of cartoons which are then dubbed for sound in their respective countries. This explains
the strange crocodile-jaw motions of most of the characters’ mouths which bear very
little relation to the phonetics of the words that the characters speak. The plot-lines of
most cartoon films follow a very traditional pattern: quest and/or test. Heroes go out on
quests where they are tested by baddies, dangers and evil forces. Cartoon comedy,
especially non-Disney from the 1940s or 1950s sustains a greater variety of ideas, tricks,
ruses and disasters. Various modes of behaviour, other forms of entertainment, figures
of authority—and, it should be said, ethnic minorities especially native Americans— are
held up to ridicule (see especially Popeye (first shown 1933) and Bugs Bunny (first
shown 1938).
Puppetry saw a huge renaissance from 1969 onwards at the hands of Jim Henson who
was responsible for two major changes. The humble glove puppet, which had become
rather characterless and restricted to mere bobbing up and down became, with some
ingenious engineering, startling contemporary characters with features capable of
expressing a much wider range of emotion; he also introduced animatronics, the
electronically operated puppet, shown to great effect with talking mice in The Witches—
the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel mentioned above.
Children’s television in Britain operates under its own budgets separate from ‘Light
Entertainment’ departments and offers a variety of material all with its equivalents in
(and frequently derived from) children’s literature. The output includes drawn cartoons,
stop-frame animation, puppets, specially commissioned drama series, adaptations of
classic children’s novels, quizzes, information and news programmes, magazine
programmes, and large amorphous mixed programmes, usually screened on Saturday
mornings mixing elements of all these, along with performances by live bands. Much of
this matches the adult output, so it is interesting to see what adult programmes are not
matched: live sport and live comedy being the most obvious. In the USA children’s
television is largely a choice between drawn cartoons and Sesame Street (first broadcast
1969) a show founded on the premise of compensatory learning and behaviouristic
teaching methods— for example, if you could make the alphabet seem as groovy as an
advertisement or a piece of rock music, and as relevant to audiences regarded as
‘disadvantaged’ (for example, African-Americans and Hispanics), then a ‘good thing’ was
being done. In actual fact, the programme’s main contribution has probably been
through its inventive puppetry (thanks originally to Jim Henson), great wit, top-flight
showbiz performers, and an array of presenters who defy Western stereotypic
conventions of race, appearance and age for children’s television.
The BBC’s adaptations of classic children’s books (Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1952),
Bawden’s Carrie’s War (1974), Masefield’s The Box of Delights (1984) and many other
productions) were for many years part of a particular BBC aesthetic, dominated by a
theatrical use of cameras and framing. That is to say, the camera rarely moved, and if it
did, it was slowly and on tracks—that is smoothly and unobtrusively); people tended to
deliver their lines from within carefully composed frames, while sets, locations and
costumes played as important roles as the characters. The direction allowed the viewer
plenty of time to take in these physical aspects; the busy, rushing camera of cinema
verité was thought inappropriate for such material. However, recently the television
adaptation (1993) of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers has used all the tricks of colour inlay
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