My child wanted to watch an animated green lantern series recently so we checked it out. Of course the main character who is the human green lantern is a fighter pilot who does a bunch of sweet fighter pilot flight maneuvers in the opening sequence. I told my child that shows like this often show the military being cool and doing cool stuff, but that in real life what fighter pilots actually do is drop bombs on children. I'm only human, I also enjoy (some) military action movies, but I know it's cotton candy brain poison too.

I hate how many children's shows have pro military pro cop propaganda. How do others talk to their kids about it to inoculate them against brainworms? I usually describe the military and the cops as being like a gang of bullies - they do things to make themselves look cool but really they just exist to hurt people and take their shit.

  • Judge_Jury [comrade/them, he/him]25•8 months ago

    Even Bluey has an episode where the moral is, "If you have symptoms of ADHD, consider joining the army."

    My kid's still too young to talk in much depth, but my intention is to curate as much copaganda as I can out of their media diet while still fulfilling most of their media requests, and to treat "the cop talk" the same way I intend to treat sexuality: answer questions frankly and concisely when they come up. They'll ask for more details if they're wondering, and the rest probably won't be relevant to them yet.

    I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was a kid, but that didn't survive me seeing how the military swindles soldiers, much less learning about the Korean War etc.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]10•8 months ago

      I'm trying to think of kids shows that don't have either the token friendly cop or cop episodes where cops talk about how great they are and I'm drawing a blank. At least for mainstream American kids shows.

      • star_wraith [he/him]8•8 months ago

        This probably only works for little kids (under age 8-9 or so) and if you live in the US, but I limit TV pretty much to just PBS Kids. Virtually no copaganda, definitely no military worship, and there’s enough variety that there’s always some shows my kids are excited to watch so it’s not like I’m forcing them to eat their veggies or anything .

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]3•8 months ago

          I always watched PBS as a kid. Even though I was raised in a very religious community, stuff like Little Bear and Arthur were pretty good.

          Though I do still think most of those had at some point a "good cop" character

      • VILenin [he/him]6•8 months ago

        Everyone knows the army is where people with differences are tolerated and celebrated and there is a culture of body positivity and rainbows and sunshine!