Hacker News Reader

The first C&H comic strip compared to the last one:

:.)

That last one still makes me tear up. What a beautiful way to exit the stage.

I agree. It was graceful, humble, optimistic, and memorable. I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone else to have pulled that off in ending something.

Star Trek The Next Generation's All Good Things comes to mind.

Fun fact - Hobbes eventually lost those little paw pads

Reading some of the compendiums with Watersons commentary are a really interesting look into how things changed over the years and an insight into comic publishing

I think Calvin was of a common archetype of that era. The sarcastic, mildly anti-heroic protagonist. And I think that archetype did all of us who grew up in that era and imbibed the culture were done a disservice. I, too, have found my way to respecting and admiring the pragmatic, the persistent, and even the earnest among us over the smart alecs and the sarcastic wits.

It could have been so much worse, and did become so. Late 90s / early 00s had Cartman being a role model to kids.

Cartman was not a role model for kids, he was portrayed as a lazy, fat, and stupid asshole in an edgy comedy show not intended for children.

Cartman typically had the most and funniest jokes and almost always got his way. He exercised power over others and only extremely rarely did the way he acted have negative consequences for him. That's a pretty attractive role model for the type of kid who's going to watch South Park. Role models don't have to be consciously selected, that's kind of the point, you see success and you imitate it. South Park is an especially stupid show but you'll see this in plenty of TV - it's basically the sitcom model: some character will be an asshole to everyone around them, but the show will frame it as a joke and consequence-free. The writers want you to think that character is funny and you probably do if you continue watching, so if you want to be a funny person you probably start acting like an asshole. Most adults can't see that for what it is - kids are screwed.

And South Park was (is?) on TV during daytime hours, of course kids watched it.

He was, factually, a role model for kids. I was there. Everybody watched South Park, everybody thought Cartman was awesome.

It's absurd to even deny it, Cartman was admired and emulated by a whole generation.

The bottom line is, Cartman got the biggest laughs. He modeled that a certain type of behavior resulted in certain outcomes. Kids aren’t stupid. They see right through the overt morality (“he’s a jerk and he got his comeuppance “) to the revealed truths: being an asshole, in some contexts, can be very funny.

Whether or not he was intended as one is irrelevant.

Vs. the fine, upstanding young Beavis and Butt-Head were from the early 90's...

Hey, Butt-Head became a senator in his later years: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

With regard to Cartman, that critique is valid. With regard to Calvin, he is there to be the foil to Hobbes, who dispenses the wisdom. Calvin and Hobbes is a transmission of wisdom. Moreso in the later years, admittedly, but even early on. There is such a thing as the fool archetype. Frodo in LOTR, Emmet in the LEGO movie, and so on. These characters who know nothing, and are demonstrably unfit for the tasks that life demands of them, are not meant to be admired for their ignorance, rather it is their ignorance that allows the writer to send them on a journey to learn a lesson that is valuable to the audience. This is a bit harder to pinpoint in Calvin and Hobbes due to the episodic nature of a weekly strip, where the plot resets each time and the punchline almost invariably involves Calvin reverting to some stubborn point of view or refusing to learn a lesson. Yet if you read the works from beginning to end in the anthology, you can see a progression in both Calvin's attitude and the subject matter on Watterson's mind. The theme is maturation. To critique Calvin for being all that you said is to miss the point. Which, if you were a child reading them at the time (as I was!) nobody can blame you for. It might have been recieved better if your parents had been party to the reading of the strips, so they could bring forward the subtext. But anyway, it is not accurate to say that Calvin and Hobbes glorifies the anti-hero, sarcastic, childishness. Calvin is constantly lampooned and presented as being the cause of his own suffering for refusing to learn.

I was going to comment something similar. I think I'm about the same age as the commenter grew up reading C&H, and also had a disaffected attitude. I don't think it was Calvin that made me that way, but the broader media at the time. Heck, most kids at my school did not read it but the general way to be cool was to be aloof.

I think it was a hangover from Gen-X and the 80's. Ferris Bueller was pretty aloof and angst'd to the gills wasn't he?

I am earnestly inclined to double down on smart alecs and sarcastic wits as a matter of pragmatism.

Ok, but will you do so persistently?

Huh, I'm basically the same age as you but only started reading it as a teenager. It was pretty obvious to me that Calvin thought too highly of himself and that Hobbes was the sensible one. Like, the punchline of many of these comics is him being wrong about something but too stubborn to admit it in a funny way.

But Hobbes is just another side of Calvin himself...

Watterson explicitly left that up to head-canon, so I disagree on a personal level but without dismissing your interpretation

I’m the same age and also read C&H voraciously. Looking back I was (to a point) blueprinted on the kid, but mostly by virtue of being a single child, smart and alienated from most of my peers at school. I wish Susie gave me the time of day. Calvin wasn’t a role model, he was an accurate portrayal. (To a point)

I see what you're getting at, and your sentiment is thoughtfully expressed, but come on... it's Calvin and Hobbes! It's part of that rarefied echelon of media that taps into something true about the human condition. Calvin doesn't need to be a manual for how to live your life - it's enough to be an island you can sometimes visit when you're in a Calvin mood.

Well said. In fact Calvin shouldn’t be a manual for life, I think. What makes it so funny is we know that Calvin is way off base all the time, but he’s got a great imagination and we’ve all struggled in the same ways, with the same things, and wish we could just wander off with our imaginary tiger and leave the world’s problems behind, too.

They’re not supposed to be pro-social. The characters are supposed to represent the philosophers, John Calvin (predestination) and Thomas Hobbes (man is an animal). Watterson is probably making fun of them.

Watterson explicitly stated that the names have no relation to the characters' personalities or philosophical views. As someone familiar with John Calvin's views and writings, I can say safely that Calvin is not much in any way similar in personality or spirit to anything John Calvin ever taught or expressed. At best, Watterson is projecting the typical libertine caricature of John Calvin as a cantankerous and disagreeable curmudgeon onto the character. John Calvin was in reality quite progressive for his time, and by all impressions did all that he did out of love for those around them in line with a plain reading of scripture. But to see him that way requires nuance that seems to be lost on the anti-religious.

Disagreeing with the idea that your fate has already been sealed no matter what, and that you have no real agency in the end has nothing to do with being anti-religious. Furthermore, I am not anti-religious

The joke is that Calvin is aligned with Hobbes’s philosophy and vice versa.

No? Like d-us-vb said, the characters' names have nothing to do with their personalities.

Yes, they occasionally discuss philosophy.

No, that does not mean that the philosophy being discussed has any relation to John Calvin or Thomas Hobbes.

The joke is that they're a kid and a stuffed tiger named after philosophers.

Well said. I feel similarly despite being born about 15 years later.

You know, your comment reminds me of something my wife and I were talking about. We have been starting to let our child have a little more screen time and choose what he wants to watch (within the parameters we set).

Some shows and movies seem harmless, initially, but then we noticed in so many kids movies (e.g., Zootopia, Sing), they're always yelling at each other, expressing anger, frustration, and hostility towards one another.

Then we wonder why kids adopt those attitudes. It's simply because mimic what they see. And worse yet, when they see it in movie/show form, they think those attitudes are cool and relatable.

Try the PBS Kids app. The shows are consistently cast with good role-model children and adults, without being preachy. Many episodes show how to resolve mistakes, frustration, and conflict in beneficial ways.

In comparison, the behavior in the kids shows from other producers (Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.) sometimes presents nasty behavior and name-calling as either inevitable, or something that's "someone else's problem": the instigator, if they're punished at all, might suffer the wrath of an authority figure, or simply bad karma.

My intent when choosing shows is not to hide the existence of bad behavior from children, but to teach them how to deal with it.

(My children also read Calvin and Hobbes. And watch those less-wholesome shows. And binge-watch MrBeast when I'm not around...)

> Try the PBS Kids app

Great recommendation. Angela Collier has a recent piece on kids' television and PBS in particular that is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DGyatqN63RZ4

I like PBS in general. My dad and I had a membership for many years. Their productions are slow and calming.

Great recommendation! I can definitely see the difference (e.g. Daniel Tiger). I agree with your philosophy about not hiding the existence of bad behavior, but teaching them how to deal with it. And I'm sure once my little guy grows, he'll gravitate towards Mr. Beast and all that, but at least I'll set a baseline so that that's not all he watches.

there is a reason why they call TV programming.

I watched Home Alone last year and the characters call each other names constantly. It's funny for sure, but no wonder me and my friends had such filthy mouths as kids. You grow up on that and sitcoms where the characters just rip on each other. It's so strange to watch as an adult.

I grew up in the seventies, we didn’t have the “filthy mouthed kids” media examples until Bad News Bears…however, prior to that, even without examples we still managed to be pretty filthy mouthed kids organically.

Which came first—the chicken or the egg?

> Some shows and movies seem harmless, initially, but then we noticed in so many kids movies (e.g., Zootopia, Sing), they're always yelling at each other, expressing anger, frustration, and hostility towards one another.

Although there are definitely a ton of kids shows that I find 100% garbage and would never let my kids watch under any circumstances, none of the 'name-brand' kids movies I've seen in the past 10 years struck me as unacceptably negative in the way you describe.

On the contrary, I get the impression that at least some of these movies are attempting to depict feelings and situations that some kids are feeling in a way that helps them understand 1) they're not alone and 2) their feelings or situations aren't wrong or abnormal.

Like, I took my kids to see Elio when it came out. BAM, right off the bat, dead parents. Anger. Frustration. Fear. Power struggles with parental figures.

This is all intentional—to the point that it's formulaic. A 2021 study found that slightly over 61% of the 155 animated kids features of the last ~80 years had no mention of the child protagonist's biological parents. There are a lot of reasons for this. The simplest are that it's way easier to come up with challenges and conflict for the protag(s) when their parents aren't around.

A more charitable reason is that there are all too many kids who, well, do have absent or fucked up parents. But it doesn't have to be that specific case either—any kid eventually has feelings of anger, fear and frustration, and seeing depictions of this in stories is important (for everyone, of any age, at any time).

I overall doubt that watching those stories causes kids to act angry and frustrated even when they're not angry and frustrated. I'm well aware of how profoundly mimetic human children are (and why that's important), but it doesn't happen with everything 100% of the time.

But this is also age-dependent in various ways. An 8-year-old can absorb a movie depiction of a fight between child and parent in a way that a 3-year-old can't. Are some toddlers going to act out because they watched that? Maybe? Probably?

Anyway, it's tricky to have these discussions because every child is different, even though there are broad anthropological patterns to humanity. But I've been more impressed than annoyed with lots of animated kids movies that I expected to loathe.

Once you realize the "dead parent trick" you see it everywhere (with variations of single parent, etc).

It makes things like Bluey stand out - wow, a show that is entertaining and fun where you don't have to kill one or more parents to make it work!

My mother used to call it the "Disney story," due to it's utter prevalence in their media. Be it death or divorce, seems like you cant throw a rock at the Disney catalog without hitting it

Many of the fairy tales have it too. Maybe its something deeper common to humanity

This is interesting; I always assumed that the Grimm's tales and all kinds of folklore throughout cultures and history were responding to anxieties about, say, super-high rates of infant death.

It would be, in a way, hilarious if it was all just lazy writing the entire time.

> Some shows and movies seem harmless, initially, but then we noticed in so many kids movies (e.g., Zootopia, Sing), they're always yelling at each other, expressing anger, frustration, and hostility towards one another.

My kids are similar. Years ago I actually just unplugged the TV and put it behind some furniture for 3 months because I was so fed up. It calmed them down a lot (this was after Covid lockdowns, when we'd just given them too much TV) but still - it flares up.

I do think a lot of kids tv is either straight addictive (e.g. Cocomelon) or depicts how kids would like to behave, e.g. in how they talk to adults rudely (e.g. how they talk to the dad in Peppa Pig), or they're always right and the adults are wrong (too may examples to name). Bluey is the saving grace there, as it depicts healthy and respectful relationships, but it's very unusual.

> Bluey is the saving grace there

I somehow had never heard about Bluey until TheOdd1sOut (YouTuber who does hilarious 10-15 minute video on slice-of-life topics) did a video about it.

https://youtu.be/nEQHiJVH79o

The TL;DW is that Bluey is a kids show that not only recognizes that the parents will likely be in the room while the show is on and therefore will occasionally have lines that are meant for them, but will actually tackle tough topics that children and their families may be dealing with. For example, in one episode, Bluey's mom is despairing because Bluey isn't reaching development milestones when he should be, she's blaming herself, and another character comes to console her, and the character looks directly towards the viewer and says "You're doing great!"

