The fascist state of Paw Patrol (2021)
thecritic.co.uk
thecritic.co.uk
Just go read the plot of the Sad Story of Henry and know it is just one of many bleak episodes: https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sad_Story_of_Henry
The purpose of Thomas the Tank Engine is not to speculate on the ramifications of living in a world with sentient trains like some weird sci-fi novel. You are welcome to write that if you want, but fat chance producing something kids will enjoy.
Thomas the Tank Engine exists to delight children with the mystique of steam engines, and to provide the back drop for simple lessons on pro-social behavior that children can understand.
It's kind of weird seeing someone claim "lessons on pro-social behavior" in a direct reply to a quote on how the show depicts immurement as a reaction to refusing direct orders from the company owner.
Unquestionable obedience to the company owner under the threat of immurement is not a basic part of parenting.
I also question how formatting our children to unquestionably accept fighting and dying in armed conflicts as being healthy and in their best interests.
The Fascist motto was “believe, obey, fight.” It is in line with the ideas you're trying to pass off as good parenting.
The lessons of the episode are simple:
- you will not get what you want if you are selfish, mean, and unreasonable (Henry's paint is eventually spoiled anyway)
- if you disobey your parents, there will be consequences (like timeout). Note that Sir Topham hat (as a parental figure) while firm, was very patient with Henry.
My local PBS station showed Thomas the Tank Engine on almost infinite loop and so I came into the show in kind of the middle as a kid. I didn't know why Henry was so "bad" at his job and all of that, only that he was cranky and didn't seem to like everybody else that much.
Then this episode aired and my mother says I cried for two days over how Henry had been treated. (It didn't help that I was what was commonly called "a quiet child" and got picked on a lot for not wanting to play with other kids or just "being weird", something I think a lot of HN can relate to.) It wasn't long after that I stopped watching Thomas.
Years later, my kid picked up watching the show and learned how to record it on his TiVo. I made sure we watched that episode together.
Yep. Turns out I was autistic, but since it wasn't in a way that that was a bother other people had I no clue until my late 30's.
Reading the episode description is really something else. They managed to perfectly capture the phenomenon of real life regular people casually being horrible cunts to each other, though I think they were probably just going for "shut up and obey".
It might be due to me being a Pole, my upbringing, and our history of WW II, but it triggers a light connotation with labor death camps whenever I hear the line.
There is something deeply, deeply sad to me about thinking through what kind of family life he might have had that he even felt the need to ask that question. I didn't grow up in a great environment either, but I never had any doubt that I was doing good things that would be a point of pride to most parents.
Malcolm (1986) Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q
young children know what usefulness is, and they want to be useful, and they love being praised for being useful. "Everybody in the family pitches in and has a role to play to make dinner and set the table" types of repetitive lessons are very important to children; it's the type of emotional development that neglectful parents don't provide.
A lot of children's play is imitating what adults do, preferably alongside adults. If you are typing on a keyboard, either give your child another one or suffer them wanting to touch yours. I'm not an expert, but this ties in with an inherent sense of usefulness and participation.
Then I watched Shed 17.
There is farming.
There is definitely commerce (restaurants and animal parlours).
Only the dogs (and 1 cat) out of all the animals can speak so the chicken being unable to isn’t unusual.
I think those were the main things said in that article and they were all incorrect.
Source - a parent who watched them with their child.
And the normal paw patrol behavior is mostly trying to figure out problems with the help of technology. So I think that is allright, even though the social interactions could be way better.
What has changed?
"further than regular dumb kid play violence." And that is quite relative and hard to judge without seeing it.
toddler noun
: a person who toddles
especially : a young child usually between one *and three years old *
Also, where is Hanna-Barbera T&J which was made between 1940 to 1960 and was made to be shown in cinemas for the adults. And after that... there is no T&J after that.
[0] If for some reason you do think it was not, then start at ~01:30: https://archive.org/details/tom-and-jerry-1940-1950-1960/Tom...
