This is not a cartoon or a movie, but I felt this show deserved a mention on my site. Not a “Random Lookalikes“-style mention or even a slight mention in relation to something else, but a really good post honoring the show.
When I was a really small child, we didn’t have cable, so all I had to watch was public television. Even after we got cable in the mid-’90s, I still watched PBS regularly. Those children’s shows–Ghostwriter, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Sesame Street, Barney–were like my soap operas as a kid. For a while, Ghostwriter was the only and best episodic show on my television screen. Once Ghostwriter was cancelled, I was bummed, wondering what could’ve happened to it and if another show would ever be just as good.
Then came along The Puzzle Place.
It seems quaint enough; six “kid” puppets–Leon, an African-American from NYC; Skye, an Apache from Arizona; Kiki, a Mexican-American from Texas; Julie, a Chinese-American from San Francisco; Ben, a German/Norwegian-American from South Dakota; and Jody, a Lithuanian-Jewish girl from Cincinnati–teaching their children audience about how to get along with one another. But it taught much more than that. It taught issues that most children’s shows weren’t delving into at the time, making it one of the most progressive shows on PBS, and, I think, a bit ahead of its time.
What I gained from that show was knowledge of different heritages, cultures, points of view, and how those differences should be nurtured and accepted. The show was at once heavy-handed and subtle in how it chose to deal with controversial subjects such as sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination. It also voiced opinions about how all ethnicities aren’t properly represented in the mainstream, as evidenced in the episode ”Rock Dreams,” when Skye becomes confused and understandably disturbed when he, an aspiring singer, can’t think of a single Native-American singer popular in the mainstream media. Through this episode, the audience actually gets to meet a Native-American group, Red Thunder, probably many kids’ first time actually seeing a Native-American rock group (I know I can speak for myself, anyway).
Ironically, the show is probably one of the only shows out of the 20th century to actually feature a Native-American as part of the main cast, let alone an entire multicultural group of “kids”. No kid was marginalized by the others for being a certain color, have a certain religious background, etc. Everyone got along and judged each other (to paraphrase Martin Luther King) by their character, not by race. Even when they did happen to disagree with each other or even get mad at one another, it was always because of someone’s actions or inaction, but because of their color or any other differing cultural factor.
Sure, this show has its problems, such as the stereotypes the characters are drawn upon (Skye being a very calm, über-earthy Native-American, Kiki having the stereotypical “Latin temper”, and Ben being an extremely milquetoast white kid), and like I said, sometimes the episodes hit you over the head with the lesson it’s trying to impart. But the characters never stay within said stereotypes; actually, in a way, the characters’ overall personalities and actions help them simultaneously address and break those stereotypes, showing that people aren’t all cookie-cutter. The lessons the show wants to desperately impress upon the minds of the children watching are lessons that should be learned, no matter how much a child gets bashed over the head with it. In short, this show achieved what it set out to achieve, and then some.
For me, this show not only helped me learn about other people’s culture and heritage, it also engendered in me a hunger to always learn as much as I could about other cultures. My first education was from entertainment, specifically PBS, cartoons, and cartoon movies. I learned about a whole lot of things from these forms of entertainment, including everything I stated above about The Puzzle Place. It is because of The Puzzle Place, as well as cartoons and movies, that I find that I realized that entertainment is a great prism through which we can view ourselves and our culture, as well as learn about other cultures and ethnicities in the process. This is the basis behind my rationale for this site-to teach people about their world through entertainment, a medium that quite a few people don’t realize is as educational as it is amusing. I don’t think any of this would have been possible–or at least, this successful–without having watched The Puzzle Place. So, I say, thank you, Puzzle Place. You’ve taught this kid well.
*word of warning: If you look up The Puzzle Place on Wikipedia, do not take seriously who it has for the voice acting, as well as the bit about a Broadway show. The puppeteers on this show are also the voices, and as for Broadway, I’ve checked every upcoming Broadway show listing, and a Puzzle Place Broadway show is not there.
