Dora the Explorer Live! - Dora’s Pirate Adventure by Chris Gifford. SVP Live Theatricals for Nickelodeon (US pay TV), at Australian Institute of Sport, Tuesday September 24.
At the risk of seeming as curmudgeonly as Ian Warden, this very conventional, superficial and non-educational entertainment reminded me most closely of the recent Democrat Convention at which hero Barack Obama was nominated for president, while foxy H. Clinton, crying “Oh Man!”, tried desperately to pretend she didn’t mind being beaten. It’s nice that the roles are reversed with Dora the heroine, played sweetly by Sheena Ortiz, and Swiper the dastardly fox played forlornly by David Taylor, but this is not enough.
Even 3 and 4 year-olds deserve better real-politick and common sense. Swiper is the clown of the show and therefore the most interesting character. His technology - his motor bike and motor boat - fail him, but Dora makes him happy by giving him a pirate jacket and allowing him to dance at her party. Map tells us how to get to the treasure at the very beginning, so no mental effort required here. The pigs, who control the treasure chest, are surprisingly compliant. When everyone (all 2,800 of them at the session I went to) yells “Give us our treasure” (which isn’t exactly theirs in the first place), the pigs say, “OK, then” and all on stage have a dance party. I suppose it could be seen as a parallel to the Wall Street show, but I don’t think it’s teaching children quite what Nickelodeon claim.
Parents tell me that in the cartoon form on a TV screen, their children do the colouring in, call out the answers to solve problems, dance along and learn some Spanish, but the claim of the original writers Chris Gifford and Valerie Walsh that “Problem-solving strategies like stopping to think, asking for help, and using what you know are modelled in every Dora show” were hardly fulfilled in Dora’s Pirate Adventure. To high energy rock-latin music, in an atmosphere of constant excitement, children’s responses were never more than repetition of slogans to encourage the hero on to win. For the only real problem - how to fix the sail on the pirate ship - children were offered a multiple choice question, beginning “Can we use a cricket bat?” (No!) with the correct answer being “Can we use sticky tape?”, which didn’t get a definite response, but the show went on anyway. How American can you get?
I quite like Hero Obama as much as Ortiz’s Dora, but investing in either show is a short-sell in my view.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment