Culture Study Podcast - The Pernicious Laziness of Paw Patrol

00:00:00.000 For millennials, young Gen Xers who are listening to this, what is the analogous show in our cartoon universe?

00:00:11.140 Oh, interesting.

00:00:11.920 Is it Power Rangers?

00:00:13.960 I don't think so.

00:00:15.040 Power Rangers is a little bit later.

00:00:17.160 Yeah.

00:00:17.380 I think that the genre of this show is a team of people helping somebody.

00:00:22.920 And I think in that sense, I want to say maybe Rescue Rangers is a reasonable analog for this.

00:00:29.200 Yeah.

00:00:30.000 A lot of these helping teams are kind of working in an extra-legal or vigilante capacity, as opposed to the sort of institutional foundational pillars of Paw Patrol.

00:00:41.820 Who deputized them?

00:00:43.060 Who deputized them?

00:00:44.900 I imagine all of those Rescue Rangers shows ends with, like, one of the Paw Patrol cops showing up and being like, you're not allowed to do any of this.

00:00:53.620 Leave this to us.

00:00:54.760 i'm ann helen peterson and this is the culture study podcast i'm philip masiak i'm the tv critic

00:01:03.840 for the new republic i teach at washington university in st louis and i'm the author

00:01:09.520 of the book avidly reads screen time how do you think about writing about television like right

00:01:14.680 now like how do you talk to your students when you're teaching about reading tv as a cultural

00:01:19.980 text? One of the things that I always say, and this is in media studies classes as well as in

00:01:25.120 literature classes and pop culture classes, is that every text is teaching us something. And

00:01:32.100 it's doing that whether it's a sort of obvious highbrow, you know, literary text like Moby Dick

00:01:38.840 or Beloved, or whether it's a car commercial or a cartoon show or a photograph in a magazine,

00:01:45.480 And that we learn the way we interact with texts, whether we view it as such or not, is that we're learning things from them. And so understanding and paying attention to these texts and the way that they teach us what they're teaching us, whether it's a small thing or a big thing, is a really important way to engage with culture, studying it, as you might say, studying culture.

00:02:07.980 So earlier this year, we did an interview in Culture Study, the newsletter about your new book. And, you know, I feel like that sprung from you having kids, one, watching children's television and then combining the fact that you had to watch children's television with your like critic's eye and being one of the only people that I know who wrote really interestingly and persuasively about it.

00:02:37.980 children's television. So can you talk a little bit about like, writing about children's television

00:02:43.280 and writing about screen time more broadly? Sure, of course. Yeah. So I've been, as you said,

00:02:48.420 I've been writing about TV with you and with other people for a really long time. And what

00:02:53.140 that has usually meant are, you know, prestige TV shows that air on Sunday nights, right? Or

00:02:59.280 sometimes monday nights and um and so a lot of that because you and i came up at a time when

00:03:08.620 episodic criticism you know like the recap era or the post recap era was was was very big and what

00:03:15.400 people wanted we turned the way that we pay attention to any cultural text toward these sort

00:03:22.240 of episodic snippets of TV shows. And so I think I learned as a writer and as a viewer to to view

00:03:30.540 with that kind of granular attention, things that are accumulating. And that was like my practice

00:03:36.280 of watching TV. And then, you know, we had Maeve in 2015. And I started watching TV with her as

00:03:44.860 at the point when she started watching TV. And you know, her TV shows are very different than my TV

00:03:49.160 shows. But it's hard to turn that way of watching off, I think. And so I wrote about this in Slate

00:03:55.300 a couple of years ago, about the sort of paranoid style of viewing that you start to develop when

00:04:01.500 you're watching pre-K CGI cartoons with your child, but you're watching them the way you

00:04:07.440 would watch Game of Thrones or something like that. And it's both sort of definitionally

00:04:15.060 inappropriate to the to the way you're supposed to watch those shows it's certainly not the way

00:04:19.700 Maeve is watching them or Phoebe but it becomes like a fun little game it's the way you sort of

00:04:25.060 keep yourself invested or keep yourself watching is to ask about the like the logistics of the

00:04:32.520 the governmental structure in Daniel Tiger's neighborhood or something like that and the

00:04:37.320 thing is I'm saying this as you know well I'm a tv critic and I learned how to do this because

00:04:41.100 of a TV critic. But I think a lot of parents and a lot of caregivers watch in the same way where,

00:04:45.860 you know, it's, these shows are not interesting from an adult perspective. And so you have to

00:04:51.840 sort of make them interesting in some way. Yeah. But that is to say, there are some really

00:04:56.780 interesting and very good shows for for kids. But by and large, you're watching these sort of

00:05:02.180 formulaic, you know, cartoons, and sort of projecting things onto them in a way that I

00:05:07.300 kind of enjoy yeah and i think that like they're there right like ideologies that form the bedrock

00:05:13.720 for like how these different shows are constructed like the world building you know there's nothing

00:05:19.620 like quote-unquote natural about like the worlds that they built even though there's um you know

00:05:24.460 whether they're peopled with tigers that are doing like asthma sounds which is what daniel tiger is

00:05:30.100 or the different shows that we watched i was like oh there's like gummy bears that bounce up and

00:05:35.640 down or like snorks is like i have like a weird underworld of animals that have things coming out

00:05:42.480 of their head like that's not natural but also like the way that they've arranged families like

00:05:47.420 the way that they've arranged their moral universe all that stuff like it's obviously building on

00:05:53.260 ideologies that we've accepted within our society for better or worse like so there is that stuff

00:05:58.580 to unpack but then also sometimes you have to be like tom and jerry are just running around

00:06:03.900 hitting each other yeah yeah i i think you're i mean you're right obviously there's you know

00:06:11.400 nothing's natural about any media right all media is artificial and and imagined and trying to to

00:06:18.380 sort of replicate some vision of of reality and that works one way in classical hollywood it works

00:06:23.920 one way in 21st century prestige television and it works just the same in in tv that's meant for

00:06:30.620 three-year-olds and sometimes I think you know whether it's Tom and Jerry hitting each other

00:06:34.680 or you know Bluey and Bingo trying to figure out how to how to play together and with their parents

