The origin of the Kung FU Custodian

In the wake of my last blog, I was feeling a bit complain-y so I've decided to steer clear of complaints this week.  I decided to instead shed some light on the origins of my url for this blog.

For years now I have been using the moniker KungFuCostodian as my xbox live gamer-tag as well as numerous other places where a unique name is required. The name came from my favorite cartoon series as a child: "Hong Kong Phooey." To my 6 year old brain, this cartoon is about a dog who is a janitor at a police station who becomes a super hero who uses karate to defeat his foes. I remember singing the theme song while running around my house at an early age. I don't know what I loved about karate so much, but apparently every other kid in the 90's loved it too. I know a large chunk of the movies I watched with my brothers centered around karate and martial arts... or ninjas. Movies like Three ninjas, Surf ninjas, Three ninjas: 2, Teenage mutant ninja turtles, Three ninjas 3... Ahhhh those were the days.

It wasn't until recently that I watched some of this karate based entertainment as an adult. Watching "Hong Kong Phooey" I can now see that it is clearly a riff on the black-sploitation films of the 1970's, and it's vaguely racist and sexist. The dog/janitor/superhero has the voice of a sole station radio dj and he and his cat sidekick make a complete mockery of martial arts. The only female character on the show is a phone board operator with a jersey accent that would annoy Fran Drescher.

Though I can identify the bias and misrepresentation of these characters I can't honestly say that I care I don't think that this had a profound effect on me growing up, even though it was my favorite cartoon. The thing is that I was a kid. I never heard Hong Kong Phooy's voice as a black guy, I heard my favorite dog super hero. There's a lot of talk about childhood development  in relation to television exposure and what they see on tv. I think tv does has a lot less of an effect on kids than is thought. At least, I think it did on me.