by Junebug Theory.
In a few days, we'll be starting our America Rock! series. We're both dreading it. These episodes won't be fun, and we’ve got nine of them before we finally get to look at Science Rock. But why is this season so heavy on the propaganda? What took us from I Got Six to Elbow Room? To find some answers, I started doing some reading. This would slowly evolve into a massive research project attempting to understand the historical context of Schoolhouse Rock, one that lead me down some truly wild rabbit holes. When I finally had a grasp on the story of this show, it gave me an idea: before we get into the bad history lessons of America Rock!, why not try to do better?
Welcome to HISTORY ROCK! SUCKS ASS, where we'll be telling the true story of Schoolhouse Rock: a story of violence, marketing, censorship, music, and Reaganomics. We've got analysis! We've got sources! We’ve even got our own musical interlude (sorta)! Schoolhouse Rock didn't just appear out of thin air, it was made by specific people for a specific reason. If we want to try and understand the show, the best thing we can do is learn it’s historical context and discover what those reasons are. Why was it so successful? Why did it eventually die? And why is America Rock! so… like that? Let’s find out together.
you should read it
i did a TON of research for it
pls share your thoughts
I helped a little bit with the research on this (not much--June tracked down some REAL esoteric sources for this one) and watching it develop from "oh yeah everyone agrees ACT is responsible for kids tv getting bad" to "oh wow everyone is completely wrong about this history" was fascinating.
I think there's some real important lessons here honestly for people pushing for things like antitrust to "correct" markets now. some necessary goods for society only get provided when you either have one random rich guy who decides they should exist... or when you have a government stepping in and letting that necessary good escape the brutal logic of the market. you might destroy the (evil) foundation of a thing's profitability and find it's been replaced with... nothing.