00:06:40.560 there's a it's maybe a simplified version of that that world building right I think about like

00:06:47.220 shows like Doc McStuffins where the action is like right up front and everything else in the

00:06:54.120 background is kind of blurry right it's kind of it's like a desktop wallpaper for you know what's

00:06:59.820 happening in the front end. But what's happening in the front end is world building, right? And

00:07:04.040 it's teaching you about like, how you're supposed to help people or that you're supposed to help

00:07:08.240 people in a certain given context. And I think that it's not just that it's world building,

00:07:13.960 but it's also that I think we generally have a presumption about kids TV, that all the world

00:07:19.180 building and all of the messaging is, is supposed to be positive, right? It's supposed to, you know,

00:07:25.960 if I'm saying that everything that we, all media texts that we encounter are teaching us things,

00:07:30.780 you know, surreptitiously or even unconsciously, you know, we expect kids TV to teach kids things,

00:07:38.380 right? That's the expectation of children's television. And so that sort of ideological

00:07:44.280 aspect you're talking about, I think is even more front and center with these shows because

00:07:48.000 parents think, oh, well, this show is good because it's teaching my kids something

00:07:52.280 positive, or something good, or something that will help them to become a good person in the

00:07:57.240 world. Right. And that includes representation, too, which we can get into. I think we should

00:08:02.380 establish a little bit of our positionality, to use an academic word. Like, we talked a little

00:08:08.780 bit about yours, watching television with your daughters. Mine is very different in that I do

00:08:14.860 not have kids i sporadically engage in various television texts when i am around my friend's

00:08:22.320 kids and so that means sometimes it's when i'm watching them we'll watch something and sometimes

00:08:27.360 it's like oh this happens at my my friend who lives in seattle when i stay at their house there

00:08:32.940 they love waking me up first instead of their parents they're like i've met the parents like

00:08:38.160 that too they they love it um they call me auntie blondie so they're like we're gonna go get auntie

00:08:43.060 blondie they come down and they wake me up and they're like come watch tv with us it's 6 30 in

00:08:47.660 the morning i get them like some cereal and like a giant thing of milk in a sippy cup right i'm like

00:08:53.380 who has ever consumed as much milk and then we choose what we're gonna watch and so sometimes

00:08:59.780 depending on like their ages it's a movie sometimes it's a tv show i've watched a bit of

00:09:05.580 PAW Patrol the kids are kind of aging out of it yeah so that my PAW Patrol knowledge is not full

00:09:15.540 yeah but does have a lot of vibes and also I know a lot about like the critique that it's

00:09:23.360 propaganda which we're going to get into as well how much PAW Patrol have you personally watched

00:09:28.440 so it's it's interesting as I think I described it to you and and Melody is that I'm conversational

00:09:34.700 in PAW Patrol, but not fluent in PAW Patrol.

00:09:38.060 I think, so I was talking to Phoebe,

00:09:41.100 so Phoebe is my four-year-old,

00:09:43.140 about this this morning,

00:09:44.720 and she knows about PAW Patrol,

00:09:47.800 but she has not really watched it

00:09:50.260 at any great length.

00:09:52.080 Maeve, her older sister, who is eight,

00:09:54.700 did watch PAW Patrol in her youth.

00:09:58.400 I'm not 100% sure in what context.

00:10:01.800 I don't remember.

00:10:02.560 I mean, I've seen, you know,

00:10:03.800 i've seen episodes we've seen a bit of it it was never her sort of central rotation show yeah um

00:10:09.840 it was something that would seep in um and i believe we had a stuffy or two that this is the

00:10:17.440 thing that's actually interesting to me i feel as if uh paw patrol is one of the more culturally

00:10:24.800 visible yes shows of this genre so mave was not a big fan but somehow ended up having

00:10:33.640 you know a rider and a sky stuffy um yeah in her her room there are shows that i would identify as

00:10:41.240 well mave was obsessed with this show and she was never obsessed with paw patrol but paw patrol is

00:10:46.020 everywhere it's it's very available it's very front and center if you walk the toy aisle at a

00:10:52.540 target or something like that and so my experience of it is both as an like an occasional you know

00:10:59.200 co-viewer, but also as someone who just notices it everywhere. And, you know, lots of kids dress

00:11:04.900 up as Paw Patrol characters for Halloween in, you know, kindergarten age and things like that.

00:11:09.960 This is a great, I think, segue into talking about how many questions we got from culture

00:11:14.120 study readers, because like this is, it was double digits. Like it was easily the most popular

00:11:21.140 question or like topic that I posed, like what questions do you have? And I think it's because

00:11:26.420 as we talked about before too parents are exposed to this and like it's super boring but want to

00:11:32.380 make it interesting to themselves and so here are all the questions yeah that they are asking

00:11:36.720 you know sometimes out of a little bit of anxiety but sometimes and i think mostly out of like

00:11:41.920 what is this ridiculous world so let's get into the first question it is from emily let's do this

00:11:49.580 as they would say on pop let's do that let's do this how do my kids know so much about pop patrol 0.84

00:11:55.300 when we've never watched it in our house and is it police propaganda or is it just not that deep

00:12:00.860 all right so this is this is this the fundamental tension and i think like the question of how kids

00:12:07.100 know about shows that they have never consumed is one that is a mildly mind-boggling but also not

00:12:13.860 if you've ever observed kids playing the way that they talk about shows and then there's the

00:12:21.620 secondary exposure element which is constant advertising on like youtube yeah the regular tv

00:12:31.280 whatever so what do you think anything else i think that's it i mean i mean it's a show that's

00:12:36.520 very available to see it's a show that's very available to see on actual tv as well as on you

00:12:43.260 know streaming and apps and things like that but to me my explanation would be that yeah it's just

00:12:48.460 very, there's a lot of Paw Patrol stuff out there. If you walk around, you do drop off or

00:12:56.020 pick up at an elementary school or a kindergarten, and you're just going to see a lot of backpacks

00:13:00.780 and sweaters and things like that with Paw Patrol stuff printed on it. There's a lot of

