for millennials, young jet necksers who are listening to this. What is the analogous show in our cartoon? Oh, interesting. Is it power rangers? I don't think so. It's not power rangers is a little bit later. Yeah. I think that the genre of this show is a team of people helping somebody. And I think in that sense,
I want to say maybe rescue rangers is a reasonable analog for this. 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 the fact that I was going to show them. Who's that? Yeah. I imagine all of those rescue rangers shows ends with like one of the Paw Patrol cops showing up big like you're not allowed to do any of this. Leave the sauce.
I'm Anne Helen Petersen and this is the Culture Study Podcast. I'm Philip Macyak. I'm the TV critic for the New Republic. I teach at Washington University in St. Louis and I'm the author of the book Avley Reads Screen Time. How do you think about writing about television like right now? Like how do you talk to your students when you're teaching about reading TV as a cultural text? One of the things that I always say and this is in media studies classes as well as in literature
classes and pop culture classes is that every text is teaching us something. And it's doing that whether it's a sort of obvious highbrow, you know, literary text like Moby Dick or beloved or whether it's a car commercial or a cartoon show or a photograph in a magazine 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. 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 side and being one of the only people that I know who wrote really interestingly and persuasively about children's television. So can you talk a little bit about like writing about children's television and writing about screen time more broadly? Sure, of course. Yeah. So I've been, as you
said, I've been writing about TV with you and with other people for a really long time. And what that has usually meant are you know, Prestige TV shows that air on Sunday nights, right? Sometimes Monday nights. And so a lot of that because you and I came up at a time when episodic criticism, the like the recap era or the post recap era was was was very big and what people wanted. We turned the way that we pay attention to any cultural text toward these sort of episodic
snippets of TV shows. And so I think I learned as a writer and as a viewer to to view with that kind of granular attention, things that are accumulating. And that was like my practice of watching TV. And then you know, we had Maeve in 2015. And I started watching TV with her as at the point when she started watching TV. And you know, her TV shows are very different than my TV shows.
But it's hard to turn that way of watching off, I think. And so I wrote about this in slate a couple of years ago about the sort of paranoid style of viewing that you start to develop when you're watching pre K CGI cartoons with your child, but you're watching them the way you would watch you know, Game of Thrones or something like that. And it becomes it's both sort of definitionally inappropriate to the way you're supposed to watch those shows. It's certainly not
the way Maeve is watching them or Phoebe, but it becomes like a fun little game. It's the way you sort of keep yourself invested or keep yourself watching is to ask about the like the logistics of the the governmental structure and and Dino Tigers neighborhood or something like that. And the thing is I'm saying that says, you know, I'm a TV critic and I learned how to do this because of a TV critic. But I think a lot of parents and a lot of caregivers watching the same way where you
know, it's these shows are not interesting from an adult perspective. And so you have to sort of make them interesting in some way. Yeah. But that is to say, there are some really interesting and very good shows for for kids. But by and large, you're watching these sort of formulaic, you know, cartoons and sort of projecting things onto them in a way that I kind of enjoy. Yeah. And I think that like they're there, right? Like ideologies that form the bedrock for like how
these different shows are constructed. Like the world building. You know, there's nothing like quote unquote natural about like the worlds that they built, even though there's, you know, whether they're people with tigers that are doing like asthma sounds, which is what Daniel Tiger is or the different shows that we watched. I was like, oh, there's like gummy bears that bounce up and down or like snorke's is like a weird underworld of animals that have things coming out of
their head. Like that's not natural. But also like the way that they've arranged families, like the way that they've arranged their moral universe, all that stuff. Like it's obviously building on an ideologies that we've accepted within our society for better or worse. So there is that stuff to unpack. But then also sometimes you have to be like, Tom and Jerry are just running around hitting each other. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. Obviously there's, you know, nothing's natural
about any media, right? All media's artificial and imagined and trying to sort of replicate some vision of reality. And that works one way in classical Hollywood. It works one way in 21st century prestige television. And it works just the same in in TV that's meant for three worlds. And sometimes I think, you know, whether it's Tom and Jerry hitting each other or, you know, Bluey and Bingo trying to figure out how to play together and with their parents, there's a, it's maybe a simplified
version of that that world building, right? I think about like shows like Doc McStuffins where the action is like right up front. And everything else in the background is kind of blurry, right? It's kind of it's like a desktop wallpaper for, you know, what's happening in the front end. But what's happening in the front end is world building, right? And it's teaching you about like how you're supposed to help people or that you're supposed to help people in a certain given context.
