He was an 8 year old and he and his friends would just wander around town. They either walked or biked to a lot of locations. The sugar bowl, the library, the park, school, each other's houses, etc. This happens in many of the episodes, if not most of them. Arthur's parents only really seem to drive him around if they're leaving town or something.None of the parents or teachers or other adults seem to even care or do much about it either.To me this seems extremely odd and even unsafe. I understand it's a cartoon but it still doesn't make much sense.
>>155114500You wouldn't try that in a big city.
>>155114500We could do that in the 90s. We weren’t anywhere near as infantized as zoomers onward.
>>155114500there were less helicopter parents in the past
>>155114533that's not really true, but it was true in the 80s, so basically same point.that's why 80s kids actually accomplished shit and 90s kids just burn out even when we get to be at the helm of massive hit shows.
>>155114667It is absolutely true. I am 38 and lived it.We had way more freedom and could go virtually anywhere around the neighborhood/town unsupervised.The only real difference between 80’s kids and 90s kids is 90s kids weren’t lead poisoned.
>>155114500Shit, dude. Back in the early 90’s my 8 year old latch key ass was all over the city. Walking to supermarkets, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Blockbuster. Taking buses to comic shops, movie theaters, department stores and hotels to mooch continental breakfasts. We were even on good terms with the hobo encampments hidden in the undeveloped forest areas. Everything you see in cartoons and movies about us happened. Except for saving rec centers, that was bullshit.
>>155114500I was basically Arthur's age at the time the show was airing and we were allowed to just go outside and do whatever. I used to bike with the kids on my street around town and sometimes we'd buy candy from the local gas station with whatever quarters we had. The idea of kids running around unattended didn't really die until the 2000s and before then was just the norm. Nobody gave a fuck.
>>155114500It's a small town, also children used to live like that until society ruined things. Also it's not entertaining to see kids go "Mom, can you drive me to the ...blank" every episode.
>>155114500parents constrain the plots of children's media so the easiest way to get the plot moving foreword is to exclude their presence entirely
>>155114917did you live somewhere rural?
>tfw born in 88>my entire life even as a young child was come home from school, mother tells me to go outside and play, I disappear until dinner time and mom never was worried about it, everIt's actually a bit of a psychic attack knowing that zoomies and alphas have literally no concept of "going outside and playing."
>harassing kids for money>Threatening to send their goons out to get them>Treating them like criminals>Brain and Arthur are black codedWtf was his problem, was he a racist?
which Arthur character would you fuck
>>155114500Is this your first cartoon? Most child characters wander around by themselves without parental supervision
>>155114917>>155117212Yep. Same age as you fags and 8-10 was probably the most free and sociable years of my childhood and the last time I had genuine female friends, I was out with my friends all the time, we'd bike and wander around and explore, rig shit up (building your own little secret hideout in some woods/wasteland feels like something every kid used to do). Moved out to buttfuck nowhere when I was 11 and it was boring and lonely as shit outside of school because I didn't live near any other kids.
>>155117189Urban.
>>155117466Obviously not the first cartoon I've seen but Arthur tends to be rather realistic in its depictions of normal life. There's obviously the odd cartoony moment here and there but for the most part the characters and situations they deal with could realistically exist. Outside of dream sequences and intro segments, I guess.Arthur is clearly supposed to be a normal kid. As opposed to I don't know, Timmy Turner or Jimmy Neutron, who do wander around by themselves or with friends, but those shows are clearly less concerned with realism; Timmy and Jimmy are not normal kids by any means.It's a bit like King Of The Hill, where the show mostly operates on realism, so you would apply realism when talking about the show. As opposed to its counterparts like Family Guy or the Simpsons which regularly invoke far less realistic concepts and plot devices.
>>155114500You could probably say something about it being a carryover of latchkey kid thingBut really Arthur (and a lot of other kids cartoons in general), even though it explicitly states the kids are mostly 8 and in fucking third grade, are treated as older kids. Like cartoons generally have kids act far older than they actually are, it's a real phenomenonIt's really noticeable with characters like the tough customers that have that kind of younger high school appearance and mannerisms, but they're in fucking 4th grade. It's weirder the more you think about it.
>>155114500You were allowed to do that back in the day. We were encouraged to do that because it was tiresome having to entertain children all day before the invention of video games and smartphones.
>>155114500>To me this seems extremely odd and even unsafe. I understand it's a cartoon but it still doesn't make much sense.That was the norm like 30 years ago. But thanks to the Global Homo we can't anymore.
>>155114500The benefits of living in a high trust society
>>155117212there's no A and there never will be>>155117810seriously? Huh. I didn't know any kids who were allowed to run wild in the 90s. You can directly follow which fearmongering news articles led to the closing off of childhood.
>>155118275and the trust pays off, too. The more people are trusted, the better they behave.but we live in a nanny state that believes the opposite, that people will misbehave anytime they are not being watched by cameras. These people have trouble with basic factual concepts, is the problem.
>>155114500>He was an 8 year old and he and his friends would just wander around town.this was realistic to childhood in the first half of the 20th century >To me this seems extremely odd and even unsafe. I understand it's a cartoon but it still doesn't make much sense.the belief that allowing kids the freedom to roam town at their leisure is why it stoppeda belief that popped up alongside car-centrid sub-urban development that ensured that families would be raised more or less in isolation from societythe soccer mom was a development from the second half of the 20th century when isolated suburbs meant parents had to drive their children everywhere, including soccer gamessafety was the pretext, control was the point
>>155118254>But thanks to the Global Homo we can't anymore.the exact reason is actually well knownits car-centric urban developmenttelling people that their children were not safe was simply a very pathos-laden way to convince people to move to the suburbs because it was good for their kids which was all a front to get people to rely on their cars for every facet of their life
>>155117212"go outside in play" for the average zoomer means playing in a 300 square foot yard. Hopefully there is a kid next door. If not... Technically we played on a single street with parental supervision also.No wonder kids prefer being inside.
>>155114917This was my experience too. 36, but I grew up in south dakota so.
With the rise of HOAs, Kids stopped being able to play outside, because the Bookers would call the cops on any unsupervised children, even if they were playing in their own yards.
>>155117212>>15511944533 and grew up in California before moving to the South, this was the norm in both of those places. I don't remember kids playing outside becoming a rarity until the mid-00s.
>>155119564The war on terrorism probably had a hand in that.
>>155119564it was a moral panic, the rise of sensationalized news reporting and 24/7 news meant that parents at home were suddenly being blasted by reports of missing children and naturally fearing for the safety of their own childrenthe emotional-laden argument of "dont you want your children to be safe?" is every hard to argue against without sounding like you hate childreneven though statistically, most child abductions occur from family members of friends rather than strangers (a trend that existed even before the change in parenting, so we cannot attribute this to stranger-danger policy working before someone who took stat 101 chimes in)
>>155119577Terrorism plus long-standing effects of Columbine I think. People started to become much more concerned about their children in general and I think it just kind of ramped up until by the mid-00s letting your kids wander around outside became seen as risky.
>>155119483That explains HOA’s but the problem is kids stopped going outside EVERYWHERE.
