As a new parent, I’ve had the dubious pleasure of becoming familiar with children’s television programming, especially Playhouse Disney. As far as I can tell, most of the shows on Disney’s morning lineup are harmless. A few are even entertaining (Bunnytown, I’m looking at you). The best bits are usually the short programs (e.g. Emily Yeung, Ooh & Aah, Feeling Good with JoJo) between the longer-format ones.
But Higglytown Heroes, despite the They Might be Giants theme music and the excellent animation, gives me pause. The basic plot of every episode starts with the Higglytown kids finding some problem they can’t solve, at which point Twinkle–the creative but clueless character–proposes some outlandish solution that, contra Occam’s famous dictum, multiplies the number of entities but without coming closer to a real solution. Not to fear, though, because Fran, an annoying, know-it-all squirrel, is quick to slap Twinkle down. Though she always leads with a compliment, she never agrees even in part with Tinkle’s solution. And, in any context other than a children’s cartoon, Fran’s contempt for Twinkle would be clear.
At this point, the Higglytown kids are greeted by a Higglytown “hero,” who, depending upon the problem to be solved, might be a soccer coach, a janitor, a teacher, Pizza Guy (one of the recurring characters), the woman who operates the street-sweeping machine, etc. You get the idea: it takes a village. We’re all heros inasmuch as we do our jobs and, thereby, help one another out.
The latter part of that isn’t a bad message, of course. Communities are interdependent. And children find learning about different occupations fascinating. The idea that doing whatever it is you’ve put your hand to might mean more than the obvious commodity or labor exchange is, well, at least putting a hopeful spin our human relations.
Three things get me about the show, though. The first is that, while deference to those with more experience or with specialized knowledge is often necessary (hey, I’m a teacher, after all), I’ve yet to see an episode where the H-crew actually put their minds to a problem and solve it by logical thinking or sheer determination. They are, in fact, so quick to throw their hands in the air and beg for help that I have a hard time imagining a problem simple enough that they might be able to solve it.
The second issue is the recurring Fran-Twinkle tete-a-tete. While including Twinkle’s fanciful ideas is probably meant to show the value of creativity, the very clear message is that Twinkle’s sort of creativity is a waste of time, something to be gotten through as quickly as possible, with a wink and a chuckle, so the more rational Fran can tell us the real score (which always boils down to deferring to someone more experienced). Twinkle’s inability to ever put her ample creativity to any practical use is just further evidence that the H-crew are useless in the face of problems and need to defer to authority as quickly as possible.
The third, and most significant, issue I have with the show is the abuse of the word “hero” itself. For, while there’s is something noble in doing your job, no matter how menial, in the spirit of the greater good–rather than just to line your own pocket–doing so is not something that can properly be labeled “heroic,” unless your job is fighting fires or policing the mean streets (and, even then, true heroism is something that happens only form time to time, not every hour of every day). I certainly don’t object to this idea that “we’re all in it together.” We are. I just think H-Town’s producers need to find a better word for it, like “camaraderie,” “community,” “civic pride,” or, perhaps, “duty.”
“Hero” is one of those terms, like “tragic,” that gets used in so many undeserved contexts that its real meaning is effectively emptied. And that’s a shame. Because there are acts that deserve the title “heroic,” and there are people who truly are heros.