The Seventies: A Fangarian Perspective

Whenever I start talking about Fanger, many find it hard believing the Fangarian Ancestry originated back to the infamous era known as the Seventies. Despite a sitcom, and the Retro-Hype from some cable channels, from my POV, the Seventies were anything but a tied-dyed, bellbottom experience.

The Seventies: The Pollyana Years

Many people recall the Seventies as a bizarre, rollercoaster decade: America was still reeling from the Sixties' Fallout with JFK's Assassination, the Vietnam War and Woodstock. In fact, before the Seventies even got off the Chrono Launching Pad, it first years were fraught with many weird disasters.

Although the Vietnam War officially ended in 1975, the US Gov't. had withdrawn our troops about two years earlier. Despite being saddened (at least I thought we were back then, considering I was only six) by the unwarranted losses during the war, America didn't give our vets any welcome back parades or any type of commemoration or commendation. The famed Vietnam Veterans Memorial would not be constructed until about 1982, where it had been designed by Maya Ying Lin, a Yale architectural student and was dedicated in Washington, DC.

In 1974, President Nixon had gotten embroiled with Watergate, ending up as the only American President ever to resign from office rather than be assassinated or impeached. And if things weren't bad enough, The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union had cropped up the age-old Red Scare, coupled with the threat of nuclear war. Even with all the peace treaties from Arms Control being established between the Superpowers in Geneva. Amazingly, the Seventies themselves hadn't even reached its mid-life yet.

Although we began starting working on fixing our planet socially and ecologically, it seemed at the time the nation was more concerned with our own problems. Like the economy and energy crisis. And if you were a child growing up in a small Texas town, these problems had never existed in the first place.

Entering this world on October 3, 1968, I spent half the Seventies in a town known as Orange, Texas. Like most Southeast Texas residencies, Orange could be best described as a modern-day Mayberry without Sheriff Taylor or Deputy Fife. Back then, everyone knew everybody, crime wasn't a major concern and you could purchase a lot of stuff for just one dollar (okay, perhaps about ten or twenty comic books, since they were only 35 and 50 cents in those days). Overall, people just wanted to forget about the Past in general and focus on living in the Present (which wasn't easy since DePalma kept directing those Vietnam films every chance he got!)

The most peculiar thing behind the Seventies in Texas was, although Texans had never gone remotely mod, our television and the media definitely did, and the insidious transformations first started with children's programming.

The ACT of Children's Programming

The Action for Children's Programming, or ACT, was first established in 1968, but its true influence didn't come into play until the Seventies. ACT was responsible for the Children's Television Workshop coming into play for shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company, and was originally designed for enforcing educational programming for public broadcasting. Regrettably, ACT also inspired a lot of parent/teacher 'watchdog' groups which, in turn, gave the network censors major headaches.

Besides regulating advertising within children's programming, ACT petitioned for the networks and the FCC to provide some type of safe programming for children, which supported healthy values (and you wonder why Barney and Friends didn't get created in this era!) with a minimal amount of violence (meaning blood, guts and gore. Apparently hitting someone seemed to be more socially acceptable back then, than blowing their brains out with a gun!) The result produced this daily format:

After an hour (or so) of network news, you were allowed broadcasting a children's show of live-action, cartoons and puppets. In this case, the popular kids' show of the Seventies was Captain Kangaroo, which lasted for about one hour. For reasons totally known to the networks themselves, the next children's program, Sesame Street, would not air until about four hours later (if you lived in Texas, where it aired around noonish.).

The final children's time slot (other than Saturday Morning) of the day would consist of old cartoons and children's shows in the late afternoon, until it was time for the local news to come on. Due to all the Texas 'watchdog' groups, Channel 6 (KDFM; CBS Affliate), would air reruns of Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones during prime-time, since some of the early-Seventies' shows had once been considered unsuitable for kids.

Taking all of this into account, you're probably wondering why we kids didn't protest this, after all, everybody had seemed to be protesting about one thing or another. First off, you must remember this was the pre-Nickelodeon Era, and about this time I was only about three. Not to mention, kids who were old enough to protest, either never watched television, or were usually too mesmerized by the tube to complain.

So what does all this have to do with Fanger? Amidst the Seventies, my protests weren't so much about the children's programming, which ACT and 'watchdog' groups were so intrinsically were keeping safe for us. But rather instead with some conflicting facts about nature and the standardized children's fairy tales we were allowed to read.