Subversive Kid’s Tv Shows


I read a book a few years ago called “Don’t Tell the Grownups” about how some authors hid their dangerous messages in the form of children’s book. As I was listening to some music from the cartoon Animaniacs, I also heard some hidden messages that the kids might not quite understand. For example, in a song where the Warner Brothers sing the names of the US Presidents, they end the song with, “…the one in charge is plain to see, it’s Clinton – first name Hilary.” So even in this kid’s show we see the joke that Hilary is in charge of the White House instead of Bill Clinton. This is pretty mild, but even more contentious is where Yakko sings all of the countries in the world. He mentions Taiwan as one of the countries. As we all know, we’re supposed to pretend that Taiwan is part of China when, for all intents and purposes, it is its own country in all but name. But here we are training kids that it is its own country – very interesting!