is at all coherent.
And then, in the final part of the book, he starts to worry that cartoons will teach kids how to levitate, which is, I guess, slightly amusing. Even his occult paranoia he bungles, though. Yoda is not patterned after the Mephistopheles in Secret Teachings of All Ages (161), as a glance at the picture of Mephistopheles will clearly indicate (Mephistopheles actually looks a bit like Tumi Gummi from the Gummi Bears, but I assume this is coincidence). She-Ra’s name is not taken from the goddess Isis (113), which is clear because Isis is not the same person as Ra. Ra is pretty common syllable (sis boom bah!). In fact, She-rah is a biblical name (1 Chron. 7:24), as is He-man (1 Kings 4:31).
Probably the funniest, and also worst and most useless, part of this book, though, is the list of “acceptable” cartoons in the back pages. This carefully curated set of ten titles includes a couple of “classics” (I don’t mean they’re good necessarily, I just mean they’re canonical; I’m not griping about them), as well as no-shows like Glo Friends and Potato Head Kids, both nakedly mercenary advertisements for toy lines, and Rocky Raccoon, a cartoon I’ve never heard of; I cannot find any evidence of its existence; perhaps he meant The Raccoons.
There’s also a “glossary of occult terms” in case you need help understanding hard words like “horoscope” or “ghost.”
For a healthy sixth sevenths of its page count, Saturday Morning Mind Control is just a rehash of secondary sources designed to prove that TV violence is bad for you. This is paint by numbers stuff. There are a couple dozen studies that always get trotted out and they’re all garbage; unreproducible axe-grindings with no double-blinds or responsible experimental cautions to be seen. Some of them demonstrate that violent TV leads to violent play, thereby proving that children cannot distinguish between pretend violence and pretend violence. Some of them involve teachers counting violent acts, which is always going to be an exercise in futility, because no teacher will ever count the violence of the state against the students. This is the problem: No TV-violence researcher ever got a result he or she didn’t want. No TV researcher has ever been surprised. All studies are carefully chosen to make sure the lab rats find the cheese. The fact that author Phil Phillips cites Fredric Wertham unironically is sufficient evidence that the studies he dredges up are a poorly vetted lot. Philips also has the duplicitous habit of slipping in studies that have nothing to do with children’s TV (or children’s media at all) whenever the honest data doesn’t say what he wants it to (for example the studies on alcohol consumption on pp105-6).
Worst of all, despite “stud[ying] over a thousand hours of” them, Phillips doesn’t seem to know very much about cartoons. This leads to a whole host of easily avoidable solecisms: Phillips thinks Smurfette is the result of sex change (p74); isn’t aware that the Chipmunks are brothers (82); falls for the old urban legend that Mighty Mouse sniffs cocaine (105); gets He-Man’s battlecry wrong (“For the power of Greyskyull”—that’s half He-Man, half She-Ra) (121); and thinks Hong Kong Phooey is a “spin-off” of Kung Fu in the same way that The New Adventures of Gilligan is based on Gilligan’s Island (it isn’t). He also gets the title of The New Adventures of Gilligan wrong (18). Also, his brief history of animation is nonsense (22), and should be discarded in favor of any other source, including wikipedia.
In a broader sense, Phillips’s ignorance leaves him confused every time context would be helpful. He cites Rocky and Bullwinkle as a series that would be easy to redub to appeal to a Japanese audience, unaware that the plots of Rocky and Bullwinkle primarily revolve around untranslatable puns. Any other series would have been a better example. When he quotes Joseph Barbera griping about being forced to make action cartoons “not out of choice,” he doesn’t have the context to understand that Barbera is probably griping because he cut his teeth on funny animal cartoons and is out of his element (also he’s really cheap, and the animation budget on Johnny Quest probably gave him nightmares). He drops the quote in with no context but with plenty of sinister insinuation, as though Hanna-Barbera’s programming choices were being dictated by the Rosicrucians.
At least the Rosicrucians would have been interesting. They would have been crazy. But for most of the book, Phillips is ignorant, but not crazy. He’s not even wrong. I mean, despite the nonsense that pass as studies, it’s pretty clear that TV has had an inimical effect on the American public; that it has made people gullible, dissatisfied but complacent, easily bored, prone to retreats into fantasy. I mean, something happened to America, and before the rise of social media, TV was the most obvious whipping boy. Phillips has stumbled backwards into an approximate truth, but it’s a tedious and cliched truth. This book so full of nonsense that it almost makes me want to doubt the evidence of the last half-century of history.
Let’s look closer at that nonsense, because Phillips’s gaffes are hardly limited to the realm of animation. He really doesn’t seem to know very much about any of the pop culture he’s dealing with. He lists the Star Wars movies out of order (161), consistently mistypes the company TSR as TSI (152), and lumps underground and adult comics (such as Young Lust and Justin’s Green’s Binky Brown) together with kids’ comics (“Lulu and Jughead”) indiscriminately. This is like writing a critique of children’s movies after watching Jodorowsky and Bunuel films. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the films are—you’re still not going to learn anything about kids’ movies by watching them. Phillips’s whole concept of what comics are like is opaque to me; he says at one point, “Elektra: Assassin is perhaps the landmark comic of the overtly sexual genre” (156), and I’ve been running this sentence over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it. It’s not a true statement about Elektra: Assassin; it’s not a good description of “overtly sexual” comics; it’s not a good use of the words “genre” or “landmark.” I’m curious what he was trying to say here, because no theory I’ve come up with is at all coherent.
