Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX

About a year before I got married, one of my former officemates was telling about how much her son loves Barney. He liked it so bad that during evenings my officemate would just play Barney VCDs until he fell asleep. My other officemates likewise profess their own children’s undying love for the purple dinosaur.

While they seemed for some reason proud of their children’s fondness for the fictional jurassic creature, deep inside I was telling myself; “A baby watching that sissy bouncing purple dinosaur all day? Shit, I don’t want any of my children to be like that.”

Fast foward to this afternoon. I arrived from the office after lunch, got in the living room and lo and behold, my 13 month old was cheering and dancing to a VCD of Barney. My wife almost cringed when she saw me; she knew I hated Barney to the bone. I asked where the video was from; she said that it was borrowed from a neighbor. Good, I thought she actually wasted money on that crap.

A lot of you might be wondering what my beef against Barney is. What’s so bad about such a cute and cuddly (not to mention purple) amalgamation of nylon, polyurethane, cotton and steel wire? Well, there are three things.

First of all, Barney is now all but a marketing ploy. His show has long ceased to be an educational show that focuses on the 3Rs; rather, each episode appears to be a 30 minute parody of song and dance starring a purple sissy T-rex (who obviously forgot his species) and two boneless proto(or tri)ceratops. The focus of the show doesn’t seem to be on teaching; it’s focus is how these dinosaurs are having so much fun singing their cutesy songs. These cutesy songs and their videos merely find their way to audio CDs, videos, books and CD ROMs, not to mention concerts.

Yes, concerts. For children. As in toddlers and preschoolers. I mean, consumerism doesn’t get any better than that. These are aside from the usual toys having the image and likeness of Barney and the 2 sidekicks, with the perennial I love you theme song included.

Second, Barney is a misguided icon of American pop culture. Although Barney’s cutesy-sissy personality seeks to educate children on good manners and courtesy (issues that seem to be of concern amongst children being reared in an individualistic me-me-me world typical of Western culture), the dinosaur’s image merely enforces the superstar paradigm that children’s shows have seem to have taken.

This is exactly the same argument against Elmo’s usurpance of Sesame Street. Sesame Street used to be a show that featured a community with people and puppets genuinely interacting with each other in everyday similar-to-real-life activities. Beginning with the popularity of Tickle Me Elmos in the mid-90s, Elmo’s fame soon rose and disloged a lot of Sesame Street regulars, effectively eliminating the community paradigm of Sesame Street.

Thus my belief that Elmo and Barney are pop icons; they are usually either doing their segments alone, or in the case of Barney, he has a small exclusivish clique instead of a large community. And all they seem to ever try to do is to have fun. I don’t know if it’s just me, but this again seems to reflect on the highly individualistic aspect of Western culture, with emphasis on popularity. And I don’t want those to be the things my baby learn from TV.

Finally, Barney’s (as well as Elmo’s) show seemed to have forgotten a very important aspect of society, which is family. Ironic, because Barney’s most popular song goes like I love you, You love me, We’re a happy family. Barney (aside from very few episodes) and Elmo’s shows are nearly devoid of the mention of parents, siblings, and grandparents. If ever they are mentioned, they are mentioned in passing. Again, I don’t know if that’s just making it more appropriate or “politically correct” for their intended market (e.g., American children, many of which have divorced parents) but the family concept for me is just too important to ignore.

My wife asked me to turn off the Barney video after our conversation. At the back of my mind, my fear would that be of my daughter pleading for me not to turn off the TV. Or pleading for me to buy this or that Barney thing. I’m going to try to nip this in the bud; I’d not let my daughter have Barney videos. Except maybe if they come as gifts. But I’m figuring out ways to prevent that too.

One good thing however: my baby’s scared of her Dancing Elmo. It’s gathering dust in the toy cabinet. So it’s just Barney with the LSS-susceptible I love you song playing when you squeeze the left hand. For now.