![]() ![]() “Early on,” says Lee, 48, “one guy grabbed Clarence’s mouth and held it shut. Watching the accosted interviewees react to a goofy puppet-and they’d often do so angrily, sometimes yanking off Clarence’s eyeballs-revealed a lot about human nature. ![]() Sometimes he’d simply annoy them for a banana, or ask what democracy smells like other times, he’d pose existential questions on the nature of television itself. OPS” a bouncy musical number about the history of slavery and retro mock-documentaries, including a tour of a hot dog factory that finds one young narrator adorably cooing, “ Delicious murder.”īut Wonder Showzen’s best-loved moments were the ones featuring Clarence, a googly-eyed, squeaky-voiced blue puppet who would harangue random New Yorkers. There were also warped animated segments such as the G.I. Those big swings included segments like “Beat Kids,” in which a pint-sized reporter approached white-collar workers on Wall Street and asked, “Who did you exploit today?” Another segment found a young kid dressed as Hitler, quizzing passersby on the state of America’s youth. “And the kind of radical comedy that John and Vernon were doing was like a punch in the face.” “The political climate was not that favorable,” says Wonder Showzen character designer Jim Tozzi, 52. By then, the Wonder Showzen team was living in New York City, where they’d endured the horrors of 9/11, as well as the disappointment of George W. But it took several years, and many setbacks, before the series finally arrived in March 2005. “Every second,” notes cocreator Vernon Chatman, 48, “we were like, ‘They’re going to take this away, so let’s get in as much as we can.’”Ĭhatman and his Wonder Showzen partner, John Lee, first came up with the idea for a demented kids’ show in the early ’90s, when they were prank-pulling students at San Francisco State. The show was so frantic and strange that it sometimes took repeated viewings to realize just how gleefully seditious Wonder Showzen really was. On Wonder Showzen, characters played rock-paper-scissors with God (who kills himself after losing), while Middle America was represented by a dim-witted, over-reactionary puppet (named, of course, “Middle America”). Influenced as much by Sesame Street as it was by Noam Chomsky, the short-lived MTV2 series was a visually jolting, politically pungent faux kids’ show featuring puppets, man-on-the-street interviews, animated segments, and kiddie-voiced “documentaries.” Throughout two hilariously stark seasons, the show exposed ugly, profound truths about sexism, racism, capitalism, and organized religion-sometimes all in the same episode. When Wonder Showzen debuted 15 years ago, it was unlike anything that had been on TV before. That dire heads-up turned out to be a bit of an understatement. The stark, ugly, profound truths Wonder Showzen exposes may be soul crushing to the weak of spirit.” ![]() The warning first aired late on a Friday night, accompanied by an ominous drone and the sound of faint screams: “ Wonder Showzen,” it read, “contains offensive, despicable content that is too controversial and too awesome for actual children. ![]()
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