Also in what universe is a show fascist for telling kids they shouldn't automatically trust the government and authority figures? That sounds like a great lesson. Just because someone is powerful doesn't mean they're right. But even though the show does the exact opposite thing I guess publish or perish, can't really blame authors for churning out the crap that sells even if not really that well thought through. Gotta get those clicks from the people receptive to those specific keywords in article headlines
https://www.docdroid.net/Oq00TE7/1741659020903700-pdf
And if you can’t be bothered reading an academic journal about it, this YouTube video really emphasises the issues quite well:
Next thing I'll be reading that the show promotes unhealthy habits by showing the kid eating vegetables and getting exercise
That sounds bad, but the evil guy is a stereotype white capitalist with a melon and the good mayor is a women of color.
https://www.nicholasdegenova.com/_files/ugd/4fd32d_2cb359fc9...
https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/INFORMIT.35941708741...
https://theconversation.com/new-zealanders-have-a-right-to-b...
*disclaimer: that’s about 2 hours worth of reading and one of the articles I couldn’t find free access to.
The TV time is sold as slots (usually ~30m for animation), you can't buy some arbitrary amount of time - you buy the slot, you need a serious amount of money for the prime time slots;
a TV show requires money (big amounts of money) for the every second produced;
so it's the easiest way to lower amount of money spent per episode - animate once, show multiple times.
When my daughter was watching the show she was always hyped up it is far too engaging for younger viewers and too basic for older viewers.
For family viewing I can recommend Octonauts - it is delightful for all ages.
I’m almost certain that there are other examples of this too.
> Spin Master Corp. is a Canadian multinational children's toy and entertainment company
Sorry, but in this case they are designed in concert: shitty toys and a cartoon to advert^W sell these shitty toys.
That's true of Transformers a bunch of other shows. Sometimes it's good
With Paw Patrol though the formula of the show reminds me of a casino or modern gaming with loot boxes. I don't know how to compare Transformers to it, as I never seen the show, only a few comics. Maybe a Marlboro commercial? ;)
I came to the comments specifically to find alternatives. This seems to be the only one mentioned so far.
Any other recommendations?
There is also this classic I remember from my childhood.
Once upon a time… life
Generally I’ve found anything selected by CBeebies (the BBC channel for young children) to be pretty good.
There's also a few classics in Australia like "Little Ted's Big Adventures" and "Big Ted's Adventures" and "Little Joey's Big Adventures" or similar, about a dozen episodes each looking at vehicles/sports/animals.
Play school is great once kids get to about 3 or 4 years old, lots of variety, language, things to learn, playing with physical objects in interesting ways.
If you want more of an American style but don't like Paw Patrol, you could try Blaze (a monster truck show that teaches counting and light physics) or Bat Wheels (just Batman themes cars, but it's higher quality than PP).
It starts at a very basic level (number 1 meets number 2) and covers things like counting, addition, multiplication, even and odd numbers, composite numbers (“super rectangles”), triangular numbers (“step squads”), cubes, prime numbers...
That might all sound very dry, but it’s also really well-written and hilarious. Many episodes are elaborate pastiches of musicals, heist movies, Star Wars and so on.
Besides the storylines it has one song per episode, usually quite lovely.
On the musical front I can't recommend Super Simple Songs enough. They are surprisingly consistent in quality, unlike other giants like Cocomelon.
Barbie: Dreamhouse Adventures is surprisingly good. Not my favorite though. There is another Barbie series that is pure garbage for me so be ware.
Puffin Rock is very nice. I love to hear Irish accent there.
I can recommend a few from behind Iron curtain, which are without words and classics for me: Krtek, Reksio and Pomysłowy Dobromir (this one has engineering spirit). You can find them on YouTube.
The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends” (2017)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-repressiv... (or https://archive.is/fjvJM)
Yes, it might indeed be so.
Huh? What is so bad about it? It is simple, but not bad. It is a kids show, not deeply philosophical adult entertainment. It shows how easy and badly things can go wrong while playing and what the firemen will do to solve it.
My only critic with the show would be, that often problems could be solved way quicker, by the ordinary people, but everyone MUST call firemen sam as the first thing and then helplessly wait, till he arrives. But apart from that, I liked it waaay more, than paw patrol.
It's a kid show.
Chill.
Is blind faith and dependence on eccentric billionaires and an omniscient police state responding to every minor disruption something we want to teach our kids?
https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397
> Conflicts of interest: None declared. It may look like my child is sponsored by Peppa Pig, but any claims to this effect are false.
