"Re-imagined" Dennis the Menace

[HBK-aholic]

COMIC tearaway Dennis The Menace has been turned into Walter The Softy by politically correct BBC bosses.

They have banned The Beano's bully from using his trusty catapult, water pistol and peashooter in their new cartoon series.



Dennis is also no longer allowed to pick on geeky Walter and is not slippered by his dad as a punishment. Even his dog Gnasher has been targeted.



He will no longer sink his teeth in people or engage in his trademark wanton destruction.



Dennis also looks less menacing, with his scowl replaced by a charming boyish grin.


In the new series made by Red Kite Animation, which launches next month on CBBC, Dennis has been "re-imagined".

This makes absolutely no sense to me, all it proves is that being Politically Correct has become even worse. Dennis the Menace is a show that almost everyone I know watched as a child, I used to love it. Yet they're completely changing it and I don't really understand how it'll be the same show due to the amount of change.

What do you think?

 

[Nitafrong]

It almost seems as if the people who make childrens tv have a deliberate mandate to destroy all the charming childrens tv of the past (Not that the Dennis the Menace cartoon is that old, though now I think about it, it must almost be 10 years since it started. Even it was quite different from the cartoon, but I still really enjoyed both )

First Postman Pat gets a helicopter and a range of other high tech gizmo's to turning him into Super Pat and Rupert Bear is transformed from a beautifully drawn creation to a souless modern adaptation. Yah boo is all I can say

 

[Gelgarin]

Personally I like political correctness. At the risk of engaging irony, striving to be politically correct is one of the least PC things a person can do in under 40's society. The mere mention of something being brushed down to appease the ideal of correctness is enough to get people hammering at the walls. I remember on this very forum when a heated debate broke out because the developers of a 70,000 seat (made up number) stadium announced that a couple of toilets had been moved so as not to face Mecca.

In my view political correctness is, nine tenths of the time, simply people going out of their way not to offend other people, and it takes a special kind of cynic to try and claim this as a bad thing. In fact I'd go so far as to say that if political correctness had a better media reputation the society would probably be a more accommodating place.

I'm aware that I'm steadfastly avoiding the question in hand here, and that would be because this is my first serious post in quite a long time, and because the social and moral question of political correctness (last time I say political correctness I promise) is a far more interesting subject to soliloquise upon than a shitty children's cartoon that I've had the misfortune to witness a handful of times. As memory serves, in one episode of that show the protagonist dropped a packed of lime jelly cubes into a reservoir, causing all of the taps in town to start spewing some physics defying, solid/liquid jelly hybrid. As far as this amature intelectual is concenred, and level of "re-imagining" that show undergoes is a good this.

I actually do have a couple of opinions on the actual question, most of which build to the idea that it's a non issue. To begin at the convoluted beginning, we wind back 85 Gelgarin years to my unhappy childhood, and my introduction to the charicter Dennis the Menace. Now as a child I was often accused of having the mental functions of a grumpy 75 year old man, and accusation I have only managed to shift by cutting 98% of the human contact out of my life. Anyway, as a youth I always had something of a problem with Dennis. Here was an ostensibly ugly, foul smelling, not very intelligent young boy who's chief activities appeared to consist of terrorising his parents, teachers, members of law enforcement and a retired war hero. He was also the bane of the existence of all the children who appeared to place value on such "square" ideals as washing regularly, studying hard in order to get a good job and... dum dum dum... generically being nice to one another. Dennis was responsible for thefts, criminal damage and on more than one occasion acts of physical violence (although these at least were generally not intentional).

Yet, despite a list of flaws that in any civilised society would have the child taken away by social services, sent to juvenile detention, given a drug problem and turned loose as a career criminal, we are supposed to applaud Dennis as a hero. Obviously aged 11 I was not able to express these objections quite so eloquently, but I assure you that they were there. As such, I seldom read the comics of partook in the show.

