Customer Reviews

Saturday Morning Fever: Growing up with Cartoon Culture

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I echo the majority of reviews here. The lack of photos for a book chronicling and analyzing such a VISUAL medium is odd: though I would guess that the licensing costs (or whatever these fees may be called) would have been prohibitive. The strength is the authors' discussion of some of the less famous citizens of Saturday Morning: Hong Kong Phooey, the menagerie of Sid & Marty Krofft, Wacky Racers, etc... Strikingly absent from the book are any significant references to The Pink Panther and Aardvark, a LONG-standing Saturday morning staple on, I believe, ABC affiliated stations and, perhaps worse, only a passing mention of The Transformers. The book discusses He-Man at some length, despite that it was a toy tie-in and was a weekday syndicated show. Transformers fits this same criteria, was more than just a 1/2 hour commercial for some product but was, in fact, a carefully craftyed sci-fi series that continues, IN-CONINUITY, with Beast Machines/Beast Wars TODAY! Shame... otherwise, a "fun" book though I think I will check-out the text the authors' claim to be a definitive overview of the genre': Saturday Morning TV.

This book has many positive and negative points to it. Let's start off with what's good about it. The authors write with a clear understanding and love for animation. The book isn't a cold text book on Saturday Morning traditions or television shows. They commnet on obscure shows and remind the reader of the reasons why they watched some shows. In the book, there is a loose history of how cartoons migrated to Saturdays, with subtle mentions of struggles between advertisers, networks, and parental groups, also reflective looks on "Generation X" and their love of animation. They even post comments sent to them from internet newsgroups from people recalling their own love and rituals of Saturday mornings. Lots of inside information told in a real fun way.

Now on to the bad parts...First off, I will state there is a very clear bias in the writing. The authors make their opinions clear when they write about programs they didn't like. What's worse is that they don't give reasons for them. Their mentality sends the message: "you had to be there to know," which means there is a stark learning curve to this text. The only saving grace, is that the authors admit their bias on the first page. Right from the start you know its going to be an opinionated retrospective look back.

The lack of photos in the book is also annoying, especially considering their text on Sid and Marty Kroff's programs, describing the visuals as trippy. The medium of television is very visual, and not being able to make a cartoon character's face with its name, makes looking back 30 years a little tough. The book takes little time to break things into generas or eras. It covers the overall collective of Saturday morning and picks out the most memorible shows and comments on them.

This book is great for the casual reader, but serverly lacking for historic or animation enthusiasts. If you do pick it up, read it for fun, not for research.

Timothy Burke is an assistant professor of history at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College; his brother, Kevin, a former editor at Film Threat and Wild Cartoon Kingdom magazines, now works for Quentin Tarantino's A Band Apart production company; together they've written Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up with Cartoon Culture (NY: St. Martin's, 1999), an uneven but nonetheless worthwhile history of and commentary on the unique American insitution that is saturday morning television. While Saturday Morning Fever suffers from a textual schizophrenia apparently brought on by the brothers Burke's divergent backgrounds, wheeling freely between nuts-and-bolts historical accounting, astute critical commentary, flippant asides, blatant fanboy partisanship and generally extraneous, allegedly "comedic" and typically unfunny inserts, it does indeed, as its authors usefully identify the characteristic viewpoint of the saturday morning TV veteran, "mix deep affection, knowing cynicism, and ironic distance" for and toward its subject matter. As such it serves as a playful foil to Marsha Kinder's cautionary Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: U of Cal P, 1993), by giving kids a bit more credit--"granting them a bit more agency," as the pop cultural studies types might put it--than Kinder does, or, at any rate, by demonstrating that saturday morning television hasn't rotted at least a couple of young minds ...

It's difficult to understand what this book is supposed to be. As a reference, there is no organization or comprehensiveness. As an analysis, there are no connections made between any of the points raised. There is no research to speak of -- just about any fan of these sorts of shows knows this superficial trivia and will be familiar with the simple program descriptions. But most disappointing is that the book fails miserably as a celebration of its topic because the authors seem to hate it, systematically crapping on each TV show they mention.

Thus it provides no value as a reference, no insight, no revelations, and no affection. This book is not worth the price I paid for it as a library second. I recycled it the weekend after it arrived in the mail.