00:13:06.300 secondhand Paw Patrol inhalation going on in America's schools, whether or not the kids

00:13:12.560 themselves are really invested in it okay then the second question is it propaganda or is it not

00:13:19.000 that dude that's a that's a real twofer question yeah how do you answer this one

00:13:24.720 i think before we did this recording i read a lot of the sort of think pieces that were circulating

00:13:32.560 during the pandemic and and during the civil rights marches about this show in particular

00:13:37.580 because i think it got a lot of and i i can't really reconstruct the genealogy of how this

00:13:42.180 happened necessarily specifically, but it felt like Paw Patrol became a sort of marker of what

00:13:48.540 propaganda looks like in popular media. Amanda Hess at the New York Times has a really good piece

00:13:53.780 about it that I thought did a good job kind of summarizing the controversy and why Paw Patrol

00:13:59.760 is at the center of it. I think all shows, all world building, whether it's a kid's show or

00:14:06.300 whether it's madman or whether it's you know um you know the mcu or something are built around

00:14:13.200 kind of fundamental assumptions about um the world that they they live in and they don't they don't

00:14:18.680 have to um focalize any particular thing if it's sort of part of the bedrock of what the story

00:14:26.680 world is i think paw patrol i think a lot of shows assume that you know police officers are

00:14:34.460 are always doing good. And there are people who can help you if you need help. You know, it pops

00:14:39.420 up, you know, more, I think, than you would imagine in a lot of different kids shows. I think

00:14:44.360 the fact that Paw Patrol puts it front and center is one of the reasons why it sort of stood out.

00:14:50.020 I think in the sense of copaganda, as it's talked about, yeah, it is. It's copaganda.

00:14:55.180 It is a show that's like cops are good.

00:14:57.380 Yeah, it's one of the main points of it. I mean, to be fair, it's also about other

00:15:01.660 emergency services. Right. So it's about how firefighters are good, too. Right. Right. So it's

00:15:06.460 not you know, it's not like the Paw Patrol is not as a whole a police force. Right. It includes a

00:15:12.780 police officer. Part of what it is doing is sort of flattening all of those emergency services.

00:15:17.860 Right. So like, yeah, of course, people who drive ambulances are good. Of course, you know,

00:15:22.360 firefighters who put out the fire at your house are good. Right. And the police are folded into

00:15:26.900 that too. So I think that's part of why it, it sort of, it becomes such a sort of flashpoint

00:15:33.340 and became such a flashpoint as we were sort of culturally sifting through even the most

00:15:39.600 seemingly innocuous media and asking like, where does this narrative come from? How does this

00:15:43.660 get rehashed and rehearsed and learned ultimately? Right. I imagine if you were to like talk at

00:15:50.740 length with the creators, there would never be a point where the creators would be like,

00:15:55.100 you know what we love cops like we wanted to make a show that just was like cops are awesome

00:16:00.560 right and instead it's more like how do we make a morally legible show that involves tropes

00:16:08.180 that are already familiar to kids that we can build on right like and then also make them dogs

00:16:15.380 so that they're cuter yeah you know and also the melodrama of it all which in so much as we're

00:16:22.720 talking about like a morally legible universe where there are like people are good people are

00:16:27.360 bad how do you find those people in any scenario like it's just easy like it's if anything it's a

00:16:34.940 lazy world building less more than like a pernicious one but it can be also be pernicious

00:16:41.260 if it's lazy so yeah part of the way this works is through the reproduction of uncritical

00:16:47.660 assumptions about the way the world works on the part of of writers and part of the reason you're

00:16:52.460 getting all these questions about Paw Patrol is that it's not that parents are more exposed to

00:16:56.660 Paw Patrol than other shows. It's that they dislike Paw Patrol more than they dislike the

00:17:01.160 other shows. It's not a very good show. I mean, I think that's at the heart of it. And part of

00:17:06.080 what you're saying is like laziness or clumsiness about the themes is a part of that. It's invoking

00:17:13.700 stuff that people should be thinking about more critically than they are thinking about it

00:17:19.100 and reproducing it relatively uncritically.

00:17:22.080 And I think that that's one of the things that makes this not –

00:17:28.160 I mean, it's an example of propaganda for just the sort of textual reasons that it is.

00:17:32.760 But it becomes egregious.

00:17:34.280 It becomes a sort of flashpoint for it, I think,

00:17:36.700 because it's just not really thinking about it that much, right?

00:17:40.360 It's just doing it because this is what you do.

00:17:42.880 Why wouldn't I do this, right?

00:17:44.760 So I agree with you.

00:17:46.100 There isn't a lot of –

00:17:47.260 I don't think there's there's like a Blue Lives Matter impulse behind the writing and

00:17:52.820 creation of of Paw Patrol. 0.64

00:17:54.640 But I think it's doing a lot of that work just on its own.

00:17:58.500 OK, our next two questions are similar.

00:18:00.160 So we're going to play them back to back.

00:18:02.360 This is from Olivia.

00:18:04.340 How did Paw Patrol get such a hold on us?

00:18:06.980 My parent friends say that it's unavoidable and they feel like so few people in their

00:18:13.520 at Sears see the problems with the show that upholds a police state. Is anyone studying the

00:18:18.780 effect that Paw Patrol or other shows with the same worldview are having on our kids?

00:18:24.320 And this is from Cece. Why is Paw Patrol so beloved by kids? What makes it addictive in a

00:18:30.060 way that Blu-ray is not? As an adult, I hate watching Paw Patrol for its black and white

00:18:35.160 morality. The bad guy is always bad and painted in a very negative light as an overweight middle-aged

00:18:41.540 man who is selfish and mean. And why can't people solve their own problems and always rely on Paw

00:18:47.360 Patrol? Also, the clever merchandising, which my kids want, I think it's an example of merchandising

00:18:54.160 opportunity disguised as a show for kids and makes me disgusted. I get the sense that this

00:19:00.080 is a show, like a lot of kids' shows, that was almost like reverse engineered, right? They were

00:19:05.860 like, what is something we can merchandize the shit out of? And then we can like, figure out 0.95

00:19:12.380 a narrative secondarily. Yeah, I think that part of your argument that it doesn't feel pernicious

00:19:18.840 is because the narrative of the show is just an existing narrative, cultural narrative,

00:19:24.260 right? Which is, if you need help, call the police, right? Or if you need help, call 911.

