Shel

Originally Aired: February 23rd, 1974
Written by: Lynn Ahrens
Performed by: Essra Mohawk

Shel's Review

Music: 🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵
Animation: 📺📺
Pedagogy: 🎓🎓🎓
Accuracy: 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Yikes Factor: 😬😬😬

I played Reginald in this song as a child in Schoolhouse Rock! Live! Junior! I still really like this song. It's very fun and catchy, the exposition fits the rhythm, and the song sorta fits the vibe of what it's talking about. It's just a good little folk song. I think June and I will disagree a lot about a lot of these Lynn Ahrens songs because I'm from New England and have a fondness for this sort of contemporary folk music. To a child, a lot of parts of this song are also genuinely funny. Clips from this one were used a lot in commercials for the DVD box sets. I love the girl getting an A+ and shouting "Wow!" and just lots of fun little echolalias and moments in this song.

The animation here is... I would say one step up from My Hero, Zero. It's very much that "newspaper strips on a white background" vibe but the character designs are at least fun and there's some good visual gags like the girl scaring the snake and the guy who says he's for the other team and his feeling goes from explanation point to comma when everyone glares at him. Also the typography is fun. Still, compared to everything else we've seen this season, you can tell this is not where they put the animation budget.

In terms of pedagogy... sure? It teaches the concept it's teaching perfectly well, but... why are we learning this? Similar to My Hero, Zero the concept is summarized immediately in one sentence and we have to wonder why it needs to be taught at all. In some ways, it's more about the punctuation than the actual grammar. Also, no attention is given to English's most beloved infix -fucking- which has the most complicated grammatical rules of any interjection. For instance, inter-fucking-jection is grammatical but not in-fucking-terjection. Obviously, the 3rd graders are not ready for this advanced grammar technique. Still, nothing is wrong, so full points for accuracy.

I do want to first acknowledge that the woman singing this song is a white woman who legally changed her last name to Mohawk. She is not from the Kanienʼkehá:ka nation. She was born Sandra Hurvitz. Why would she do this? This would be because her husband was Frazier Mohawk: "an American record producer and sometime photographer, publicist, circus owner, and farmer." He was born Barry Friedman in California and I can't find any evidence of him being Kanienʼkehá:ka either; and there's no explanation online for why he legally changed his name to this. So. Hippies appropriating indigenous culture and profiting off of it as a brand, neat.

Also, Hello Rape Culture! Poor fucking Geraldine, first she's sexually harassed by Geraldo "despite her objections" and then when she finally caves in, he turns into a frog because she kissed him, finally freed from his curse to be a human being. Kids, if someone shouts that interjection "No!" then you need to respect that non-consent, even if it's a "no," because the feeling's not as strong. In fact, you should really be waiting on that interjection "Yes!" before you go trying to get them to say "Oh!" and so forth if you know what I mean.

June's Review

Music 🎵🎵🎵🎵

Yeah I like this one. It sticks with you. The gags in the music are good and in this case the "speaking over the music" actually fits. It's timed well and it's really funny. And "DARN, THAT'S THE END" is something I still think of constantly. The way the one girl says WOW is actually like a permanent part of my vocabulary at this point.

Animation 📺📺📺📺

Okay, I know the animation here is cheap, but I absolutely love it. I find so many gags in this hilarious, like the animation of the snake scare or the Hurray Guy. But mostly? I LOVE the typography. It's one of my favorite things and this song does it constantly. The glowing WOW, the way the RATS shows up, the cursive HEY, it's all so great; it's also really well coordinated with the music.

Pedagogy 🎓🎓🎓

This song mostly taught me that interjections were things you yell. I don't know if I can blame the song for it, but for a very long time I thought that interjections were just things you yelled.

Accuracy 🎯🎯🎯

Frogs are cute, Geraldine. I'm dating one. Maybe this one isn't, but I can't stand for this frog slander.

Yikes 😬

The Mohawk thing is pretty fuckin' weird, but I think the Geraldine thing is funny, mostly because she's very much in power the whole time. The worst thing he does is kiss her hand in a creepy way and gets yelled at for it. Still, it certainly could be better. Me and Shel over here just waiting with our big yikes numbers to throw them at America Rocks as hard as possible, lol.

Up Next: Nobody can accuse me of being the one fixated on feet after this next one.