For a book which is to remind us all of our innocent days of eating Cap'n Crunch in front of the TV set on Saturday morning for hours, this thing is lousy. The text is an easy enough read, intelligent with some valid points. But the photographs (the very few in here) are awful. Didn't the authors and the publisher understand that this type of book demands nostalgic images from the past to help the book along? What were they thinking?--obviously not of book sales.

I just finished the book, and I wanted to echo what several others have said here. The Burkes do their best work when recalling the shows, in the chapter called "The Shows Themselves." Their riffing on Scooby Doo and the rest made me laugh out loud. Where things seem to fall apart is in the completely unfunny sidebars, and the pseudo-sober history lesson at the beginning.

When I ordered this book,I thought I was getting a history of Saturday Morning cartoons.But all that's in this book is just a bunch of pointless babbling by the authors.I had to wade through pages of meaningless chatter just to find the very few facts that are scattered helter-skelter around this book.Mostly,you'll see the same,redundant babble about how the authors did'nt like "Yogi's Gang".How they thought "Laff-a-Lympics"was terrible.How they did'nt like"Scooby and Scrappy-Doo."There were mentions of shows they liked such as "Animaniacs" and "The Tick".
Then there's more repititious babbling about how they did'nt like "Monchichi's","Laff-a-Lympics","Yogi's Gang",etc.Alongo with the mildly amusing sidebars,this book was just about what shows the authors hated.There's even an unfunny crack about "Inch High,Private Dick".Was this book written by teenagers?Guys-if you want to write books,at least stick with something you actaully KNOW about.These guys don't really know anythnig about cartoons;they just try to impress us with pretending to be Saturday morning cartoon experts.What this book boils down to is just a book of the author's opinions.That's all.I was so disappointed in the book that I'm going to return it to Amazon.com.

This book was only fair at best. It had only a few pictures (mostly of board games and toys) and little worthwhile information. It's basically a collection of the authors' opinions, thoughts, and memories on the topic, which meant little to me since I value my own opinions and memories much more. It's almost like the authors didn't seek, want, and/or have permission to write this book from the people who created the shows they discuss. The authors give us their thoughts instead of the thoughts of the thoughts of those who really matter... the people who created or were involved with the shows. I was hoping for a trip down memory lane; this book took a detour very early on and never got back on track.

Reading this book is like having a chat with an old school buddy with his own perception, along with some historical facts, about Saturday morning heyday with cartoons.
There are some valid ideas of what Saturday morning meant to some in the generation of early morning cartoons, and their experiances, but in all, this is a quick rundown and criteria of what the authors favor, and vote for as valid or invalid cartoons of that glorious era.
Personally, I liked just about everything because it meant variety for channel checking. The authors do touch base on the phenomenon of how Saturday morning cartoon time might have been given the thumbsdown to by some panicked part of society that didnt approve of kids being subjected to repeated violence in what seemed to me at the time, harmless cartoons.
I never thought of those randomly action packed cartoons like Jonny Quest or The Herculoids as a means to teach violence, but rather they were like kids versions of adult action packed adventures, that was meant for kids to watch, and get wrapped up in. Not that they were teaching violence, or becoming the brainwashing vehicles parents sometimes thought them to be.
Although the author(s) do try to section off topics, the conversations play like a random conversation going to and from any source cartoons that fit the bill on the train of thought.
I must admit, when I first opened the book, I thought, oh my, just alot of literature for such a colorful playing era, with minimal icon illustrations, although there are a few interesting clip pages from early TV guides on Saturday morning.
I think the one thing I did not tolerate was the tendency to favor those same action packed violent cartoons in less favor for the more quality family focused cartoons such as The Flintstones, and The Jetsons which the author found boring, and did not shy from saying so several times.
That, of course, is entirely his opinion, as I thought, from a true blue Saturday morning cartoon fan, that Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons were among the most elite.
At any rate, the author does give food for thought on what the studios were thinking in the formation of Saturday morning entertainment brought on by prime time relocation when animation television sought to grow more prosperly there, and the trouble parents were also having with kids commercials with toys, and cereals.
All in all, its a fair enough run through, but illustrative it's not.

I enjoyed the refreshing of warm memories through this book. But I was very disapointed with the lack of photos used. There's no way you cover a topic such as this and not include a sufficient amount of photos to go with the memories.