Danger Dan: as presented at the 2011 SOURCE Symposium at St. Edward's University
Who is the world’s cheapest, most available babysitter? TV. Safer than the Web and more enticing than books, for half a century it has been the medium of choice for people of all ages. But kids especially develop a fierce loyalty to shows. Right when they’re forming their most basic ideas about the world, these shows are the lens through which they see life. Their characters and themes even show up in their own imagination.
With such power over a person’s life, what should kids be watching?
My solution has been not to censor, nor vote badly-written shows off the air. It’s been to make a show myself.
“Danger Dan” is a 300-pound black man in the inner city who, with a motley crew of oddly-gifted sidekicks, battles the forces of evil and contemporary personal issues. Day after day, the show wrestles—sometimes literally—with the things kids and adults wrestle with every day. One of Dan’s sidekicks is a psychic monk, who literally feels everything more than we do, from emotions to incantations. Another is a 26-year-old, cursed to live as an 8-year-old until she proves she’s mature enough to act her age.
The show even investigates the stereotypes of other action heroes. It raises questions like “what makes a villain villainous? And are they really having sleepovers with root-beer floats behind the scenes?”
There will be many chases and explosions. But there will also be personal growth—and the kids will never see it coming.