00:19:29.020 And it's not doing much more than reproducing that narrative and adding puppy characters to it.

00:19:38.500 So I think that there's a kind of ease to this show that is instantly understandable to people who just exist in the cultural atmosphere we exist in.

00:19:49.840 right there are things about the show that are controversial right but there's nothing

00:19:54.100 controversial about saying that its narratives are sort of deeply embedded in the culture right

00:19:59.360 they don't have to do a lot of world building because the world that this show exists in is

00:20:03.780 basically the one we exist in it's just dogs instead of of people right i would also say

00:20:09.920 and because we've had this experience now a couple of times this year so you know if you your kid

00:20:16.740 goes to public school or or or even if they don't right very often one of the things that that you

00:20:22.260 get is like a visit from the fire truck yeah and kids love it kids love a fire truck and you get

00:20:26.900 to climb on it and you know honk the horn or whatever um and and it's kind of an interesting

00:20:32.880 firefighters have this cool object that gets to sort of signify what they do and get you know

00:20:40.800 get the neighborhood excited about it like cops don't have a cool object that isn't a gun

00:20:46.880 to get kids excited about but what cops do have is dogs and my both girls have had visits from

00:20:54.800 like cops with dogs at their schools and they love it right because they got dogs right they

00:21:00.720 got cool puppies that we get to hang out with i think paw patrol it's not only that it's just sort

00:21:04.900 of reproducing this pre-existing cultural narrative it's also taking advantage of of like one of the

00:21:11.880 biggest pr advantages cops have with kids is that they've got dogs right kids love dogs like what's

00:21:17.840 wrong with dogs so what if there's a show and the cop is a dog right that's just better than you 0.59

00:21:23.460 could imagine and a puppy and a puppy not just a dog yeah not some old old stinky you know german

00:21:31.080 shepherd just going back to the question asker who asked is it not that deep it isn't that deep

00:21:38.100 yeah there's not a lot of complexity to this show even in the way that there is for some of the other

00:21:43.580 shows that are that are kind of part of its if a part of its genre like i keep saying doc mcsteffans

00:21:49.420 but doc mcsteffans right there's a slightly more slightly more complex sort of uh representation of

00:21:57.740 like care and helpfulness within the context of that show than there is with this because

00:22:05.560 because in Doc McStuffins it's about asking people to help you and people feeling a responsibility

00:22:12.060 to care for each other whereas Paw Patrol this is their job right you just like press the button

00:22:17.700 you know right and and the the appropriate dog comes out to help with the problem yeah yeah yeah

00:22:22.880 And so that I think that you're right. There is a it's it's hard to talk about Paw Patrol to like lend nuance to Paw Patrol because it's just it's it's it's the point of the show is that it is not nuanced. Right. The point of the show is that it is clear as day. Everything about the show is super clear.

00:22:40.260 And, yeah, I think especially for having conversations about the relationship between community members and policing, especially, you know, non-white community members and policing, like the show just does not have a space to talk about that. 0.75

00:22:57.500 So you either, in this situation, I think that the idea is you counter-program Paw Patrol with better versions of it, or you just try not to have your kid watch Paw Patrol. 0.91

00:23:13.700 You're like, cool bag.

00:23:15.600 Also, let's watch this instead, right?

00:23:19.020 I do love that the person points out that like, why won't my kid get addicted to Bluey?

00:23:23.320 I don't know. I'd like to meet this kid that is incapable of getting addicted to Bluey because I that is not my experience. I try again. I don't know.

00:23:34.140 Yeah, I think that that's the best advice. Right. It's like if there's a show that like sucks. Right. Either it sucks because it's annoying or sucks because it has this complete lack of nuance and also is like reproducing these ideologies that are like propaganda like this. Yeah. Counterprogram.

00:23:51.100 Yeah, there's a lot of kids TV out there.

00:23:53.060 A lot of it on, you know, a lot of it on paid apps and things like that.

00:23:56.960 But a lot of it on regular television and also freebie, you know, apps.

00:24:01.700 There's a lot of different kids shows out there that are doing better work than Paw Patrol is doing.

00:24:08.020 I'm sympathetic to the idea that it's hard to escape because we didn't escape it.

00:24:12.200 You know, it's everywhere.

00:24:13.320 But, you know, there's other kids shows.

00:24:16.380 Our next question is from Kristen.

00:24:18.880 And I love it.

00:24:20.300 Melody's going to read it for us.

00:24:22.100 Who wrote the Paw Patrol theme song?

00:24:24.780 It's so loud and aggressive compared to the other kids' theme songs.

00:24:29.260 All right.

00:24:29.700 So we're going to play a little bit of this song.

00:24:32.080 Oh, no.

00:24:33.000 All right.

00:24:33.420 I'm going to press play.

00:24:35.920 Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol, we'll be there on the double.

00:24:40.440 Whenever there's a problem, around Adventure Bay.

00:24:45.000 Ryder and his team of pups will come and save the day.

00:24:48.720 I like the line, no jobs too big, no pups too small.

00:25:00.000 This is great.

00:25:01.960 So the question is, why is it so loud and aggressive compared to other kid theme songs?

00:25:08.700 Honestly, that just seems like in line with a lot of other kids' theme songs.

00:25:13.040 I don't know.

00:25:13.680 What do you think?

00:25:14.320 I think there's two main kinds of kids' TV theme song.

00:25:18.380 One is fast, explanatory, premise-based theme song,

00:25:24.180 which I think this falls under the umbrella of

00:25:26.640 all the way back to like DuckTales, you know.

00:25:29.260 Yeah.

00:25:29.540 So what's the show, right?

00:25:31.300 Yeah.

00:25:31.440 It's what this theme song is an answer to.

00:25:35.480 And then you have the kind of like bouncy,

00:25:37.880 enigmatic, iconic theme song

00:25:39.900 that like the Bluey theme song, for instance.

00:25:42.840 Yeah.

