posted 2007/06/13 at 19:59
TV's 'Mr. Wizard' Don Herbert dies at 89 (AP via Yahoo! News)
When we first got cable when I was young, I was a real die-hard Nickelodeon watcher for the longest time. Just as I think watching Sesame Street every day when I was younger prepared me for a lifetime of learning, Mr. Wizard's World helped continue to make learning fun for me, and opened up new possibilities for me that I wouldn't have been exposed to if I'd watched MTV all the time like the other kids in the neighbourhood did. For that matter, I think watching You Can't Do That on Television prepared me to become the huge Monty Python fan I later became. (When they trot out the green slime on Nickelodeon specials these days, do kids even know where it originated from?) Funnily enough science was always my worst subject when I got older -- I had incredibly poor teachers in high school -- but when I was younger, Mr. Wizard's World was a real joy for me, especially since it enabled Mom and I to bond from her memories of the shows Mr. Wizard did when she was young.
If there's one thing that strikes me most about Mr. Wizard's approach as I look back on it, it's that he was able to make science seem cool without really trying to spin things that way. I admit that I was far out of his target demographic when Bill Nye's show first started airing, but from what little I can remember of his show, he came off to me as kind of obnoxious, coming right out and saying, "Isn't this cool, kids?" (I think I remember part of that annoying "BILL! BILL! BILL!" theme song was some woman saying, "Science rules.") As a general rule, if you feel like you have to tell kids that something is cool to get them to believe that it is, in fact, cool, then it isn't really cool. If Mr. Wizard ever said anything like "isn't that neat" to the kids he was with, he always did it after showing off something that got some kind of reaction from the kids, and him saying that was more a reaffirmation of what the kids just saw than him trying to sell science as cool.
In the mid-1990s back before we got DirecTV at the house and there were few stations on our basic cable that were actually worth watching, I can remember watching Mr. Wizard's World again, as Nickelodeon aired the shows late at night for Cable in the Classroom. While the early-1980s computer graphics they used to introduce the show's segments made me cringe, and I still shudder at the kind of clothing we all wore back then, the show itself was still entertaining to me, even though I was far past the target age of the show. I can't really watch the children's shows being produced these days -- I don't get the appeal adults see in Lazy Town although that may just be because I don't do drugs -- but if by some chance I were to come across a repeat of Mr. Wizard's World when I was flipping around the television looking for something to watch, I'd definitely stay on the show for a while, both because of the fond memories and because it's just a good show.
It's bad enough that a show like Mr. Wizard's World could never get made these days because television executives and marketers would claim that it doesn't have enough "flash" or whatever. What's really bothering me right now is that in the culture we're in right now, most people my age and younger would look at the show and go, "A man in his sixties performing "experiments" with ten-year-olds? Ha ha, he must be a pedophile!" I'm guessing there's probably going to be a whole wave of those kinds of comments about Herbert in the coming days here, and each one is probably going to make me feel sick to my stomach.
Sean, here's something to cheer you up. Pepsi...and cucumber...together at last!
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1980
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon