Sans Souci. (Teletubbies)

Member Name: peel.rebekah

Product:	Teletubbies
Date:	18/10/01 (464 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ey oh.

Disadvantages: Tinky Winky do Boum Boum dance.

It would, I rationalise, be the natural, if not the obvious choice to make children's entertainment in primary colours (those being red, yellow and blue, and of which all other colours can be made), so on which premise do those chosen colours drop the blue and add purple and green? And what do those pigment changes actually mean? And who are the THEY behind this barrage of hues upon mine and my progeny's senses? And should I be getting out my copy of Kandinsky's Theory of Colour?

You see, Victor has discovered the teletubbies...BIG TIME, as I expect so many other children of his age have done so before him, and in a way that puts all other children's television programs out to pasture in a very large field where they can eat all day, all night, and never need to come back to the farm, never at all, ever. In fact, Victor's attention span drops to that of not very attentive gnat during an algebra lesson when anything else is on the television...well, not quite true, he seems to have a hankering for Italian black and white '50's movies, but that's kind of besides the point...

The point? Well, I'm amazed. No, more than that, I'm jolly well overwhelmed at my twenty months old reaction to four adults dressed in dubious shaded, large arsed costumes with a penchant for pink gloop and plastic bread. You see my point? Not yet? Well let me make myself clearer:

Four 'tubbies' who are at the forefront of telecommunication experimentation...just take a look at their bellies, what do we see? Yes, that's right folks, some sort of interactive videophone getup. Forget your palm pilots, your Generation 3 mobiles, move over Existenz, this is the future - a television unit where our belly buttons should be (hmmn, I wonder if the doctor who separated them from their mummies at birth just unplugged, or did he have to rewire?).

It the tubbie unit is going to receive all those transmissions, then, bien
sur, it has to have a receiver: Hence we see this evolved protuberance from said tubbies' head, each of which appears to be unique. A shared feature of these tubbies is the enlarged femur bone...or maybe just a cellulite problem in the thigh rejoin, we can't be sure (although I can just imagine La La down at Weight Watchers: "It's a thyroid problem"). We can also surmise that the outside colour of their fur/skin may actually play no part in the recognition of their ethnic origin...unless Dipsy has just returned from Ibiza or has a sunbed hidden away somewhere in Teletubbyland.

Then there's this size/sex thing: The two of larger tubbies are regarded as being male (aahem, not that I've inspected at close quarters, yet there seems to be an extreme lack of physical evidence to support this claim), the smaller, more fragile pair are defined as female. This in no way equates to relative intelligence levels, as it is often the smallest female of the group (Po) that provides insight, thought and humour. The two 'males' exhibit extremely feminine behavior at times (one appears to have a favourite handbag, the other a faux fur hat), while the two 'females' prefer to spend their time in more male orientated pastimes - playing with a ball and a tricycle.

What are we to make of their rather bland and featureless faces? Their lack of usable nostrils makes one ponder whether they have evolved from a state of sinus problems. All in all, their appearance, while some would regard it as cute, is pretty non functional and repelling to that of an adult gaze.

Let us just take a moment to muse over their constant and loyal companion, The Noo-Noo: One supposes that the rather robust vacuum cleaner is some sort of pet, yet the tubbies do tend to neglect him, letting him only eat/clean up their leftovers. They chastise 'him' when his suction becomes to loud or off putting, yet surely this is a feature complete
ly beyond his control, a little like snoring or the passing of toilet wind. The most worrying of The Noo-Noo's features are his elongated eyeball tissues and his flashing red buttocks, both of which seem to be of little evolutionary value to this creature and his fellow kind.

All of the above species exist in a land that appears to be very similar to our own; the differences seem to lie in the gently rolling hillocks, abundance of plastic flowers, continuous blue sky (not forgetting little fluffy clouds that are very likely to look just like a ball, hat, bag or tricycle) and lack of rabbit droppings. Their abode can only be described as a sunken spaceship (of the 1950's variety - we're not talking Stealth or Star Wars here); half hidden by the greenness of the countryside, only its large telescope/megaphone penetrating the stillness of the air gives it away...Penetrating the air with nursery rhymes and children's songs, feeding times and bye bye so-longs.

Did I get carried away there? Did you notice?

All this because I started thinking that:

1) Reviews on the Teletubbies are exceedingly boring.

And

2) How the hell did the makers of this monstrosity know how and what to market to a pre vocally communicative audience?

I can understand how such people market research their creations for an older age group, but this one just baffles me. As a mother, I have a difficult enough time as it is trying to work out what my son is trying to tell me, so Mr/Mrs Market Researcher with biro and note pad in hand must be stumped. And if we, as parents, don't understand or see the appeal, then it can't be us that are passing on the approval of such a program.

I'm not too sure about all that original hype when poor ol' Tinky Winky was fired for being too camp with his handbag...I mean, come on, how can you not be TOO camp when you're six foot something, dressed in purple fur, no w
illy in sight, told to talk in a nearly testicles dropped fashion...AND holding a handbag? Naa. Campiness is embedded in Teletubbies, I have no ffffin' idea why, but it seems to work.

I will, however, defend the program from those viscous 'dumbing down' attacks that it suffered when most parents discovered their children's obsession; I think that side of it is rather inventive, and dare I say it - funky. Not since Playschool have we had so much dancing, jumping up and down and shaking of derrieres (No, Jemima was too much of a lady to join in those sorts of shenanigans, but believe me, Big Ted certainly did ask). Music, in the Teletubbies, is the all important route to teaching, as is the use of repetition; colour is kept simple (ish) and language is on a direct level with the children the program is aimed at, again using a repetitive approach when a new word is included.

Nope, I've no qualms with that side of affairs, nor with the varied and often alternative children and their lifestyles that get to play themselves out on the Teletubbies TV monitor tummy button bits: Get down and boogie with a slicked jazz version of The Grand old Duke of York in the company of multi racial jitterbugging juniors; Tour a canal boat with the 'traveling' young lady that lives aboard; Do the Boum Boum dance till your tam tams fall off and just, well, jump up and down for no reason whatsoever while little plastic flowers chat amongst themselves with posh accents...

That's it, I think I've overdosed.

Time for Tubby bye byes.

Oh yeh, and La La is my favourite.

Summary: