Despite the fact that Mickey Mouse has been used in a foul and disgusting manner, Disney should at least state that he would never be used to teach children to hate or kill. The cheerful ambassador of global good will was twisted into a figure of contempt for life, and Disney's message should have been stronger. Perhaps you believe (or don't) that Israel has a right to exist. Perhaps you accept the idea that the Palestinian people are the true and eternal landholders of the current Jewish state (or not). It doesn't matter. Instructing young children to despise their fellow humans is never a good idea, whatever your viewpoint may be, and using Mickey Mouse in order to do so is both idiotic and contemptible.

There is a story dating back to the 1960s that tells of how a U.S. hospital ship had to solve the problem of getting children to come to the shore for health services. One doctor came up with the idea of painting a picture of Mickey Mouse on the side of the ship. Despite having no previous exposure to the Mouse, the kids were immediately attracted to the painting of a smiling Mickey, and hit the beach in swarms. This is the Mickey Mouse that children truly cherish, not the second-rate propagandist who was brutalized in front of adoring young kids. Farfour, Butterfly, Martyr Mouse, whatever -- I hope we never see your miserable likes again.

Go ahead, Mr. Iger, speak up. If radical Islamists want to produce cartoons of their own creation (they are already making comparable video games), I suppose that can't be stopped. But when they mess with Mickey Mouse, raise your voice a bit louder. If you can't do this for professional radicals like Hamas, then at least do it for the rest of us.

Ben Tennyson, avatar of the multitasking generation. All Ben 10 images © Cartoon Network.

II. Ben 10, again and again.
One of the mainstream animation shows I've noted lately is Cartoon Network's Ben 10. It came to my attention due to its large following and copious merchandising. For those of you who don't focus much on the cable or network mainstream, the premise of the show is as follows: A kid (conveniently) named Ben Tennyson is nearly hit by an alien pod, which turns out to house a device called the Omnitrix. (This refers to a kind of supercharged wristwatch, not a female who can eat anything on Earth). The Omnitrix allows Ben to transform into no fewer than 10 alien life forms. Each one has a unique set of powers and comes complete with cool names like Stinkfly, Ghostfreak and Heatblast. Ben can now kick the butts of any and all alien evildoers. Sometime in the future, it has been revealed, he will be known as Ben 10,000, as the Omnitrix appears to have quite a bit of storage capacity.

I used to read a comicbook something like this when I was a kid. It was called Dial H for Hero (OK, it was called House of Mystery, sticklers), and it had to do with a kid named Robby Reed who found an alien dial-up in a murky cavern. Broadband, I guess, was beyond space travelers at the time. Anyway, if his town was endangered, Robby simply dialed up the word "HERO," and got to be one, with superpowers thoughtfully provided. Robby never knew what he would get, but trust me, he always lived to tell the tale at the end.

Now, I understand that every superhero can trace his/her origin back to Gilgamesh (or at least Philip Wylie), and that some retellings of mythos are going to be pretty close to each other. That isn't the road I want to go down, anyhow. It struck me instead that Ben Tennyson was an update of Robby Reed for a different generation of kids, one that would have had little patience with Robby's limitations.

This is an age of videogamers and multitaskers who start at very young ages. Their neural circuits have been able to adapt to increasingly sophisticated technologies, and this is what they expect from today's world. Dial H for Hero belongs to the age of dial telephones and pre-digital communications and media. Ben 10 is a high-tech entertainment for the cyber-tykes described above, a true cartoon contemporary of the iPhone.

Ben as Fourarms, one of his 10 alien personas.

Kids today would never be satisfied with dialing up a hero, especially not one built to their specifications. They would want an instantaneous device that could let them choose among personas, just like their videogames do. You don't find devices by poking around in old caves anymore; you have them delivered to your door by alien pods. In this age when a kid can text message, scan MySpace, and plug into an iPod simultaneously, it won't do to be one hero at a time; a kid has to be able to punch up anywhere from 10 to 10,000. What kind of technology can store only one crummy, unpredictable hero-persona at a time, anyway?

Robby could revert to normal by dialing "HERO" in reverse. After he did, he went back to his everyday self. Ben Tennyson has been consumed by the changes in his life, and is destined, by the looks of things, to be immersed in tech-heavy heroism for as long as he lives. So it is for today's generation of kids, who could not conceivably exist without high-speed, high-tech modes of communication and consciousness.

On some level, today's children have become one with their multifunctional cell phones, and Ben Tennyson is their avatar (or is that another show?). The medical profession worries that obesity is epidemic among them due to their sedentary preoccupations, and psychologists fret over possible impaired abilities to relate to other humans, but kids do seem to relate to this cartoon and go for the marketed products. It's not just sci-fi; it speaks directly to who and what they are in 2007. Robby Reed could only dream.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.