I'm almost tempted to actually watch the show even though I don't have kids.

> Bluey isn't reaching development milestones when he should be

She should be. Bluey and Bingo are sisters.

The show is extremely good, and when my kids were around that age, we all watched together. Hard to explain to your 6 year old why you are bawling your eyes out, but it does lead to some important conversations. It’s also an inspiration to be a better parent, particularly for Dads. Thank you Bandit.

I don’t know if any of this stuff will hit if you aren’t a parent. It hits right into the heart of all those things people tell you “you can’t understand if you don’t have kids”.

It’s an objectively good show though, I found myself watching it even when the kids weren’t around. There are still some episodes I can’t watch; but you’d need to have had those experiences to understand.

Dr Angela Collier just did a video on children's tv. She has some good recommendations. Evidently before she became an astrophysicist she got a degree in education. Who knew?

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyatqN63RZ4

Don't forget that in most shows where kids are the main-characters, adults in general (and particularly parents) are either absent or less mature than the kids. This is the easiest way to make the kids shine, but certainly communicates a particular message. I really respected Netflix's The Baby Sitters Club for not falling into that trap.

Yes - that's a really good way of putting it.

As always, the home model is what has greater influence than any tv show. If parents are also behaving as in the TV shows then the shows simply serve as confirmation bias to what the children observe.

I noticed that when I adopted a loving, quieter tone, and truly focused on do as i do vs do as i say attitudes, my children began to reject the "norms" shown on the tv shows. Today my children remark about how their friends act at their homes and towards their parents, and we have discussions about it.

That said, I definitely had the problem you describe, but it was resolved by focusing on consequences of actions and being ready to follow through on punishments (much like you did). Combined with the do as i do attitude, those punishments were ultimately punishments for me as well. You are being a terorrizing little bad ass? ok no TV. But then this means I can't watch TV because then they might watch TV while in the same room as me. Mutual pain.

Peppa Pig is at least funny. The one that pushed me over the edge wrt to behavior modeling was Caillou. My god people have some self respect as parents. You have to have to create some boundaries for children, not just knee-jerk syrupy-sweet coddling from dawn til dusk.

I find Peppa Pig has multiple layers and the stereotypes of the pig parents are actually targeted to entertain the human parents when they join watching.

I don't have kids so I never thought about it from that angle, but I really dislike how yell-y so many modern animated shows are. Couldn't make it through a single episode of Rick and Morty.

I'd never thought how it might impact kids, but now that you mention it, I can only dislike the trend more.

Invader Zim (2006) was a great cartoon but every character was basically screaming every line of dialogue

Jhonen Vasquez was previously best known for Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, an insanely dark graphic novel. I'm still stunned that the powers that be thought he should write an animated children's show. That said, I love Invader Zim. Taquitos!

Rick and Morty is absolutely not a kids show.

Yes, sorry, I had a non-sequitur between my two sentences. The first was about modern animated shows. The second was about how dialog in shows (not necessarily Rick and Morty) could affect kids.

Regardless, I also highly doubt that Rick and Morty is only consumed by people who are no longer susceptible to getting cues on how to interact with others from media.

Human beings yelling at each other, expressing anger, frustration, and hostility towards each other, seems like a human universal, rather than something children would only learn to do from watching recent tv and movies.

One thing I always notice after trips abroad is the extent to which American newscasters are practically yelling at their audience. This is a stark contrast to many European countries, where the tone is calmer and more measured.

What are these contradictions and hypocrisies? Maybe I'm just old, but I've never understood the angst younger people seem to have these days.

from my familiarity with the writing of past generations and even past civilizations it seems reasonable to conclude that contradictions and hypocrisies are generally understood to exit. I don't think it's just down to the young people.

I'm curious about this too. No debate about whether they're generally understood, but I'm curious if anyone can name one.

well one obvious contradiction is if you want peace prepare for war, unfortunately Bart Simpson's paradox doesn't seem to be in the commonly bemoaned list and I don't remember the rest of the paradoxes in that episode.