Renaissance+Snail

Mr. Steven M. Schaber Contact: (267) 231 9683 Email : Tub65392@temple.edu February 23rd, 2010 Children and Mass Media ** East meets West in //__Renaissance Snail__// ** Dear Mrs. Sandy Wax,

To begin, Cargo is a twelve year old piece of escargot that lives in a supermarket. He spends his life in a tank of water in the seafood section, and is the only seafood that travels to different sections of the supermarket. Every section he visits, he creates a badge and sticks it to his shell. No other item in the seafood isle is as brave and adventurous as Cargo, and Cargo always returns with a movie that he created and edited together with non-linear editing software to show his friends.

In essence, Cargo is always thirsty and makes pots of tea all day. He is always making new types of teas with the items he finds in the supermarket. In this way, Cargo will start his day by entering his pantry and selecting some very special items to make tea with. He will lay them out on his table, and explain the importance for each ingredient, corresponding to how he is feeling that day. Cargo is in touch with his emotions. As Cargo starts to mix the tea, colors, and smells attract all of the other seafood’s, making him the most popular seafood item in the store. He shares with his friends, and in return they bow in gratitude.

As a rule, Cargo get’s hungry every night for sushi. He knows exactly how to make the perfect sushi for his last meal before he goes to sleep and the supermarket lights go off and all of the employees go home. In a segment of the show, Cargo prepares the rice, the vinegar solution, and the sushi nori in all of the right ways. Once the basic ingredients are ready, Cargo takes his journal from his bookshelf and does a combination of reading and writing out loud to reflect on his day, and his speculations for the future of tomorrow. When the pen starts to write, the ink comes to life according to what he says and lays down in the middle of the prepared sushi nori on the bamboo mat. When Cargo is finished journaling, he calls his friends once again and they all grab a piece of the long bamboo mat. Under Cargo’s instruction, his friends start to push and push in order to complete the sushi roll. When they are finished, a beautiful roll of delicious sushi has been made by community hands, and one of the characters, portrayed as the seafood sword fish cuts the roll for all to eat and enjoy.

Chiefly, Cargo is a nice guy, and nice guys have best friends. Therefore Cargo’s best friend is a Clam named Loofa and is the only seafood that can give Cargo suggestions for ingredients for sushi. Sometimes Cargo doesn’t know how he’s feeling, and needs to confide in his best friend Loofa. The Clam opens her mouth to show him his giant pearl. When Cargo looks into Loofa’s pearl, he can see himself and it helps him in making the correct variety of sushi geared towards the way he feels. Also, sometimes Cargo is feeling delusional, and therefore depends on Loofa as a second pair of eyes to bring him back down to earth. Cargo will ask Loofa a serious question, and the clam will say, “Why don’t you see for yourself, Cargo” and will open up her shell. As Cargo looks into the giant pearl he sees himself as something extremely beloved like an emperor of the seafood isle, crown and trident. Then he asks the clam if this is correct, and the clam says, I think you should take another look. Cargo will look into the giant pearl and see now himself as something very beggarly. Then he asks the clam if this is correct, and the clam says, I think you still need another look. The third time the clam opens her shell for Cargo to view his image, he is not beloved, nor beggarly, but somewhere in between. The sushi can now be made. This will teach children the importance of the unique concept of finding or calculating emotional equilibrium.

In brief, these are just some examples of the creative possibilities of the adventures that Cargo, and his friends can show off to the viewers. The target audience for this children’s television show are migrants from the Far East. The demographic can be called, according to Wikipedia.org, the Overseas Chinese. These are families of Chinese origin, or descent that live in the western hemisphere. The demographic is also migrants from India, and South Korea, as they are both places of the Far East that settle in the USA. The show will identify acculturation through visiting these cultures supermarkets, in America. Yes, Cargo will travel through the plumbing of each tank he resides in with his friends to supermarkets in Chinatown, or across the way to the Indian grocer Patel Market. Every major grocery store will be touched upon, in order for Cargo to build a gigantic pantry of foreign items for his tea, and books for his journals. Along the way, Cargo will meet brand new friends, and keep in touch with his original community while he is away through snail mail. Snail Mail is another creative section where the piece of escargot will use his unique conk shell to telecommunicate to his friends in other grocery stores.

Accordingly, //Renaissance Snail// promises many things. The show introduces a healthy vernacular of food that children should consume. It teaches the dependency of friendships through a give and take model that runs throughout the entire show. Also, it teaches solitude and how to find solo activities in which social people can utilize in order to recharge their social battery.

Furthermore, some of the more marketable realms of //Renaissance Snail// include merchandising plush animals, cell phone conk shells, branded journals, teapots, sushi equipment and mugs. These paraphernalia will sell to the Far East demographic, in addition to introducing the western psyche with some of the staples of the east.

In short, //Renaissance Snail// will harmonize the eastern and western hemisphere of the planet earth. Every episode will begin and end with one themed quote from Kakuzo Okakura’s essay novel “The Book of Tea” and will have an extreme relevancy to the content of that episode. Each season will explore the fluidity of the haiku fashioned style of poetry.