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How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

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Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#111

Post by 93po »

imp0cat wrote: post #76
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, look. Human brains are not designed to passively absorb audiovisual dreck that's on TV. We're humans designed to interact with the natural world, plants, animals, and especially one another, in tangible ways. Video edutainment is a futile proposition. Get your face out of the screen while you still can, and be present to your fellow man.

That is the point, no? That Bluey is not the average " audiovisual dreck ".

By the previous commenters opinion I assume it is. The point being to have people interact with the world instead of passively accepting high levels of stimulation for doing nothing. I believe it’s healthier for all humans of any age to engage with the input->output model of the world.

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#112

Post by jhot »

xattt wrote: post #84
jboggan wrote: post #18

Bluey is a godsend in our household. It's not annoying and the amount of classical and original music woven into each episode is wonderful. There's one particular episode - "Sleepytime" - which I cannot bring myself to watch anymore because I get so emotional. Every parent I talk to with young kids who has seen the episode agrees and knows what I mean. It's really that good, and despite being a fun little show there…

The last available episode, Cricket, is even more devastating. It shows what kind of sibling relationships can be in face of family situations that might be trying for kids, and how they come through for each other. I hope for my kids to have this kind of bond.

Definitely one of my favorites and gets me emotional every time. I can only hope my kids have the same empathy and awareness as Rusty.

The Grandad episode also hits hard as my parents age and I see them only a few times a year.

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#113

Post by lmpdev »

One underrated aspect of the show is the backgrounds being grounded in reality

I live in the city (Brisbane) the show is set in

Effectively every detailed background is recognisable but tastefully selected (not shoved down the viewer’s throat)

If you do ever visit Australia, take the kids to see Brisbane

My partner manages front of house for the Live Action Bluey theatre show, she was the first person to put Bluey on my radar (we have no children)

The live action show was so popular they’ve recently just put it on for a second session

The kids get to watch Bluey inside the QPAC building (a common background in the show, next to the Eye of Brisbane)

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#114

Post by hiisukun »

jboggan wrote: post #18

Bluey is a godsend in our household. It's not annoying and the amount of classical and original music woven into each episode is wonderful. There's one particular episode - "Sleepytime" - which I cannot bring myself to watch anymore because I get so emotional. Every parent I talk to with young kids who has seen the episode agrees and knows what I mean. It's really that good, and despite being a fun little show there…

There's another episode, called rain, that you might enjoy if you haven't seen it (and some of the sibling commenters might too). There's no dialog, and it's a beautiful balance of the frustration and wonder that comes with parenting.

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#115

Post by bknight1983 »

hiisukun wrote: post #114
jboggan wrote: post #18

Bluey is a godsend in our household. It's not annoying and the amount of classical and original music woven into each episode is wonderful. There's one particular episode - "Sleepytime" - which I cannot bring myself to watch anymore because I get so emotional. Every parent I talk to with young kids who has seen the episode agrees and knows what I mean. It's really that good, and despite being a fun little show there…

There's another episode, called rain, that you might enjoy if you haven't seen it (and some of the sibling commenters might too). There's no dialog, and it's a beautiful balance of the frustration and wonder that comes with parenting.

‘Rain’ is special to me because I would do the same thing as a kid, just trodding along and trying to build a dam to hold the water back. My daughter and I do it now when we have a big rain storm

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#116

Post by bknight1983 »

The beauty of Bluey is that, for me at least, all the games were games we played as kids (keepy uppy, shadowlands, mucking around in the stream). Now my kid wants to play these games (and not be on a screen) and I get to play again. Everyone wins

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#117

Post by lukeck »

The_Colonel wrote: post #64
robby_w_g wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This family has two mommies. They love each other so proudly and they all go marching in... the... big parade," sing the lyrics. Other terms featured include "trans," "non-binary" and "queer." > “Love is love is love you see, and everyone should love proudly,” Acknowledging LGBTQ people are capable of love is somehow an example of “culture war”. It’s incredible people can be so bothered by a simple, sweet message.

Bluey is targeted towards pre-school children. I'm not really bothered if my 4-year-old daughter sees stuff like this, it's just that she won't really understand things like "non-binary". It seems like a topic more appropriate for older children - maybe from age 8 or later?

At my kids’ childcare, by far the most popular educator is non-binary. They do a great job of listening to the kids, and talking to them without talking down to them. Come to think of it, the way they interact with the kids actually reminds me a fair bit of the parents in Bluey.

Both my kids (3 and 5 but now at school) have said stuff like “Today we did x with Greg. He’s not exactly a boy and not exactly a girl.” Then they get on with their day. To them, it’s just another person that’s a bit different to them.

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#118

Post by rreyes1979 »

a_bonobo wrote: post #37
jboggan wrote: post #18

Bluey is a godsend in our household. It's not annoying and the amount of classical and original music woven into each episode is wonderful. There's one particular episode - "Sleepytime" - which I cannot bring myself to watch anymore because I get so emotional. Every parent I talk to with young kids who has seen the episode agrees and knows what I mean. It's really that good, and despite being a fun little show there…

'Onesies' and 'Babyrace' are also highly emotional episodes. Onesies is, hidden for children, about the inability to conceive children, not being able to deal with your relatives' children; 'Babyrace' is about the doubt all parents have about their parenting ('You're doing great' is aimed directly at the audience)

Please provide the Season and episode number. I would like to find them but my UI is in Spanish so it's hard to find them :(

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#119

Post by kasey_junk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27
seized wrote: post #12

As a parent it's just a genuinely nice show to watch. There is so much complete crap out there now that Bluey is a breath of fresh air. A few others are good fun as well like Grizzy and The Lemmings. But Bluey reigns supreme. Although I wish the phone game didn't have in app purchases. At least the Bluey video game on Steam is good and without in app purchases or micro transaction nonsense.

> so much complete crap out there now that Bluey is a breath of fresh air Out of curiosity, as a non-parent, what makes it crap?

There are literally hundreds of thousands of “kids” YouTube videos, clearly created by algorithm, that play a single song (when my kid was young it was finger family) and put bootleg cartoon characters (spider man, the smurfs, etc) dancing to it over a kaleidoscope background.

At least back when my kid was small the YouTube algo would start feeding them up after the second or third video. You’d turn around to make dinner and come back to this never ending loop of … crap.

Frankly, I was pretty impressed with the hustle and curious what the tech stack looked like.

Re: How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment

#120

Post by The_Colonel »

lukeck wrote: post #117
The_Colonel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluey is targeted towards pre-school children. I'm not really bothered if my 4-year-old daughter sees stuff like this, it's just that she won't really understand things like "non-binary". It seems like a topic more appropriate for older children - maybe from age 8 or later?

At my kids’ childcare, by far the most popular educator is non-binary. They do a great job of listening to the kids, and talking to them without talking down to them. Come to think of it, the way they interact with the kids actually reminds me a fair bit of the parents in Bluey. Both my kids (3 and 5 but now at school) have said stuff like “Today we did x with Greg. He’s not exactly a boy and not exactly a girl.” The…

I guess this is more common in US then.

I live in a pretty liberal European city, yet I haven't met any non-binary person. I know exactly one trans person, and only remotely (she lives in US). I guess to me, this topic seems "advanced", perhaps "irrelevant" in a way for such a small kid. There are many other things she needs to learn about, which she will commonly experience in the real world.

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