Now we head towards the crux of the question... do my objections to the content mean the show should be changed? Answer... no. Changing a successful formula for the sake of an ideal is a waste of broadcaster's time. So now for the plot twist. From that last sentence it sounds like I'm coming down on the side of Dennis the meth addict is waiting... and had these changes been forced on the show by the BBC then I would be. But they weren't. These were changes that the show decided to make, for the simply reason that a lot of parents probably feel similarly about Dennis to myself, and since monitoring your child's activities for disturbing influenced gets more and more in vogue every time some kid shoots up a Burger King, they don't want parents stopping their kinds watching the show.

I'm reminded of the stadium debate we had ages ago. In both cases the "change" was made for no other reason that to make the "product" as accommodation as possible to as large an audience as possible. In other words it's about money. People who make cartoons probably know more about making money in the cartoon industry that I do, so my final answer is simply to let them get on with it.

None of us watch the show, no child is going to mourn its passing for more than a few minutes, so why exactly should we care?

...

So what do you think? Does Gelgarin still work?

 

[Kip The Fury]

To be fair, when you look back it does have some controversial issues.

Using a slingshot, which is a dangerous weapon. I do agree that toning down the waterpistol and peashooter is a bit much though.

"Picking on Geeky Walter" - Bullying

"Slippered as punishment" - child abuse (its a stretch i know but theres outcry about spanking children and this is basically the same thing)

Gnasher will no longer sink his teeth in people or engage in his trademark wanton destruction - Attacking with a Dog

When you look at it you can kinda understand that in this day and age it might be better not to have impressionable children watch things like this. Of course its not the case where every child who watches the program will go out and start shooting people with catapults, or thinking its alright to pick on "softies", but it could happen.

The current audience/demographic wont even remember the "old" Dennis the Menace, there not going to care. The only people complaining are the older people who probably wouldn't watch it anyway, its not aimed at them anyway. Its not like their going to destroy all the old copies, if your nostalgic im sure you'll be able to find them somewhere.

There are bigger issues in the world people, lets stop worrying about people spoiling cartoons you weren't going to watch anyway and start worrying about the important issues

 

[Nitafrong]

You make some good points Mr G. I especially liked your point about being PC isn't that PC in an under 40's society. As far as I am aware though the UK average age is getting older and older and if my geography classes serve me right, if we are not already at that age we are fast approaching it.

I personally loved Dennis as a child as I also loved William Brown (who if not the basis for, was defiantly a large influence on the creation of Dennis). He was a rogue (always the basis for some of societies favourite characters ), who always got up to badness but generally of the decidedly innocent category. His adventures couched in the extreme were always clear as fantasy to me. It was a comic book and a cartoon, and never something I took literally and I have to wonder if you really did too

The advantage of following a PC route is that you don't offend people as you mentioned. The problem though is to attempt to achieve this you naturally have to dilute and water down everything to make it acceptable to all. Things become bland and uninteresting. There is a difference in my mind anyway between being deliberately harmful and hurtful and being a naughty little boy.

I felt even more annoyed when I heard that they were editing the new editions of the Famous Five books to make them fit into modern standards, to have the boys and girls share the housework and to remove phrases like "You will make a nice little housewife someday" In a modern context I would find this a bit demeaning (unless the person actually wanted to be a housewife, which Anne did here) but this isn't a modern book- its a book that was written in the 1930s or so. It's reflective of the time, like any book and this shouldn't be changed to appease modern sensibilities. There are plenty of Punch cartoons, books and films which are quite demeaning to the Irish- as well as the ubiquitous Paddy Irishman jokes. But I don't get offended by any of these- they reflected the time they were created in, or in the case of the jokes become oral tradition. (In Ireland we generally swop the Irishman for the Englishman anyways )

So yeah while I believe deliberately insulting and offending people is wrong and that some sensibilities need to be taken to make sure material isn't incredibly offensive to the majority of the population (something I don't believe Dennis falls into), I don't think we need to be as PC. If 50 years of reading Dennis has failed to induce the youth into becoming "meth addicts" I don't see how it will now.