BLOG TO COMM

FARFOUR THE MOUSE!

In between telling your humble blogger all about the ST. TRINIAN'S movies plus how lousy he thought Sue Hodge looked on last Saturday's episode of 'ALLO 'ALLO (not to mention the hotsy-totsies he has for current heart-throb, English actress Julia Foster, at least as she looked in the sixties), Don Fellman cued me into this weirdie he read about in THE NEW YORK POST just recently. It's taken from a Palestinian kiddie show that aired on the boob tube this past summer called THE PIONEERS OF TOMORROW, and amidst the typically low-budget look and feel of the thing which reminds me more of something that would have aired on a Pittsburgh television station well up until the mid-seventies (with a ROMPER ROOM-styled set complete with a Palestinean Miss Sally) we're treated to (believe-it-or-not) an obvious cheap costume knockoff Mickey Mouse called Farfour who I guess is designed to convert your average six-year-old viewer to the next intifada! Copyright-infringement aside, Farfour's entire reason for being ain't exactly akin to his Amerigan cousin in the rodent family, for this rat's certainly front and center for the Palestinean cause as this first youtube clip will point out!:



And besides his spewing of nothing but kiddiespeak hatred and ire for the nation of Israel, Farfour sure likes to dish it out to the current powers that be in the United States!:



I guess this is what kids in Palestine have to rush home to watch after school, and frankly I'll take GOMER PYLE reruns anyday! But what's really bizarre is Farfour's final appearance on this I believe still-running series where not only does his human grandfather (who looks to be about forty but remembers the pre-1948 days clearly!) die, but before doing so gives Farfour a key and important documents proving that what is now Tel Aviv really belongs to the Arabs! Unfortunately for Farfour he's captured and drilled by an Israeli intent on getting the elusive goodies, and when all else (mainly bribery) fails this sunglassed shady character decides to give the animal a few good whaps in order to speed up the process!:



Who says MR. BILL-styled humor is dead! And although we don't see it, the hostess tells us that Farfour did not survive the interrogation and thus all good Moslem kids should be like him, body/arm expressions and all! (And frankly, I sure wish they would have video'd a scene where we actually see Farfour go to that great cheese bin in the sky what with his overacting and cringe-inducing squeaky voice!) Now, I've long bemoaned the demise of afternoon kid shows where cheap local productions featuring guys dressed up like sailors and gals in cowpoke outfits would host LITTLE RASCALS shorts and 40s/50s-vintage Warner Brothers cartoons, but maybe a case can be made for endless news broadcasts and OPRAH if any revival in local kids television's going to come off even remotely like this piece of pure propaganda ploy! All I gotta say is, with "serious" television being like this, who needs satire?