The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, those sewer-dwelling superheroes who fight crime with cheerful banter and martial arts, may be up against their most powerful enemy yet.
Preschool teachers and daycare staffs across Canada have declared war on the immensely popular ”heroes-in-a-half-shell.”
As karate kicks and delighted shrieks of ”Cowabunga, Dude!” pervade playgrounds, ”Turtlemania” increasingly is being viewed by Canadian educators, parents and even psychiatrists as a menace that incites their children toward aggressive behavior.
As in the U.S., many Canadians find the Turtles` TV cartoon show, their movies and their current North American concert tour imaginative, entertaining and good fun.
But others point out that children tend to idolize and imitate the wisecracking reptiles, learning a subliminal message that violence is the way to solve problems.
”Turtles is a dirty word in day care,” says Liza Msyk, head kindergarten teacher at Balmy Beach Community Day Care inToronto, one of countless centers that ban toys and playground activity based on the Ninja Turtles.
Even so, she sighed, her youngsters are constantly scrapping and pretending to be Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello or Raphael, the Renaissance artists whose names were appropriated by the amphibious quartet.
”I hate the Turtles,” says Carolyne Brennan, a teacher who bans them in her classes at Toronto`s Mooredale Pre-School. ”One kid will kick another for no reason at all, and they don`t relate the kicking with hurting. There`s no question the Turtles incite kids to more violent behavior.”
The Ninja Turtles are by no means the first example of entertaining children with violence, experts say. Even the Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner cartoons of a generation ago were replete with violent acts.
But there is growing concern these days about the long-term consequences of these shows, especially in Canada, which prides itself on its educational and constructive TV programming for children.
”Cartoon figures have always been violent,” said Dr. Arlette Lefebvre, a Toronto child psychiatrist. ”The difference now is the quantity of violent events per hour and the special effects that make them seem all the more real. ”In the movies, they`re huge, lifesize figures. The power of the big screen and concerts have a lot to do with kids thinking it`s reality.”
Lefebvre is a member of the Children`s Broadcast Institute, a national organization advocating better-quality television. She and other experts cited these examples of how the cartoons affect children:
A 6-year-old Toronto boy, still wearing his Turtle costume the day after Halloween last fall, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his next-door friend in the arm for not returning a borrowed toy.
A 3-year-old boy in an Ottawa suburb picked up the family cat and spun it around his head like a Turtle hero wielding a weapon. ”It`s just like Michaelangelo,” he protested, when his horrified mother intervened. The cat ran away and didn`t return home for two days.
Two Toronto girls, aged 4 and 5, were caught and stopped in separate incidents earlier this year trying to climb down manholes into the sewers to visit the Turtles` underground home.
The problem is not confined to Canada. In Champaign, Ill., last year, three small children opened a sewer cover and were stopped just before descending to search for their green friends. The incident prompted a local Ninja Turtle Alert, with teachers instructed to explain that the reptiles were not real.
Pint-sized fans flailed at one another with swords, nunchukus and karate kicks during intermission at the Turtles` concerts this month in Toronto. The critically acclaimed, yearlong concert tour, which emphasizes an anti-drug, non-violent message, comes to Chicago for a second time June 7.
”The Turtle films are quite violent, the first more than the second, much more violent than the TV cartoons,” said Dr. Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist who chairs the Champaign-based National Coalition on Television Violence.
”The cartoons are no worse than other violent cartoons over the years. The main difference is the stylistic actions of the Turtles are very distinctive and easy to imitate, since they use martial arts moves.” he said. ”Our generation grew up to be the most violent generation of Americans in our history,” Radecki argues, citing FBI crime statistics, ”and the second television generation appears to be breaking the records that we set in the 1970s.”
Because the Turtle characters are based on normal, pizza-loving, girl-shy, teenaged boys, children identify with them and emulate them, he said.
”The cultural message becomes one of glamorized violence. It`s not surprising that people learn what they are taught.”
The coalition released a study in April concluding that 100 nationally distributed cartoons aired on U.S. television since last fall contain three times as many acts of violence as prime-time shows.
Overall, cartoon programming was found to average 26 acts of violence per hour, with cartoons in first-run syndication being the most violent with an average 37 acts per hour. These include the Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, Tiny Toons, Peter Pan and the Pirates, Dragon Warrior and Toxic Crusader.
By age 18, the coalition estimates, the average child will have witnessed about 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 25,000 murders.
Kevin Shea, president of YTV Canada Inc., a national children`s network based in Toronto, defended the Turtles` cartoon series his network airs. The controversy over violence did not start up until the first movie came out a year ago, and his network only received a few complaints after that, he said. ”The entertainment value of the Turtles-to give life and purpose to dumb amphibians-was a unique idea in animation,” Shea said. ”It`s a very entertaining show.”
Added YTV producer Bob Martin, ”Kids tell us what they like and they love the Turtles. We struggle with the right balance as parents and programmers, but you can`t argue with the fact that these guys (Turtles) have made a connection with the kids, and it`s true around the world.”
