Has anyone watched this documentary streaming on Max?
When I was a child growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I watched a lot of Nickelodeon. I always thought that the channel respected it’s audience more than Disney did, in that it often wasn’t afraid to “skirt the line” a little. I didn’t feel patronized watching shows like, ‘Salute Your Shorts’, and ‘Ren and Stimpy’, or earlier, “You Can’t Do That On Television”. It just seemed authentic in a way that a lot of media for kids didn’t feel.
There’s no doubt, after all we’ve learned, that Nickelodeon was a very toxic place to work for, and there were a lot of predators there. It’s DEEPLY troubling and disappointing.
Dan Schneider was no doubt a sexist creep, and some of what he’s done is inexcusable.
I do think that there are parts of the documentary that were exaggerated. Ariana Grande trys the squeez juice from a potato… ok? I mean, maybe we are sexualizing something that didn’t intend to be sexual. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me.
I’m pretty sure You Can’t Do That on Television was produced by a Canadian television station and Nickelodeon picked it up to air on their network. i.e. It was on Nick but it wasn’t really a Nick show. Also, I think the social dynamics on YCDTOT was a bit different from a typical production with children. Most of the performers on YCDTOT were just regular kids who went to a normal school during the week rather than what we think of as real actors. Obviously there were some exceptions, but I don’t think TCDTOT was rife with abuse like some of the other shows that aired on Nick.
Show business has had a reputation as being a fairly toxic environment for decades now. Well, nearly a century now I suppose. It does appear there needs to be some stronger protections for children.
I watched the first episode but it doesn’t seem like something I want to binge. I didn’t get Nickelodeon until 1991, and I think I was slightly too old for All That and The Amanda Show. I never got into them. I never even got in to the Kid’s Choice Awards (wtf was I doing at 12??)
So far it definitely seems like Schnieder was horrible to his female staff, and kids on All That did stuff they weren’t comfortable with (like that poor kid in the spandex suits).
I had the same thought. It didn’t seem sexual at all. I don’t know how else an idiot character could go about trying to squeeze juice out of a potato.
I don’t want to pass judgement on the documentary too much, not having seen the whole thing. And I definitely don’t want to defend Schnieder. But I do think that some of the stuff was pushing the definition of “sexually charged.”
BTW if you’re interested in the earlier days of Nickelodeon, pre-Schnieder, I enjoyed the book “Slimed: An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age”. It definitely is more in line with how I remember Nickelodeon, during “my era”.
Judging by the cable guide, it’s only four episodes which have been mostly edited into a pair of 120-minute episodes. There are some hour-long episodes but they have the same summaries as half of the two-hour ones.
Looking back, it seems like in their early days most of Nick’s programming was made up of foreign shows that they picked up (You Can’t Do That on Television and Today’s Special from Canada, Danger Mouse and Count Duckula from Britain, Belle and Sebastian was French, I think) or reruns of old shows they thought would appeal to kids, like Lassie and Dennis the Menace.
I haven’t seen the doc. Did they actually show the potato scene? And did they show the other scenes shot in that same bed?
Because it definitely seems sexual to me. There’s no reason for the potato to be that big so she has to double fist it, nor for her to be trying to squirt it into her mouth. She tries to downplay it, but she makes the O-lips at least a couple times, too. And she groans while doing it.
Honestly, the question itself sounds like something that a perv might have asked a kid to do. That’s the one thing I remember with iCarly, Victorious and stuff. A lot of girls wanted to make their own shows based on the Internet shows inside those TV shows. They would take requests from strangers, And a lot of pervy guys took advantage of it. I actually think this may be the main reason why Gen Z is very aware of foot fetishes and so many will not ever show their feet on camera.
I don’t know… I mean, do people really stimulate themselves and others that way? I would imagine twisting it that way, would… hurt. Yes, the one where she’s drinking water, I guess, looks a little “sus”. I just think people can find sexual context in anything.
It’s not about what people actually do. It’s about doing gestures that are seen as sexual. She is doing the hand miming for squeezing a long penis. And then there’s the grunting for no reason.
That clip also includes her holding some weird blobby things like a penis, her in the foot fetish “the Pose”, sticking her finger down her throat like girls do in porn (to show their lack of gag reflex), and sucking her own toes. She’s also playing up the breathy bimbo fetish towards the end.
It’s all very fetishy. I’ve seen every last one of them done intentionally on …certain types of sites. I could buy one of them maybe being accidental, but not so many. Especially not with the people we know were on set.
There’s no way, for example, that the feet-related stuff would be lost on anyone who had a foot fetish. Heck, the first place I encountered the clips was on …certain types of sites.
[quote=“MyFootsZZZ, post:12, topic:999091, full:true”]
Would it have helped if she held the potato horizontally? [/quote]
Not really. It would have helped if she squeezed it into a cup, not trying to do it into her mouth. Or, like I said, it was a more normal-looking potato that wouldn’t need two hands to squeeze in that particular manner. And leave out the groaning.
Though, really, it would be best if they just didn’t use that “question” at all. It’s not like they had to have someone juicing a potato into her mouth while groaning. If someone asked some kid online to do that, I would suspect their motives.
Exactly like the guys who would dare kids to fit their feet in their mouth or not laugh while their feet were tickled. Or write on their feet and send in photos–something Nickelodeon also did.
I was a huge Nickelodeon kid growing up in the 90s; Nick was probably 90% of what I watched on TV. I agree with previous posters that the 90s Nick shows were good at not treating the audience like they were stupid. The Adventures of Pete & Pete was probably my favorite show, and it’s still funny to me today.
I aged out of watching Nickelodeon in roughly the year 2000, which was right at the start of Dan Schneider’s reign of power at the network. It has been well known for several years now that Schneider was a creep. I read Jennette McCurdy’s (former star of iCarly) memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died and she refers at several points to “The Creator”, a figure at Nick who was clearly Dan Schneider and was skin-crawlingly creepy.
Last night, I found out that there are 4 one-hour episodes, and they’re showing them in a 1-4-3-2 order. I’m not going to watch any more of it until I have all of them on my Tivo.
Probably better known as the dorky fat kid in Head of the Class.
His costar on that show Brian Robbins was president of Nickelodeon and is now president of Paramount Pictures. I don’t know if he was hit with any of this.