00:25:42.980 Where it's just a little earworm that you get stuck.

00:25:45.600 There's no lyrics.

00:25:46.280 there's no real need to explain what's going on um but this is this is like if you took a

00:25:52.520 pamphlet about regional community services and asked blink 182 to

00:25:58.000 to turn it into a song for like a rock opera the best part is that melody looked up who wrote the

00:26:07.120 theme song and it's co-written by like a bunch of christian rock stars from like the early 2000s

00:26:15.880 was it like sandy patty okay so it's two composers two songwriters from very different genres

00:26:23.460 there is the christian guy or at least he wrote songs for christian musicians christian stars in

00:26:30.960 the early 2000s like sandy patty ffh oh my god point of grace oh my god jackie velasquez

00:26:37.700 like everybody i listened to in 2001 sandy patty was like kind of kids music though right

00:26:45.400 i don't know i never got into her but yeah no that was like that was yeah but it's a mash-up

00:26:50.620 it's the christian guy sorry i'm gonna edit myself out of this so maybe no you're not you're gonna be

00:26:55.960 you're gonna be in this is like conspiracy corner the other songwriter has written songs for like

00:27:04.100 kesha cold play the pussycat dolls so it's like really a mash-up i just like this song is so bad

00:27:14.260 why does it need so many composers but i think that you're right that it's like it's so simple

00:27:20.320 it's just what they do it's like how you know sometimes freelance writers they just have to

00:27:24.080 like do copy editing sometimes to like put together a feasible salary i don't know this

00:27:29.080 is what kesha's co-writer is doing i'm looking now i'm seeing this as being bankrolled by the

00:27:33.540 rand corporation halliburton wow no i'm kidding that was my michael moore reading

00:27:39.660 George H.W. Bush

00:27:44.740 co-wrote this song

00:27:45.900 The police

00:27:49.500 Who benefits from the Paw Patrol

00:27:51.940 Do you think that our parents

00:27:55.560 hated the DuckTales

00:27:58.160 song or the DuckTales

00:28:00.260 premise

00:28:00.980 just diving into money

00:28:03.420 I don't know

00:28:04.220 My parents did not

00:28:06.900 co-watching is the strategy now

00:28:09.460 and my parents never watched cartoons with me yeah i don't know i mean i i don't want to mount

00:28:15.560 too big of a defense of ducktales but i feel like there's a yeah the class politics of ducktales

00:28:20.800 might be interesting to dive to dive into there is there is he is like scrooge mcduck is kind of

00:28:27.260 on the outs though it's it's it isn't endearing to everyone that he has that much money it's useful

00:28:32.320 to huey dewey and louie but it's not necessarily right like he's grouchy and so you're supposed

00:28:38.540 to learn that if you have too much money, you're grouchy. It's bad. It's bad to have that much

00:28:43.840 money. All right. Next question. This is about kids TV more broadly. Yeah. And it's from Anya.

00:28:50.540 Why is the trope of one girl character in a group of boys so persistent in kids TV? You see it on

00:28:57.580 the Muppets. You see it on the Smurfs. You see it now in Paw Patrol. It's even in Stranger Things.

00:29:02.920 How are we still doing this? Yeah, man. Yeah. What are your thoughts on this?

00:29:07.900 so this show was made in was it 2013 am i right about that wow it's that old yeah and a lot of

00:29:16.720 other shows were around then that don't have this problem so like daniel tiger's neighborhood is

00:29:21.620 roughly that vintage and it it's got pretty good splits you know for representation it feels

00:29:28.440 anachronistic for the show to be this bad at gender representation yeah in other words um given that

00:29:35.660 I think a lot of its peers were released and came into the media sphere at a time when it would have seemed weird to have just the one girl, you know, dog on the on the show because it feels like, well, why would you make that mistake?

00:29:51.760 I think it goes back to what we were talking about before. Like, this show never feels like it's doing something on purpose, in part because a lot of the things that it does, it does kind of by accident. And I was reading about it, and they tried to, after the first season, they added Everest to try to sort of address this problem.

00:30:11.860 But but like at what point during the production process did somebody not bring that up, you know, that that it was going to be a thing?

00:30:18.400 I mean, I think part of it is, you know, there is and this is this is part of why I think Paw Patrol in particular feels more forward with its whatever politics it has is in part because it does very clearly feel like a show designed for little boys to watch.

00:30:38.020 yeah and and i think you know the same thing is true of super wings the same thing is basically

00:30:43.240 true of octonauts on the other side of the ledger there are a lot of shows that are very

00:30:48.000 focused shows in this like pre-k you know cgi space um that are really focused on little girls

00:30:56.060 in particular or who's like point of view character as a little girl so like

00:30:59.440 doc mcsteffans or uh jesse and nessie or the rocketeer shimmer and shine shows like that i

00:31:06.300 I mean, I watch Shimmer and Shine.

00:31:09.280 Oh, my God.

00:31:09.940 Yeah, there's a lot of problems with Shimmer and Shine. 1.00

00:31:12.940 There is one boy character on Shimmer and Shine, and he is just a complete moron.

00:31:18.460 And every episode is basically structured around the idea that there's this like elaborate thing happening with these genies. 0.96

00:31:27.080 And he's just completely unaware of it.

00:31:29.540 I'm not saying this is I'm not advocating for Shimmer and Shine.

00:31:31.940 I think Shimmer and Shine is as problematic as Paw Patrol in some ways.

00:31:36.980 But I think that there are shows that feel very catered towards particular audiences based on gender.

00:31:44.260 And I think Paw Patrol in some ways is in that mix, but also is kind of ham-fisted in the mistakes it makes in that respect.

00:31:52.680 You know, I, I have noticed through osmosis that a lot of the shows on PBS kids, which all kind of blend together in my mind, like the characters are actually almost always pretty racially diverse. And there's no one main character. Like it's often like a team that's doing something like, it's always outdoors somehow. Maybe it's just like what the kids that I hang out with are watching. Like they're oftentimes exploring mountains or that sort of thing.