And then, in the final part of the book, he starts to worry that cartoons will teach kids how to levitate, which is, I guess, slightly amusing. Even his occult paranoia he bungles, though. Yoda is not patterned after the Mephistopheles in Secret Teachings of All Ages (161), as a glance at the picture of Mephistopheles will clearly indicate (Mephistopheles actually looks a bit like Tumi Gummi from the Gummi Bears, but I assume this is coincidence). She-Ra’s name is not taken from the goddess Isis (113), which is clear because Isis is not the same person as Ra. Ra is pretty common syllable (sis boom bah!). In fact, She-rah is a biblical name (1 Chron. 7:24), as is He-man (1 Kings 4:31).
Probably the funniest, and also worst and most useless, part of this book, though, is the list of “acceptable” cartoons in the back pages. This carefully curated set of ten titles includes a couple of “classics” (I don’t mean they’re good necessarily, I just mean they’re canonical; I’m not griping about them), as well as no-shows like Glo Friends and Potato Head Kids, both nakedly mercenary advertisements for toy lines, and Rocky Raccoon, a cartoon I’ve never heard of; I cannot find any evidence of its existence; perhaps he meant The Raccoons.
There’s also a “glossary of occult terms” in case you need help understanding hard words like “horoscope” or “ghost.”
January 17, 2011
Although written 20 years ago, and our ideas of Saturday morning cartoons are now defunct, this is a scary look at the evils of early exposure to television and programming in relation to childhood development. The author underscores his hypothesis with various correlative studies. I am now filled with guilt for the little bit of slap-stick comedy (3 Stooges) and super-hero violence (Spectacular Spider Man) I have exposed my 2 1/2 yr old to. Otherwise, I feel that I have gone to great lengths to minimize my son's exposure to what could be construed as violent fantasy and repeated commercial broadcast exposure by patronizing either PBS or Nick Jr for more educatonal programs.
I have difficulty recalling some of the examples Mr. Phillips gives of the occult symbolism profundly displayed in the saturday morning cartoons, or perhaps I just accepted them for what I thought they were, embellished products of the weaved fantasy. For the most part I thought he was reaching to draw some of his conclusions and inferences regarding this portion of his book. Essentially, if it wasn't obvious, I don't believe it's that important. I suppose if I studied as many as he did in the time he researched this book, I would be more accutely aware of them and their inflences. Then again, I've become quite keen of the phrase "when your holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
I have seen that some people liken Mr. Phillips work as the "Christian Paranoia" genre that are so prevalent in religious bookstores and great fodder for The 700 club. To an extent, this may be true, but it doesn't minimize my belief that Phillips has made a strong case that we need to re-examine what we are exposing our children to through the television, first as parents, and then as a nation. I, for one, personally think that some of today's "reality shows" and "soap-operas" are far more dangerous for society as a whole than a handful of children's cartoons.
Oddly enough, as a child that grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, gravitated to the afternoon violent fest that was Transformers (also had the toys), GI Joe, etc, absorbed and collected comic books, played Dungeon's & Dragons (author refers to as psychodrama) and was even drawn to the horror/slasher film (Rated Z's as the book referred to them as), I begin to wonder if I was the exception to Phillip's predictions or the rule. I don't recall a life rife with childhood agression or becoming an anti-social adult. That being said, I don't see me handing over the television remote to my son in the same lackadaisical manner with which I was able to achieve control of it.
I have difficulty recalling some of the examples Mr. Phillips gives of the occult symbolism profundly displayed in the saturday morning cartoons, or perhaps I just accepted them for what I thought they were, embellished products of the weaved fantasy. For the most part I thought he was reaching to draw some of his conclusions and inferences regarding this portion of his book. Essentially, if it wasn't obvious, I don't believe it's that important. I suppose if I studied as many as he did in the time he researched this book, I would be more accutely aware of them and their inflences. Then again, I've become quite keen of the phrase "when your holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
I have seen that some people liken Mr. Phillips work as the "Christian Paranoia" genre that are so prevalent in religious bookstores and great fodder for The 700 club. To an extent, this may be true, but it doesn't minimize my belief that Phillips has made a strong case that we need to re-examine what we are exposing our children to through the television, first as parents, and then as a nation. I, for one, personally think that some of today's "reality shows" and "soap-operas" are far more dangerous for society as a whole than a handful of children's cartoons.
Oddly enough, as a child that grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, gravitated to the afternoon violent fest that was Transformers (also had the toys), GI Joe, etc, absorbed and collected comic books, played Dungeon's & Dragons (author refers to as psychodrama) and was even drawn to the horror/slasher film (Rated Z's as the book referred to them as), I begin to wonder if I was the exception to Phillip's predictions or the rule. I don't recall a life rife with childhood agression or becoming an anti-social adult. That being said, I don't see me handing over the television remote to my son in the same lackadaisical manner with which I was able to achieve control of it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews