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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26624 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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This leaves the question of how Christian entertainment goes mainstream for kids stuff. It’s kids stuff, it doesn’t have to be good, and lots of people are trying to pick the twenty dollar bill up off the sidewalk.

I think it would be much better if it didn’t feel like it has to preach at you or overtly quote the Bible. The biggest problem they have, for me is that they come off preaching at the audience all the time. You can show faith by actions and make good moral characters and show them doing good moral things without having to tell the audience. The best examples I can give off the top of my head are 7th Heaven and Little House on the Prarrie. In both, it was pretty obvious that the families were Christians, but the producers and writers didn’t feel the need to have everything boil down to “the message” and related Bible citations.

VeggieTales seems to have been the one that cracked the conundrum, but nobody managed to replicate it since.

but nobody managed to replicate it since

The recipe is one part captive audience (this was always 'Churches looking for Sunday school material' or other Christian parents looking for something that was, well, Christian), one part strangely competent 3D animation team (cartoons don't need to be complex re: industry dominated by low-cost CalArts style for the last 10 years, they just need to not look outright bad- simple objects that bend, thus "veggies", were arguably the ideal way to do this in the late '90s), one part sane storyboarders who can keep the message in their pants for more than 5 minutes, and one part parents that won't get a bug up their ass about it being a chocolate bunny instead of a golden idol even though the message works better (especially with that age group) if you use the former.

It is my opinion that you need all 4 of those things to make that kind of media work, and to a point it's why that group persisted. The other medias of this type were just... boring, like so fucking boring- they might have meant well but you can only do so much with kid's choir, puppet shows, and a host that's totally not going to be dealing with rape allegations in 20 years.

Prince of Egypt was also pretty mainstream wasn't it? Granted 1997 is a long time ago. And there were the Narnia movies, but they flubbed the sequel and stopped making them.

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