Do kids really catch on to many of the adult themes in Futurama?

They’re probably more aware than you realize.

You’re obviously not aware of the smut televised daily on The Disney Channel.

Kids truly are more observant than they are given credit for and most of them live in the really real world where they don’t need a TV to find those things. I mean, compared to my day at work, Futurama is pretty damn innocuous.

How many kids see that stuff in their daily lives just watching the world around them? I’m not talking about those unfortunate kids who watch mommy blow a guy for $20 so she can get some more meth either. Maybe daddy had a hard day at the office and has a little too much in an attempt to unwind. Maybe they live in a bad part of town. (If I wanted hookers and blow, it’s less than a five minute drive away…) Or maybe they are merely not sequestered by cultist parents who think that if they treat their darling kid like a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed bullshit) that nothing bad will ever happen to them.

Yes, they could gain some knowledge from Futurama, but they could gain a lot more if they ever leave the house. This is the world we live in, and people have to cope.

Of course, they won’t get all the references as many are pop culture things that were a bit before their time, often aimed at those of us who remember when Michael Jackson was black and 8-track was the pinnacle of car audio.

BTW, I just ran across a great quote that has probably been around for a while:
“You can’t child-proof your world, only world-proof your child.”

That’s why in most place it’s rated for 14/15+ or only after a certain hour.

Seriously, when I was a girl, and this was well before Futurama, I learned a lot about sex, drugs, drinking, violence, etc. etc. solely without the help of mass media. Us poor ghetto kids knew things, the rich kids I went to school with knew things, and we all talked about them. We had older brothers and sisters, too, who got themselves into things. Kids aren’t shielded nearly as much as any adult wants to think, or as stupid.

It never ceases to amaze me how adults forget what it was like to be kids and forget that they’ve known a lot since ~5 or 6 years old. I know I kept my mouth shut about what I suspected adults were (hypocritically) up to when I was a kid. I didn’t want to get smacked for pointing out the differences between what adults were saying I wasn’t supposed to do when they were doing it – even the religious folks.

By the time your kid is 10, they’ve seen plenty, believe me. No Matt Groening necessary. I’ve just been reminded that I started reading this comic back when I was 11 – and I totally grokked it. If I hadn’t already been exposed to similar hypocrisies as a younger kid, it would’ve gone over my head, probably.

I think they would. I was around 12 years old when I started watching Futurama, and I picked up on a lot of the innuendos. Futurama was comparatively mild to Family Guy, I thought, and there were only a handful of Futurama episodes that were overtly sexual. The bottom line is this; if a kid has cable from a young age, they’ll be able to pick up on innuendos in any show.

Just because something is animated, doesn’t mean it is for kids. I don’t let my kids watch Futurama or Family Guy and even cringe when hubby lets them watch The Simpsons.

Right now, my younger one is into Eureka, which pleases me. I’d rather him watch science fiction as corny as it is, than some of that animated rubbish. At least he is learning some science terms.

@cazzie I’ve seen enough Hentai to attest to that! Seriously, you rarely see American animators showing girls with J-cups and skimpy outfits the way even some of the normal, mainstream anime does, but we seem to have more of a problem with that sort of thing than a culture that is all about being proper and respectful, which makes me wonder about how repressed we are.

If you get worried about them watching The Simpsons then they are going to crash and burn once they see life outside your cloistered monastery. I see therapy bills in the future.

Besides, American Dad did worse though still not as messed up as real world news.

@jerv I’ll let him when he’s older… he’s 6 and a half! The other one is autistic. He doesn’t get it at all and he spends most of the time asking questions when we do let him watch things like Simpsons. He usually leaves the room saying ‘I don’t get it.’ The younger one will get to watch those things in time. He has a good sense of humour. We don’t get any of that anime stuff here.

Repressed? I don’t think so. I live in Scandinavia. We have full frontal nudity on our national channels. No biggie.

I don’t think that young kids actually watch the program. If older children understand the adult humor, they didn’t get their understanding from watching the show. Further, I believe that televisions still have channel selectors and if the parents don’t want them to watch the show, they can stop it. Kids learn much more about sex and gross parts of life on the school bus than they do on censored television.

In fact. Americans spend too much time worrying about censorship and not enough time talking to their kids.

I learned most of what I’d call potty humor from watching Saturday Night live as a toddler/kid.

Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood did not go over my head at all.

@SpatzieLover – “We would like to talk to the President!” “Uh, sorry, don’t have no more time! See ya!”

@Ron_C Exactly!

@cazzie I meant that us Americans are repressed. Still, I picked up on a lot of that stuff before I was 7. As for your other son, there are lots of things that don’t make sense to anyone anyways. Being autistic merely makes one ask more questions instead of blindly accepting things as they are since we don’t always have filters to tell us not to question things.

@cazzie Repressed? I don’t think so. I live in Scandinavia. We have full frontal nudity on our national channels. No biggie. Ack ack!!! Danger, danger Will Robinson, full frontal nudity DANGER!!! You have the FCC running cold in their tracks and the MPAA choking on its own stomach bile. Even the most sex absorbed Yankee would get the heebie jeebies seeing full frontal nudity on network TV, even if shown 11pm!

@jerv I’ve seen enough Hentai to attest to that! Seriously, you rarely see American animators showing girls with J-cups and skimpy outfits the way even some of the normal, mainstream anime does, but we seem to have more of a problem with that sort of thing than a culture that is all about being proper and respectful, which makes me wonder about how repressed we are. Japanese art and culture seem to be somewhat misplaced as the US, just in different way. But I addressed that with my chikan question. I am not sure what J-cups are but I will take your word for it that it has to be racy.

I don’t know if it is repression as much as lowering of moral standards, or plain two-faced hypocrisy the way sex is handle here in Yankee Town, live and in the media. When I was a kid the 1st couple I seen sleeping in the same bed was Mr. and Mrs. Brady, and only at night when it was bed time. I remember once I seen an episode of Andy Griffith and Opie found an abandoned baby and innocently went about asking the town’s women if they wanted to have a baby and that caused an uproar. That was about as racy as it got sexually. In that time, people did not shack up, you were married if you were living together. The innuendo with jerking off a horse would have never flown on even Love American Style, in my day, and that was very tame compared to what is on at primetime these days.

@Hypocrisy_Central Some of the girls in some anime have breasts bigger than a human head, hence J-cup. We won’t even discuss tentacles.

@jerv Ooooooohhhhh…....THOSE J-cups…......