>“The parents were so relatable and mirrored the parent I wanted to be,”
Ooof fiction teaching Idealism. From Nietzsche to Plato, its agreed, fiction corrupts. One day the floury idealism will be seen not to work, and the damage will have already been done.
I've seen Bluey, it was funny, it taught some general concepts... but if my kids are going to watch TV, why not Bill Nye the Science Guy or similar?
Remember that these children's characters are corporate mascots, not friends.
"I'm not going to take advice from a cartoon dog" - is exactly one of the lines in the show.
There are shows geared to teach science in appropriate ways to kids in this same demographic. But that's not the point of Bluey -- it's modeling an ideal family, in a way that's understandable to young children, while being relatable for their parents to watch and appreciate along side with them. They represent a loving, functional family, that likes to have fun, and sometimes has hard issues to deal with, that children get to see. For some families it's an unattainable ideal, and for others it's a mirror of a modern 20-30yo parents raising young kids, complete with modern situations.
It's hard to stress out just how perfectly they nail a show that both kids + parents can watch, that they both find enjoyable, in this demographic, without pandering, or being annoying about it, because it's such a rare find.
The praise this franchise receives is extremely well deserved.
Sir, it's a show for toddlers that adults can watch and relate to. Watch the repetitiveness of Daniel Tiger or the brain destroying Cocomelon (which should be banned) then get back to me.
I was rewatching Max Headroom recently and my favorite episode stood out to me. It's about an addictive game show called "Whacketts" which is so mind-numbingly insipid that even the punk operator of the pirate TV station that runs the show wonders why it's so popular. Turns out that the Whacketts broadcast is interlaced with a signal that looks like rapidly changing hexadecimal numbers and functions as a "drug" that induces euphoria in anyone who is visually exposed to it.
When I was a kid I thought this was somewhat dodgy science fiction. As an adult in the age of Cocomelon and Skibidi Toilet, I'm not so sure.
Yeah, we imagined brainwashing would involve rapidly flashing hidden messages. In reality, it involves a head sticking out of a toilet.
Hearing some of the things my elder daughter hears from other kids in the kindergarten, I sometimes wonder if we haven't jumped into some bizarro alternate universe.
Having actually sat down to watch Skibidi Toilet, it's fine. It's basically a series of over-the-top action sequences done with Garry's Mod assets. It's watching someone mashing action figures together that they kit-bashed out of other action figures.
I'm looking forward to hearing the story of the animator that got inspired to go into the field by watching Skibidi Toilet. It's going to happen.
That's a tale as old as time, though. In the 1980s, I got in trouble for using "this sucks" or "this blows" around grade one or two. It's now common slang, but it was still too close to its sexual origins at the time (which of course was over my head, but I of course wanted to emulate the older graders).
There's an episode where the father is trying to teach Bluey to play chess. It is implied by the mother that he's only doing that because "all smart kids play chess, therefore she should learn chess."
The teaching fails, not because she doesn't understand but because she and Bingo end up making up the fantasy of the game. (To the point that sacrificing a piece is a shock and abhorrent).
It ends up with the mother intervening, beating the dad at the game and saying "Work on the heads later, for now, just hearts."
So to you, I say: Bill Nye, yes. Bluey, yes too. Each in their own time... If the kids feel like it.
Fiction gives us a channel to explore problems we wouldn't otherwise regularly see in our day-to-day lives, and learn about the right ways to answer them, so that when we are confronted with them for real, we have a better framework for dealing with them than our basic instincts provide.
Real-world ethical problems tend to be much more complex than those presented in fiction, but that's exactly why we need fiction to provide us with the building blocks via easier-to-understand case studies.
Because Bluey is for 3-6 year olds or around that range and the most important thing for them to learn at this age is social skills. There is plenty of time after for Bill Nye.
I have a morbid fascination with trying to predict the most down-voted comment theme for any given HN thread. I was quite excited to find out how someone would inevitably manage to enrage people in a Bluey thread, but someone managed!
And do they only watch science shows teaching STEM subjects? Or do they get to watch shows that have some emotional lessons as well? If so, what shows?
I think people are reacting because Bill Nye is not even remotely in the same category. It has a different kind of value, and frankly it’s not as important as the kind of value kids get from Bluey.
It’s very nice if kids learn science. Great even. But the most important things kid can get from TV shows (if anything, it’s okay to watch things for fun as well) is to learn social skills. Bluey has a lot of that, and it does it without being annoying about it like Daniel Tiger. It’s a good balance
Nietzsche and Plato were some of the best fiction writers ever produced.
Storytelling, allegory, dramatic dialogue, compelling narratives, and 'myth making' can have different goals - sometimes it's to teach the glory of science. Other times it's about social relationships and how to be a functional human.
Bluey works so well because the combination of kids' entertainment with adult themes and storylines portraying positive role models feels unforced - some folks may not enjoy it, that's fine.
Right? Plato criticizing fiction has to be one of the funniest things I've read.
"We must stop making up stories. Now, have you heard about how we're all sitting in a cave watching a shadow-play of the actual reality happening outside the cave?"
Ooof fiction teaching Idealism. From Nietzsche to Plato, its agreed, fiction corrupts. One day the floury idealism will be seen not to work, and the damage will have already been done.
I've seen Bluey, it was funny, it taught some general concepts... but if my kids are going to watch TV, why not Bill Nye the Science Guy or similar?
Remember that these children's characters are corporate mascots, not friends.