CNN - Review: 'Saturday Morning Fever'

(CNN) -- Remember all those Saturday mornings that you spent glued to the tube, mesmerized by the adventures of Scooby-Doo and H.R. Pufnstuf? Despite the fears of your elders, you weren't really rotting your brain. You were experiencing a generational bonding ritual. At least, that's the argument of Timothy and Kevin Burke in their paean to the animated children's television of the 1970s, "Saturday Morning Fever."

By turns informative, argumentative, wisecracking and nostalgic, "Saturday Morning Fever" is more entertaining than most of the TV shows it chronicles. The Burkes -- one a college professor, the other a former fan magazine editor who works at a film company -- admit that much of what they endured as veterans of Saturday morning cartoons was trash. But it was their trash, and they aren't afraid to admit they loved it.

"Saturday morning," they write, "like streaking, Charlie's Angels, and polyester, is at its heart a thing of the seventies. From 1969 to 1979, millions of children watched some of the programs now so closely associated with the memory of Saturday morning.... The experience of watching The Funky Phantom or The Harlem Globetrotters is as evocative of the seventies as disco or Jimmy Carter."

The cartoons provide the children of the '70s (now tagged "Generation X") a common vocabulary, a verbal shorthand that allows them to identify and communicate with others of their kind. As one Saturday morning veteran told the authors, "I sometimes recite lines from cartoons like, 'I keep my feathers numbered, for just such an emergency' or 'THERE ARE NO LA BREA TARPITS IN SCOTLAND!!', and, oddly enough, most people seem to know what I'm referring to."

Between analyses of cartoons as shared experiences and arguments that they really weren't bad for the kids, the Burkes pause to reflect on the shows themselves. There are fond, if not always reverent, reminiscences of programs as diverse as the animated "Star Trek," the quirky "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp," "Space Ghost" and "The Archies" plus the whole stable of Hanna-Barbera creations. The pinnacle of the Saturday morning experience, the authors contend, was "Scooby-Doo." That show still sparks heated debates among aficionados. "The top question, of course, is: What the hell are Scooby snacks and why do Shaggy and Scooby want them so badly? For that matter, why do Shaggy and Scooby always have the munchies? And if they're always eating prodigious amounts of food, how come they're not fat?"

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In the final chapter of "Saturday Morning Fever," the Burkes present an ardent defense of the cartoon culture. It's appropriately titled "Of Course You Know, This Means War." Their tone becomes a bit defensive, but their argument is simple. When it comes to cartoons, kids get it and grown-ups don't. They claim the children watching Saturday morning TV fully comprehend the difference between animated violence and the real-world kind. They assert that the youngsters bombarded by pitches for sugary cereals and overpriced plastic action figures are bright enough to know the difference between commercials and entertainment. To critics of kidvid everywhere, they have a simple message: The kids are all right.

L.D. Meagher is a senior writer at CNN Headline News. He has worked in broadcasting for 30 years.

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