Alabama is in hot water, but not for the reason you may think.
Alabama Public Television has decided not to air a new episode of the kids’ show “Arthur,” in which Arthur’s teacher marries another man (or aardvark, technically; the teacher himself is a rat, which really goes to show that none of this makes any sense at all).
Mike Mckenzie, director of programming at APT, told AL.com that the network was concerned about children watching the episode without supervision.
“Parents have trusted Alabama Public Television for more than 50 years to provide children’s programs that entertain, educate and inspire,” Mckenzie said. “More importantly — although we strongly encourage parents to watch television with their children and talk about what they have learned afterwards — parents trust that their children can watch APT without their supervision. We also know that children who are younger than the ‘target’ audience for Arthur also watch the program.”
The creators of “Arthur,” on the other hand, want to familiarize children with same-sex marriage, reflecting the changing landscape of America. And there was nothing lewd or inappropriate about the cartoon gay wedding.
China was widely condemned for pulling a similar move after “Bohemian Rhapsody” came out last fall. The Freddie Mercury biopic was stripped of its “gay scenes,” including one in which Mercury tells his fiancée he’s not straight.
No one benefits from this sort of censorship. In the case of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the film loses some of its cohesion. It’s a story about Mercury’s personal life, after all. In the case of the “Arthur” episode, children are being sheltered from an increasingly common occurrence in America that’s going to have to be explained to them at some point. Parents can explain it to their children however they’d like, but hiding a TV wedding doesn’t change the fact that same-sex marriage is becoming more popular.
Kids are exposed to plenty of controversial social issues on a daily basis. And if parents don’t want their kids to watch “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone,” they can turn off the TV.