00:32:22.540 like that to me seems like more of where if you're trying to be mindful about this stuff

00:32:29.300 then you don't have a main character right you have many main characters who are all interesting

00:32:33.960 and skilled in different ways and that is kind of the lesson of the show is that we collaborate

00:32:38.820 to do things and like oftentimes they meet an expert who imparts knowledge but then also

00:32:45.020 they rely on the knowledge and like curiosity and innovativeness of the the younger kids who

00:32:52.700 make up this this larger worldview I mean in my experience thinking about shows that have been

00:33:00.580 produced during and have had sort of like some sort of cultural purchase during the eight years

00:33:07.000 that I've been a parent it feels like a convention at this point for shows to sort of foreground

00:33:14.540 some some aspect or multiple aspects of of representational diversity on screen like it

00:33:20.660 doesn't feel weird to me when there's a show that has a cast of characters who represent a sort of

00:33:26.480 broad swath of of different races and ethnicities and and genders and it's stranger to encounter a

00:33:33.560 show that feels very boy focused or feels very white right in a new show right i think this is

00:33:40.780 a that's important because it's been such a huge problem in in kids media and in media in general

00:33:46.340 but just watching what what we watch on tv i think that for for kids shows i mean i think it's very

00:33:53.840 obviously been a point of emphasis in kids television production over at least the last

00:33:58.100 several years i keep thinking about like they didn't necessarily need to gender the dogs like

00:34:03.360 what if they just like just gave them weird dog names like spot and then they're just like this

00:34:09.820 as a dog like to me that would be interesting and cool like to just think about like here are dogs

00:34:15.320 that are doing work and we don't have to focus on like giving them pink hats or whatever um

00:34:21.340 all right so our last question is a great example of why I love culture study readers

00:34:25.900 it is from Mandy are the pups on call all the time when do they get breaks how do they not burn

00:34:32.040 out is the show promoting underfunding of public services and reliance on privatization of complex

00:34:37.900 work, as well as exploitation of non-profit workers, in this case dogs. I've thought about

00:34:43.000 this too much. What do you think? Well, yeah, you've thought about it too much, but everybody's

00:34:49.880 thought about it too much. It's the way of watching that we, I think, sometimes occupy,

00:34:55.740 is that we overthink these things. And again, I think the reason why Paw Patrol becomes a target

00:35:02.680 here, rightfully, is that when you start to overthink Paw Patrol, it immediately falls

00:35:08.440 apart in a way that some of the other shows at least can, like, hold up to the sort of

00:35:13.920 projections of parents in the audience, right?

00:35:16.380 There are inconsistencies in Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, but you get the sense that there's

00:35:21.640 a real, like, world there, whereas Paw Patrol is, like, you know, is, like, two tonal shifts

00:35:29.000 away from being a nightmare, right?

00:35:31.220 Yeah, yes.

00:35:32.680 And so just like a dog factory where they're always like, when's my caller going to ring?

00:35:38.120 Like, oh, my gosh, I'm always on call.

00:35:40.500 It's just these dogs with like stress disorders.

00:35:42.920 Yeah, I'm just a human boy.

00:35:44.120 And all my friends are dog police officers and everybody's always in trouble. 0.65

00:35:49.140 And they're a couple of adults and they're malicious. 0.98

00:35:53.600 And fat and middle aged and bald. 0.98

00:35:56.260 Yeah, exactly.

00:35:56.760 i mean do you think um is there a show like as a means of wrapping us up like is there a show that

00:36:07.700 you have taken particular delight in watching and not because it's like a show that has jokes for

00:36:13.820 adults too because i think sometimes adults fall into that trap like the show that you think is

00:36:18.960 delightful on all levels and isn't doesn't fall apart the way that paw patrol does yeah

00:36:26.740 so so i think bluey is the obvious example that that comes up in part because that's a show that

00:36:34.500 that is just about being in a family and and what it's like to be in a family um i think that in

00:36:42.960 this particular like genre space even the good shows are a little bit trying i think we talked

00:36:49.500 about you were talking about your um the kids you hang out with who kind of grew out of this show

00:36:54.800 And I think this type of show, right, whether it's Paw Patrol or Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood or Wish and Poof or, you know, The Rocketeer, this like this super formulaic CGI pre-K show really is the kind of show that kids grow out of.

00:37:14.000 I you know, we don't we don't really watch many of these shows at all. Phoebe's for, you know, she was watching them, you know, maybe six months ago. And it's just not she's not into it anymore. And I think in some ways, the thing you then say about Paw Patrol is, well, they'll grow out of it. Right. But the other thing to say about Paw Patrol, especially if what we're talking about are the sort of uncritical assumptions it makes about what what policing is and the role that it serves in society.

00:37:42.040 and what level of trust, you know, the imagined viewer of Paw Patrol is meant to put in the police

00:37:50.980 is that, yeah, it's a show kids grow out of, but it's a show they encounter during a very

00:37:56.060 formative period of their development, right? And so I admit that it is silly that I ask questions

00:38:04.320 about whether, you know, Daniel Tiger's neighborhood is a constitutional monarchy

00:38:10.260 or uh is the the king a figurehead um how is miss elena the child of a uh puppet and a human man

00:38:20.840 like how i i admit those questions are silly right yeah but their questions i think 0.79

00:38:26.600 the questions that your your readers ask about paw patrol are are also silly but they're also

00:38:34.340 important because kids are going to answer them at a time when they're coming up with answers for

00:38:39.840 a lot of the questions they have about the world, right? And so Paw Patrol slots right in there as

00:38:44.700 a kind of public service announcement for the fire departments, for sure, but also for the police,

00:38:49.000 right? And that's the kind of thing that they just sort of can take with them. At its heart,

00:38:55.200 that show is just a show about helpfulness and being a part of a community. But I think there

00:39:00.120 are other shows that are about that, too. I think Wonder Pets is a really good one.

00:39:04.920 You know, Daniel Tiger is silly, but it's also a really good one in that sense. There's a show

00:39:09.220 that has been on and off of streaming platforms since it was created,

00:39:13.080 but a show called Azmay and Roy that was on Max.

00:39:15.880 It was part of the development of the Sesame Street brand into standalone shows.

00:39:22.040 That show is really good if you can find it.

