When The Rain Comes, They Run and Hide Their Heads

My Lovely and Talented Wife Who is Smarter Than Me™ recently brought this DVD home from the library. For those of you who don't have small children and may not be familiar with the Baby Einstein line, they are a series of DVDs designed to stimulate infants' cognitive development with classical music, colorful imagery and stock footage of real world objects. Do they work? Hell, I don't know - but they get the one-year-old to go slack-jawed and goggle-eyed long enough to get a shower in and that's good enough for me.

They used to be an independent entity but a few years ago they were bought out by Disney. Each video is hosted by an animal puppet character; these characters are named after artists, writers and scientists such as Van Gogh, Mozart, and Pavlov. The animal adventure video used to be hosted by Jane, a monkey in a pith helmet presumably named after Jane Goodall. Now that Disney's running the show, it's hosted  by an elephant named Noah.  He's got an ark and everything.

You read that right - Disney managed to dumb down material aimed at infants.

Anyway, I'm not writing this to rag on Disney, though heaven knows you can do that all day long; nor do I want to get into the staggering implausibility of the Noah's Ark story (another fine way to blow an afternoon.) What I'm really curious about is why fundamentalists and the people who want to sell stuff to them think the story of the Genesis flood is such great material for kids. Because they do, you know. I guess it's because the story features so many cuddly animals (and not so many dinosaurs) - but the last time I checked the drowning death of nearly every living creature on Earth was a critical plot point of the story. Maybe it's me, but the boat full of plushy fun seems to pale in comparison to that. Then again, I am the buzzkill that walks so I'm probably not the guy to ask.

Still, all things considered, if you're looking for old testament stories to amuse the kiddies you don't really have too many choices besides Noah. It's certainly more kid friendly than children being mauled by she-bears or Lot offering his own daughter to a rape gang, so it's got that going for it.

Comments

[King Ed Ra]

That pre-Moses version of God was an ass, wasn't he? He was big on smiting the world if he didn't get his props. That was he beauty of Moses' covenant, wasn't it--make God sign a contract? Old Yahweh toned down the theatrics after that (unless you were a Philistine or a Nazi), saving his wrath for making his new business partners the most persecuted group of people on the planet. "Hey, Jews! Thanks for making sure your God doesn't kill us again. BTW, we're going to enslave you for the next 900 years or so--Don't worry, God's got your back! (*snicker*)

Honestly, I'm amazed that the ancient Israelites didn't embrace Atheism as a cultural belief system after that 40 year trek through the desert. "For the love of Pete, Moses, would you just stop and ask for directions1"

[modesty]

"My Lovely and Talented Wife Who is Smarter Than Me™ " ; I like that!