The Wiggles: I approve (I think)

Well, the 11am West Wing episode was--bizarrely--replaced by an old Queer Eye episode, so I did a little channel surfing and found The Wiggles, a children's show that I have almost heard of (well, I heard Adam complain about it on his blog and I saw a sign on the Oakland Coliseum for "The Wiggles: LIVE!") .

In case you are unfamiliar with this phenomenon, basically it's 4 Australian guys in black pants and different solid-colored t-shirts doing the twist. One of them looks vaguely Asian and plays the keyboard and another one plays a guitar, though there's no drummer. The reason for that, of course, is that a drummer would have to sit. The Wiggles do not sit. Neither do they stand still. Nope. In fact, as far as I can tell, their "songs" are just thinly disguised aerobic exercise routines for tots. Yup.

Not that I object to tots doing age-appropriate cardio, mind you. I think it's great to encourage kids to dance and sing and be silly and get some exercise instead of sitting blob-like in front of the TV. Also, I have to say that the Wiggles' cardio moves look like fun. If I hadn't been drinking a cup of tea at the time, I very well may have joined them.

Ok, but the thing is, isn't that the same idea behind the weird and psychadelic (and mildly disturbing) Boohbah show (from the makers of the weird and psychadelic and somewhat disturbing Teletubbies show)? But Boohbah and Teletubbies have these intense bouncy costumes and sets and colors and scarysmilingbabyburningsun! And there's all this "well, babies don't perceive the world the way we do, so we should make a weird psychadelic world in order that the little wee ones can relate to it. You wouldn't understand because you're an adult and you don't have a focus group. Trust us, we need the scary baby acid bird costumes or else the kids won't get it."

But The Wiggles are just some guys in t-shirts. Like probably a bunch of dads who used to have a Monkees cover band or something. This is a bargain basement show. It is guys doing the twist. And apparently they're a big hit.

Ok, in the interest of full disclosure, there are some costumed characters on The Wiggles' show. There's a guy in a dog suit, a guy in an octopus suit (2 arms, 2 legs, and 4 extra things), someone in a Dorothy the Dinosaur suit (kind of sub-Barney, but not nearly as annoying--she eats roses and makes soup with too much garlic) and Captain Feathersword, the the friendly pirate. (aside: I have to say that as much as I like pirates with swords, I really, really, really like that Captain Feathersword has a feathersword and no other form of weapon or discernible weapon or means or interest in aggression. Kids DO copy what they see on TV and this way I guess you avoid kids swordfighting in the living room. Until they see a not-so-friendly pirate swordfighting, I guess. But I like that the feathersword is more of a prop than a weapon.) Dog, Dinosaur, Octopus and Pirate are all energetic dancers, as you might guess. But they look like guys in suits, not like giant blobs of play-doh with antennae.

So what's the big deal? Have you seen Sesame Street lately? It's got some good old-fashioned numbers-letters-cultural sensitivity-emotional awareness-muppets stuff, but then there's all this flashy flashy hoo-hah and then a half hour of super-lame-O Elmo's World. What is that all about? I suspect that the folks over at CTW have taken a hit off the Teletubbies pipe and are thinking "We need to keep the show hip and cool so kids can relate to it and be interested in it and so we can compete with DragonballZ. Um, the way to do that must be to use a lot of animation and funky graphics and flashing lights, and then slow everything down for Elmo's world so the wee tots can relate to it. The kids of today are not like the kids of yesterday, you know. These younguns are post-MTV generation. They don't relate to the media the way previous generations did. They're cynical and have short attention spans and parse images differently blah blah blah blah."

So under that model, kids wouldn't like The Wiggles or at least not enough for them to be commercially successful (my only major complaint about Wiggledom, so far: they're doing promotional cross-ties with Mott and are on the Disney channel. But OTOH, there's no brand-name applesauce on the show. And at least it's applesauce and not candy, breakfast cereal, violent toys or games, etc.) But clearly, they seem to be commercially viable.

Ok, so you still wonder why this matters? Wouldn't it bother you if the people who are 2 and 3 now are really these sort of proto-transhumans? It would bother me. Also, I mean if the tots now are that different, then if I decided to have kids at some point, how different would those beings be from me?

The success of The Wiggles reassures me because it suggests that perhaps the tots of tomorrow will be people I can relate to, and that the shows my kids will watch (assuming we have shows and TV then...for all I know they'll be wired or have chewable cell-phones or something) will be shows I can understand and guess at the reasoning behind, and also quite frankly will be shows that won't give me nightmares. Also the feathersword thing.
- posted by k @ 12:09 PM