00:39:24.360 And so, you know, I think that it's a genre that you just don't want to stick around too much in

00:39:30.280 because none of it's great, you know.

00:39:33.020 But the goal is to try to minimize the amount of learning that happens in that space that isn't just about this vague positivity towards being a helpful member of a community.

00:39:46.000 I will say that Daniel Tiger is the only show that I have like a visceral reaction to.

00:39:50.980 When I see it, I'm like, are they trying to anesthetize me?

00:39:55.960 Like, are they trying to make the caregiver fall asleep right now?

00:40:00.600 Last question.

00:40:01.520 Yeah.

00:40:01.780 What was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid?

00:40:05.660 My favorite cartoon when I was a kid?

00:40:07.480 I think probably at a certain age it was DuckTales.

00:40:12.100 I really loved DuckTales.

00:40:14.020 I was also a big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan.

00:40:16.900 Same.

00:40:17.620 Yeah.

00:40:18.400 100%. 1.00

00:40:18.920 No girls, except for the female reporter in a jumpsuit. 1.00

00:40:22.160 Respectable. 0.92

00:40:23.320 I also loved X-Men.

00:40:26.020 I thought X-Men was really cool and interesting.

00:40:28.180 I was like, oh, all the gifted kids get to go to a mansion.

00:40:30.640 Cool.

00:40:31.200 Love it.

00:40:34.100 X-Men advancing the pernicious, gifted and talented propaganda.

00:40:38.620 We could have a different episode on that.

00:40:42.040 How easy is it to access testing to become an X-Men?

00:40:46.140 It is not equitable.

00:40:47.840 How many of those kids' parents paid for expensive test prep tutors in advance of them getting into the academy, you know?

00:40:54.240 Some, but not all.

00:40:55.580 That would be my response.

00:40:58.680 It has been a true delight.

00:41:01.200 We are going to have you come back on, maybe not to talk about children's television, but maybe some other aspect of television.

00:41:06.860 My great dream is to become the David B. and Cooley of this podcast.

00:41:11.120 Just you come in at the end.

00:41:13.260 Like, you know, like Terry Gross at the end of Fresh Air, like has like a nine minute TV review.

00:41:19.420 Yep.

00:41:19.860 Yep.

00:41:20.300 Love it.

00:41:21.600 Where can people find you if they want to find more of you on the Internet?

00:41:24.780 So I you can follow me at PJMACIAK on the various socials.

00:41:30.760 And I write very regularly at The New Republic.

00:41:33.600 Awesome.

00:41:34.240 Thank you so much.

00:41:37.800 Next up, we're going to do advice time.

00:41:40.180 So normally, this is bonus content that is just for paid subscribers.

00:41:43.840 But we are making the full version of today's episode available to everyone.

00:41:48.100 Think of it as a holiday gift from me and Melody to you. 1.00

00:41:52.000 And speaking of holiday gifts, today's question is about the extra mental load a lot of moms

00:41:56.700 carry around this time of year. 0.99

00:41:58.260 So stick around.

00:42:00.760 welcome back to the triple a segment ask ann anything i have a special guest for this question

00:42:08.360 michelle cisa hello hi ann michelle is joining me because we just finished recording an episode

00:42:14.440 about the mean girls trailer that's coming out next month you do not want to miss it but our

00:42:19.000 question today is still very much in keeping with this episode's theme of fraughtness generally

00:42:26.020 speaking in parenting it's from a listener who wants to remain anonymous so melody is going to

00:42:30.460 read it for us. I'm curious about how it seems that parents, usually moms, have more mental

00:42:36.400 load around school winter holiday events than I remember from growing up. My kids are in elementary

00:42:41.680 school. For example, organizing teacher gifts, spirit weeks, sending things for class holiday

00:42:47.320 parties, kids needing different outfits for holiday performances. Maybe it was the difference

00:42:52.200 between where I grew up in a smaller town and where I live now outside a big city, but I don't

00:42:57.740 remember my mom doing any of this. How did we get here? How do we stop and or keep this from

00:43:04.560 creeping on until it takes over even more of our lives? Do some parents enjoy it? I have not met

00:43:10.240 them. I have also not met them for what it's worth. All right. Does this sound familiar to

00:43:16.720 you, Michelle? It does. I mean, I have so many thoughts about this as someone who has two

00:43:23.120 children and i i have a theory about where some of this pressure comes from which is the big thing

00:43:29.020 that's changed between our generation as parents and you know our parents generation and that is

00:43:34.740 social media where you know you are seeing everybody engineering all of these holiday moments

00:43:42.660 all of these you know outfits these activities there's this kind of arms race for creating like

00:43:50.080 family memories through this visual medium where you're making sure that you've like you know set

00:43:57.140 design your children's birthday parties that you've gone to the pumpkin patch in the fall

00:44:00.600 and and it I don't know that anybody enjoys it but I think when we see other people doing it we

00:44:06.120 feel compelled to keep up and I think that pressure happens at school too where there's this this idea

00:44:11.740 that like if there's a silly pajama day you have to send your kids in silly pajamas I don't know

00:44:17.460 why schools are so interested because i feel like teachers have enough going on and they also

00:44:22.860 shouldn't feel like they have to engineer this kind of constant holiday magic i think there's

00:44:27.580 an interesting intersection here with what you were saying about the rise of social media

00:44:31.180 the other thing that has happened since we were kids is an incredible decline in school funding

00:44:37.120 yes and public support for schools just generally and so what you have are schools particularly

00:44:45.040 public schools that are under threat that are under duress like it has never been a more difficult

00:44:51.540 time to be a teacher right now and so I think that builds this like over determined thing about what

00:44:59.480 you get all of the teachers as gifts I think I used to like color a card that was the extent of

00:45:07.480 the present that I gave to a teacher and that didn't that wasn't because I didn't appreciate

00:45:13.840 my teacher i think that the way that we showed that we appreciated our teachers was by paying

00:45:19.240 taxes and paying them a living wage yeah um and then the other thing about the school holiday

00:45:25.540 stuff and the spirit weeks i did a piece on this a while back and we'll put it in the show notes

