Is Children’s TV being written by mothers as ‘love letters’ to their kids?
Writer / Director Nick Verso says Children's TV is too often concerned with keeping kids safe, written as 'love letters' by mothers instead, of letting them get into trouble.
- Published by David Knox
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If so much Children’s TV is written by adults, how does that colour what the industry thinks is appropriate for them, and in what ways might it potentially get things wrong?
That was a question posed recently to a panel at the Australian Content in the Streaming Era Symposium.
Writer / director Nick Verso (Crazy Fun Park), treading carefully in his response, acknowledged there were inherent risks of adults making content for children.
“There has been a bit of a shift in terms of who is creating the content, I would say, for kids. I grew up with 80s and 90s content and a lot of that stuff for kids was Steven Spielberg. It’s Joel Schumacher. It’s Round the Twist, Esben Storm, Paul Jennings, Jonathan Schiff,” he said.
He continued, “It was actually about appealing to their own inner child. They were kind of doing ‘This is what I think would be fun. This is what I wanted to do as a kid, but couldn’t.’ So you were playing around with that sort of content. That was Tony Ayres’ approach with Nowhere Boys. It was certainly my approach with Crazy Fun Park. It was very much ‘Let’s be cheeky and mischievous and playful…let’s get the kids into trouble.’
“But that’s a very tricky thing for the ABC when you’ve got immitable behavior and people ready to accuse you of anything if someone were to copy something.”
Photo: Brian Tang
Noting that the industry has historically been pretty sexist and shut out a lot of female creators and diverse writers, Kids TV has served as an entry point for female creatives.
“I actually think what we’re seeing now in a lot of kids TV is a lot of content created by mothers, and that’s just a slightly different approach to storytelling,” said Verso (pictured above, centre)
“I’ve often received notes on things from mothers who will approach something quite different to an overgrown kid like me. They’ll say things like, ‘I wouldn’t want my son hanging out with these characters.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but your son wants to and he’s probably doing it.’ So either you tell the truth of that, or you’ll just be out of touch with it. That’s kind of the choices I see it to be brutally honest.
“So I think there is a difference in the approach. I’ve because I’ve worked with a lot of mothers who have been creating shows as ‘love letters’, in a way to their kids, and they do have a certain degree of responsibility and care that I certainly do not have when I’m approaching story! Because it is about trying to keep their kids safe and protect them a bit, whereas I’m trying to get them into trouble.
“So I think that’s a little bit of a difference in how kids TV, particularly, is being formulated at the moment.”
- Tagged with Crazy Fun Park
5 Responses
Yes, there has been a shift, but isn’t that because it’s not the 80s and 90s anymore? I think if you’re trying to appeal to your own “inner child” from 40 years ago, you are not appealing to modern kids. Their life experience is completely different. And sure, maybe it has tipped too far one way, but to sum that up as the result of women and specifically “mothers” is weak. At least they are writing for children and not themselves. Who hurt you, Nick?
Look, I get where he’s coming from. A lot of local kids stuff feels very safe. Not sure if we’re missing context here, but lumping all the blame on “mums writing love letters to their kids” comes across as gobsmackingly misogynistic – I’d hope that wasn’t his intent. I know plenty of female writers (mums or otherwise) who are desperate to write edgier content – but a lot of the time women are still not coming from the same position of privilege in which the higher-ups will trust and support their vision. The brick wall that kids content in Australia faces isn’t coming from writers – it’s issues such as the lack of budget for development and rooms, and the deep-seated risk-averseness in our funding bodies and networks. The fact that the same handful of (often white late-middle-aged male) writers have been some of the most repeatedly credited writers on our kids/animated shows for the past 2 or so decades probably doesn’t help.
Doesn’t that show set at a kid’s theme park have a kid being decapitated (of course I know we don’t see it, but they mention it)
I like Nick Verso’s approach to this question. Be one of the kids, rather than what an adult would like the kids to be. ‘Crazy Fun Park’ was brilliant and I was disappointed that it never went beyond one season.
I watched and worked on kids TV from the 1970’s. The Golden Rule was never talk down to the audience. Too many do gooders have been involved in setting policies and agendas these days. They don’t seem to give credit that kids are actually intelligent and can handle concepts and subjects that aren’t all nicey nicey and politically correct and it all seems dumbed down these days. Hence the kids find the content boring and don’t watch it – Bluey being the exception.