I do not have much experience with the topic but my impression is that toddlers/kids experience things quite differently (ex: liking to see the same cartoon N times, with N rather large) so we should be careful when trying to draw conclusions about good and bad.
Once again, Zuma and his hovercraft are overlooked. SMH
If that show is the biggest problem in your life, you either have a fantastic life or you're focusing on the wrong thing.
First world problems indeed.
Because it's not just your daughter that gets hooked up on it, but also nearly every kid in her daycare/kindergarten, every other kid she sees on the playground, etc. With so much Paw Patrol-branded merchandise everywhere, the show is stuck in the "pit of success", a self-reinforcing popularity loop.
And that's on top of the show being heavily optimized for its audience.
Maybe I should ask for it local giveaway groups.
I mean it takes some mental effort to look at Paw Patrol or Thomas the Tank engine and spit out Communist Manifesto.
Here are my reasons
1. The episodes are mostly non stop action where, without any reflection/ or slow pace. Also 0 teachings for viewers
2. All primary decisions made by Rider. Paws have 0 agency.
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There are lots of criticisms of other media in this thread. I will add my 2 cents
Superkitties. Every villain is justirier, just doesn't chose right approach. Even if they commit bad things one after another. And in the end of show moral of story is literally spelled out. Authors hammering it down too hard.
Brer Rabbit stories by Joel Harris (old books). I started reading aloud to kiddo and stopped, as some stories are too cruel and unfair. The world is unfair, but this is too early for kiddos age.
I have 2 young kids, and I select what they can watch. And I'm aware that when I was a kid I watched lots of violent shows like Tom and Jerry like someone else said, or even Dragon Ball which is a million times more violent, but I hesitate to let them watch other much more innocuous shows.
I'm an atheist, so I'm not burdened with religious prejudices, and I'm very open minded, I think everyone has a right to sleep with and love whoever they want, and to identify themselves as whoever they want, I also think no one should be discriminated against because of their skin tone, nationality, beliefs, identity, disabilities or anything else.
But I also understand the outrage against wokism. There is an episode in Ridley Jones which is a show for young kids, where there is a bison saying that it's non-binary and what are their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for the plot and those are subjects that go miles above the heads of the intended audience. Also in many of the latest Disney productions and other shows in Netflix there's been a lot of queer characters and gay/lesbian relationships, which is not necessarily a problem depending how it is treated, specially if the production is for teenagers and adults, but I think it's completely unnecessary and kind of force feeding to include that kind of topics in the shows for the youngest kids. That trend also brings us ludicrous contradictions like an upcoming version of Snow White and the 7 dwarves, which are not actually dwarves, I think there's maybe 1 dwarf only.
Having said that, there's so many examples of religious extremisms taking things to the, erm, well, extremes. And I'm not going to even mention Muslim Theocracies because I think those are ultimate level of autocratic religion fuelled fascist regimes. But for example in Catholic Poland, the children's show Teletubbies was banned because they said the purple teletubbie was gay.
I think there are lots of shows in Netflix that it would be wise to don't allow your kids to watch, depending on their age of course. But the concerns the article raises about Paw Patrol are honestly laughable. There's a lot of illogical things in kid's shows. Just look Spongebob Squarepants and you'll see that they're under the water but most of the time physics and everything else behaves as if they're not. In Paw Patrol I always asked myself how a 10 year old doesn't seem to have adult supervision and seems to have unlimited resources and money to fund his organization. But again, in this show puppies talk and can drive cars, so you can't expect it to be based on reality. Of course in this show there will always be some kind of trouble which the Paw Patrol will happily solve, but there wouldn't be much of a show if that wasn't the case, isn't it? I can think of many series I watched when I was a kid and teenager, that also show a different problem or villain in every episode, actually that's the case for a large number of series. Just think of those oldies Knight Rider, McGuiver, A Team... The same critiques applied to Paw Patrol in the article would applie to all of them.
Also it calls the Mayor in Paw Patrol tyrannical when there's no evidence of repression or autocracy in the show, and I find it funny that he fantasizes with a resistance composed of poets and religious types. As if religious types weren't on the oppressing end of autocracies most of the time along history.
Do you have any source of this information? As far as I know it is false - this show has never been banned in Poland.