00:45:30.460 but a lot of teachers told me that one of the reasons they resort to these spirit weeks

00:45:35.980 is because their teachers are or their students are so worn down from school from like testing

00:45:42.200 and like just really too much stuff going on that this is a way to like give students some joy

00:45:51.140 in the school week right like and to distract and to like just have something fun and that to me is 0.64

00:45:58.380 a symptom of a larger malaise and not connected obviously to like women bearing the responsibility

00:46:07.200 for creating holiday magic but like it's just a big part of this bigger cluster that's really

00:46:11.420 frustrating it is yes and I mean one thing I would also gently add is whether you know you don't

00:46:17.300 remember your mom doing this because a lot of what our moms did when we were children is invisible to

00:46:22.960 us because I think this kind of labor has always fallen on moms and and it's challenging now

00:46:28.420 because I think there probably were more stay-at-home moms 30 years ago than there are now

00:46:33.740 and the idea that you could devote yourself to you know your child's classroom was uh even then

00:46:40.240 probably an unrealistic expectation for most. But now, you know, people are trying to do this

00:46:44.560 on top of full-time jobs, on top of other caregiving responsibilities. And it really

00:46:49.540 does feel like this decline in supporting our social institutions like school has displaced a

00:46:56.220 lot of labor, unpaid labor, onto other people. And some of that is falling on teachers who are

00:47:00.800 doing more and more with less, and some of it is falling on parents. And I don't know what my

00:47:06.180 solution for that is besides you know vote for better funding fight for better funding for your

00:47:13.460 public institutions um but also i try and really encourage people to opt out of yep you know these

00:47:20.520 things if you know you don't have to participate in the holiday arms race um and i think it's worth

00:47:27.500 you know sending an email to your kid's school and explaining why you can't because i think

00:47:31.300 probably teachers would would feel relief to see a parent saying you know what this is a little too

00:47:36.160 much I don't think we need to do all this like I appreciate it but I can't participate for these

00:47:41.020 reasons like give that teacher permission to plan less next year as well yeah and that's the thing

00:47:47.000 is that teachers also say that if they don't participate in this then they'll have parents

00:47:52.140 who write in and say like why aren't you doing this so if you can you know whether it's part

00:47:58.360 of a parent teacher association or just like having a couple other people who write in and

00:48:02.420 say like i'm i'm trying to give you permission like i'm that yeah that you don't have to

00:48:06.360 participate in this that's great the other thing i would say is like you do not need to get a

00:48:10.940 teacher anything cute as a present give them money like give them a gift card give them a gift card

00:48:16.980 to target give them a gift card to starbucks wherever that is how you say it and then also

00:48:22.620 have your kids do something that is meaningful like and that is maybe harder than making or

00:48:29.020 buying something cute but at the same time it's more meaningful and then I think your last point

00:48:33.420 about opting out is so great because it's hard at first but I have watched a lot of moms be like

00:48:40.100 you know what I there's so much stress in my life over the holiday card I'm just gonna stop

00:48:44.300 just stop yeah and once you don't do it one year it gets so much easier and you know the truly

00:48:51.200 radical suggestion if you find that this is all falling on you as the mom in the dynamic perhaps

00:48:56.760 it's time for your partner to write some holiday cards you know to to make sure that the the funny

00:49:03.140 pajamas are cleaned and packed for school I mean I see among my friends who are parents so much of

00:49:08.900 this anxiety among women and in heterosexual marriages with children and I don't know that

00:49:15.580 like the men in those families are even often aware of these expectations and no that is also

00:49:22.340 something that hasn't changed over the generations you know my mom talks about how my dad was always

00:49:26.500 listed as the first contact for schools to call if we were sick or something like that and regardless

00:49:31.280 every time one of us threw up in the classroom she got the call first oh my gosh and and that

00:49:37.700 has to change too you know like make sure if there is a huge volume of domestic labor accumulating

00:49:43.360 around the holidays that you're talking with your partner about either how to share it or just what

00:49:48.360 you're doing like let's make that work visible to everybody I think that that last point is so

00:49:53.820 important because sometimes i think a lot of us who feel like we're shouldering a lot of the mental

00:49:58.960 load do so in silence and then at some point it boils over and like you have a fight yeah and so

00:50:05.100 sometimes just talking about the things that you're doing can be really useful in making that

00:50:09.520 mental load visible um and and hopefully if you have an empathetic partner they will see a lot of

00:50:16.000 what you're doing and be like how can i how can i share that load how can we like do this together

00:50:20.420 Figure out what, as a family, not just you as a mom, but as a family, what do we want to prioritize?

00:50:27.360 What is actually meaningful to us?

00:50:29.500 What matters?

00:50:30.680 I think that's a great way of approaching it. 1.00

00:50:33.380 Make men do more holiday cards.

00:50:37.380 There's our solution. 0.77

00:50:39.000 All right.

00:50:39.320 Thank you so much.

00:50:40.760 Thanks, Anne.

00:50:42.640 Thank you so much for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

00:50:45.620 If you like today's advice time, or just if you like this episode, you will love being

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00:50:59.640 heartwarming knowledge that you're helping us make the show that we want to make that

00:51:02.920 is just as weird and interesting as you heard today.

00:51:07.200 I'll also say that this is our primary economic model.

00:51:09.900 If we don't have subscribers, we can't keep making the show.

00:51:12.640 so if you want the show to continue gotta subscribe we have so many great episodes in

00:51:18.680 the works and I promise you don't want to miss any of them next week Melody says I have to say

00:51:23.940 I'm taking the plunge I'm literally we're gonna be talking about cold plunging and the weird

00:51:30.240 culture that's popped up around it and the tentative plan is I have to go take a cold

00:51:34.960 plunge we'll see if this happens the culture study podcast is produced by me Anne Helen

00:51:39.580 Peterson and Melody Rowell. Our music is by Poddington Bear. You can find me on Instagram

00:51:44.700 at Anne Helen Peterson and the show at Culture Study Pod. Thank you again for listening and we'll

00:51:50.180 talk again soon.

Culture Study Podcast - December 27, 2023

The Pernicious Laziness of Paw Patrol

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Transcript