The Iranian-American pro-
ducer of the film “Babak
and Friends: A First Norooz” has come out with a new children’s series that has just been sold to 27 PBS stations across the United States.
“Mixed Nutz” is a multi-cultural cartoon series that aims to encourage kids to learn about and take pride in diverse cultures. The central characters of the show include children from countries including Iran, Korea, Cuba and India. The show is produced by Norooz Productions and the cartoons are made by Big Bad Boo Productions, the same animation company that made the 2005 cartoon “Babak and Friends.”
In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), co-founder Shabnam Rezaei of Big Bad Boo Animation Studios explained how she came up with the idea for her company and her new show.
“I had started a Persian website called persianmirror. The reason behind all of it was feeling a little bit alienated as someone from Iran and coming across individuals who may have not had the opportunity to learn about Iran and really get all their information from the media and wanting to sort of balance out the negative with some positive,” Rezaei told NPR.
“So while you’re seeing all this war and terrible activity going on on television, wanting to bring the human story to people, just telling them that Iranians are just like anybody else and talking about sort of the more fun cultural holidays like Now Ruz—one of our first shows ‘Babak and Friends: A First Nowruz,’ which was sort of like a Charlie Brown Christmas Special, basically exploring the Persian holiday of Now Ruz with the character of Babak,” she explained.
While “Babak and Friends” was a cartoon targeted for an Iranian audience, “Mixed Nutz” is a show that caters to all cultures. “After ‘Babak and Friends,’ we realized that there was gap in the market for culturally rich entertainment that wouldn’t be just for Iranians, but for other immigrant families as well as Americans who are just interested in the world.
“So, we came up with the concept of ‘Mixed Nutz,’ and ‘Mixed Nutz’ is basically kids from around the world that have something in common—they’re friends in school and their adventures are in school and at home. And so, we have the character of Babak, we also have Jay who is from Korea, and we have Sanjay, who’s Indian.”
Rezaei said she hopes her show will encourage children of all cultures to learn about and be proud of their roots. “We just want to create basic curiosity in children to want to know more, to want to go around the world and communicate. But if our cartoons reflect the diverse world that we live in, how great would that be?” she said.
In an interview with CNN, Rezaei said, “We want children at a very early age to care about different cultures,… to be engaged with the world and to want to travel, in hopes that if they do know more about the world, that we will have a more peaceful and understanding society.”
Big Bad Boo is an animation company that produces cartoons aimed at educating children about the diverse cultures in America. The company is now working on a series based on the 1001 Nights stories—also known as the Arabian Nights tales. Big Bad Boo has taken the classic stories, which include Aladdin and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, and is currently in production on 26 episodes aimed at children between the ages of six and nine.
For more information on the shows, see: http://www.babak andfriends.com/babak/