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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

#151

Bluey, I honestly believe, is a show for adults (more specifically parents, but, you know, parents are adults) that kids can also enjoy. Like, traditionally, the "best" kid's media from an adult point of view has been kids shows that are also enjoyable for adults, but Bluey is genuinely the opposite. There are episodes where it feels like the entire point is to get the adults in the room misty-eyed and sniffling, and…

Bobs burgers was originally pitched as a show about cannibals

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most kids shows seem like a low effort afterthought full of contrived vapid nonsense. Kids brain is not adult brain. You need a different kind of training material.

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.

Not all audio-visual entertainment is dreck and the reduction of all of it to that is elitist and shitty.

Some kids don't live in a place where they can interact with the natural world, for starters, because our society is awful.

Additionally, not everything even in kids entertainment is dreck either. You have your Bluey's, and you have pregnant Elsa spiderman keyword slurry. A spectrum you'll find in basically every media, kids and otherwise, between actual art that's made by people wanting to share something, and content-mill designed-by-committee (or AI) bullshit that's designed to keep your attention.

The unfortunately true part is now more than ever so much more of the latter of this spectrum is present than the former, because everything in our society is done for profit and not to make the world better, and it's far more profitable to make by-the-numbers repetitive minimum-viable-product garbage that people will tolerate rather than truly great things that take time and care to create that people adore. But that's a curation problem, not a problem with the media itself.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

LGBTQ is not a political message... It's a message of acceptance

To be fair, there are subtler ways of communicating acceptance. The Bluey way would seem to be having a couple at the playground that the kids maybe ask about. Or maybe they don’t! They just coëxist peacefully because it’s no more remarkable than them having a different skin tone. Different framing from a drag show, which I can see someone preferring without being homophobic.

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

#154
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can watch it adhoc. Edit: Pretty much all the top Bluey episodes have a good emotional pull to them. See https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/mar/21/the-10-best-...

Aww, they missed Puppets, the most meta episode of them all about free will!

That was a weird dream!

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

#155

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.

yes, acceptance of others is an overly political message to those of a certain political persuasion. can’t have kids running around thinking whatever they grow into might be ok if it doesn’t comport with mommy and daddy’s worldview.

It goes both ways. Maybe you'll teach your kids to be open and tolerant to everything but they'll grow up, convert to Catholicism, and -- gasp -- vote conservative.

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

#156
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a dad, I used to like Peppa Pig, but now can barely stand it - as opposed to Bluey. Daddy Pig is fat, useless, convinced he's an expert in everything but failing every time. His parenting skills hover around 0, and always needs to be rescued, usually by Mummy Pig. So much for healthy co-parenting. Furthermore, Peppa is mean to her friends, who like her regardless, she always gets special treatment. I'm not saying…

The other thing is that there is zero conflict in Peppa Pig - any bad thing that happens is resolved immediately. Peppa always gets what she wants. Bluey is far more realistic: the parents can't just wave a wand to make Bluey and Bingo's problems go away, and it leads to a life lesson. For example, in the "Copycat" episode Bluey finds an injured bird and she and her dad take it to the vet. It dies anyway. But it's a…

It sounds like an Australian Arthur (which is a nice thing to have)

So long, Spanky.

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

#157
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Some people believe that whether you're a woman or a man is a thought in your head, and they also believe that these thoughts mean you can be neither, which they call 'non-binary'. It's helpful to respect these people's beliefs and act as if they are true, because they can get very angry and vindictive if you don't agree with them. And then we ask why some kids wind up entrenched away from economic opportunity… Lik…

The point is it's not a private affair. Retribution from people who react harmfully when others do not share their beliefs is a real thing, ask anyone who was brought up in a strict religious environment who became a non-believer. Sometimes the easiest path is minimal appeasement to avoid conflict where you'll end up worse off.

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

#158
A bit tangential but also related -- I grew up watching 'Adventures of the Gummi Bears' back in the late 80s and early 90s. Recently, I came across it on Disney+ and re-watched it. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the episodes are teaching kids good (again, subjective) morals and behaviors. The language is never crass even when the characters are upset (meaning it's a good thing to teach kids). I liked it so much that I re-watched all of the six seasons twice.

Now that I saw this article and discussion, I'll be trying Bluey next.

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

#159

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?

[deleted]

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

#160
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)

A great deal of the show is directed at parents which accounts in no small part for its popularity. For instance, new parents who do not have much exposure to young children may find playing with their own kids to be frustrating, boring, etc. The parents in the show are excellent models for how to talk to, play, and have fun with young children
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