Attack of The Teletubbies
Toddlers
targets of English
pop culture invasion
By Gerry Bowler • Special to ChristianWeek
Today’s pop culture quiz: What do toddlers, trendy gays, drugged-out teens, highly stressed businessmen and PBS executives have in common? Answer: they are all fans of the latest phenomenon in children’s television, The Teletubbies.
The Teletubbies (Tinky Winky, Po, Laa-Laa and Dipsy) are brightly-colored, child-shaped creatures who sport antennae on their heads and televisions on their tummies. They inhabit a grassy landscape full of cuddly bunnies, whirling windmills and talking flowers, overseen by a sun with the face of a baby and an obliging vacuum cleaner named Noo Noo. They frolic, fall over, sing, dance, watch video clips on their stomachs and talk in a kind of baby talk that makes Barney the Dinosaur sound like an Athenian orator in comparison. This is a gentle world, where there are no adults and where things happen slowly and repetitively; there is none of the continuously startling, jolts-per-second approach that marks some of the segments seen, for instance, on Sesame Street.
The Teletubbies is a recent import from Britain where the show, aimed at one- to four-year-olds, has attracted an audience in the millions and a host of critics as well. Its appearance on North American screens has rekindled the controversies that the show engendered when it first appeared on the BBC.
Supporters and critics
Those who support the show assert that it is the first "age-appropriate" program for very young viewers and they make some spectacular claims for its objectives. Teletubbies will, according to PBS, promote a sense of humor, affection and movement, reinforce speech, encourage listening, increase confidence and self-esteem while celebrating individuality and ethnic diversity. The show will also encourage a child to feel comfortable in a technologically rich environment, enhance cognitive functions and prepare them for success when they eventually attend school. The slow pace, baby language and repetition will suit the target audience, which might otherwise be confused and frustrated by faster-paced, louder children’s programming.
Critics of the show are many. Some argue that the Tubbies’ invented "emergent" language will slow the acquisition of standard English; others fear that the Teletubbie marketing machine will colonize even younger children than the age groups cultivated by Barney, Elmo and other "tele-educational" figures. More notoriety has resulted from the fact that Tinky Winky, with his male voice and cherished red purse, has become a gay icon, and that the set’s surreal atmosphere and bright colors have made the show a hit with drug-using teens (as well as with older viewers simply seeking relief from the stresses of adult life).
A better way
There is no doubt that the Tubbies are sweet little things and that the program has an eerie kind of other-wordly charm, but the last thing a one-year-old child needs is a television program designed to enhance her cognitive functions. It may have escaped the notice of television executives, but the human race managed to produce the likes of Socrates, Shakespeare, Mozart and Einstein long before the invention of the cathode-ray projection tube, a device whose contribution to education is rivaled only by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
Attention, parents! The television is a marvelous thing. It can entertain us, amuse us and sell us stuff–but it is a lousy educator. It cannot present information in the depth that a printed page can and the shallow data that we get from the TV is forgotten far more quickly than those things we read or experience. It makes us drowsy, passive and (if watched too much by children) obese.
If you truly want to enhance your child’s cognition talk to him, read to him. If you want to encourage affection in your child, hug her. If you want to promote movement, run and play together. So care-givers: put down the channel changer. Slowly now. Pick up the baby and move away from the screen. That’s it. Turn off the TV and no one will get hurt.
Gerry Bowler is a Winnipeg writer and historian.