And I think that it's not just that it's world building, but it's also that I think we generally have a presumption about kids TV that all the world building and all of the messaging is supposed to be positive, right? It's supposed to, you know, if I'm saying that everything that we in all media text that we encounter or teaching us things, you know, surreptitiously or even unconsciously, you know,
we expect kids TV to teach kids things, right? That's the expectation of children's television. And so that sort of ideological aspect you're talking about, I think it's even more front and center with these shows because parents think, oh, well, this shows good because it's teaching my kids something positive or something good or something that will help them to become a good person in the world. Right. And that includes representation too, which we can get into. I think we should establish a
little bit of our positionality to use an academic word. Like we talked a little bit about yours watching television with your daughters. Mine is very different in that. I do not have kids. I sporadically engage in various television texts when I am around my friends' kids. And so that means sometimes it's when I'm watching them, we'll watch something. And sometimes it's like, oh, this happens up my friend who lives in Seattle when I stay at their house, they love waking me up
first instead of their parents. They're like, we're gonna go gay. I get the parents like that too. They love it. They call me anti-blondy. So they're like, we're gonna go get anti-blondy. They come down and they wake me up and they're like, come watch TV with us. It's 6.30 in the morning. I get them like some cereal and like a giant thing of milk in a sippy cup, right? I'm like, who has ever consumed this much milk? And then we choose what we're gonna watch. And so sometimes
depending on like their ages, it's a movie. Sometimes it's a TV show. I've watched a bit of Paw Patrol. The kids are kind of aging out of it. So my Paw Patrol knowledge is not full. But does have a lot of vibes. And also I know a lot about like the critique that it's Copaganda, which we're gonna get into as well. How much Paw Patrol have you personally watched? So it's interesting. I think I described it to you and Melody as that I'm conversational
in Paw Patrol, but not fluent in Paw Patrol. I think, so I was talking to Phoebe, so Phoebe is my four year old about this this morning. And she knows about Paw Patrol. But she has not really watched it at any great length. Maeve, her older sister, who is eight, did watch Paw Patrol in her youth. I'm not 100% sure in what context. I don't remember. I mean, I've seen, you know, I've seen episodes. We've seen a bit of it. It was never her sort of central rotation
show. It was something that would see Ben. And I believe we had a stuffier too. This is the thing that's actually interesting to me. I feel as if Paw Patrol is one of the more culturally visible shows of this genre. So Maeve was not a big fan, but somehow ended up having, you know, a writer and a sky stuffy in her room. There are shows that I would identify as, well, Maeve was obsessed with this show. And she was never obsessed with Paw Patrol, but Paw Patrol is everywhere. It's
very available. It's very front and center if you walk the toy aisle at a target or something like that. And so my experience of it is both as an occasional co-viewer, but also as someone who just notices it everywhere. And lots of kids dress up as Paw Patrol characters for Halloween, in kindergarten, age, and things like that. This is a great, I think, segue into talking about how many questions we got from culture-stutter readers because it was double digits. It was
easily the most popular topic that I pose, like, what questions do you have? And I think it's because, as we talked about before, two, parents are exposed to this, and like, it's super boring, but want to make it interesting to themselves. And so here are all the questions that they are asking, you know, sometimes out of a little bit of anxiety, but sometimes, and I think mostly out of like, what is this ridiculous world? So let's get into the first question. It is from Emily.
What's do this? What's they would say on Paw Patrol? Let's do that. Let's do this. How do my kids know so much about Paw Patrol when we've never watched it in our house? And is it police propaganda, or is it just not that deep? All right, so this is the fundamental tension. And I think, like, the question of how kids know about shows that they have never consumed is one that is mildly mind-boggling, but also not if you've ever observed kids playing the way that they talk about shows.
And then there's the secondary exposure element, which is constant advertising on like YouTube, the regular TV, whatever. So what do you think? Anything else? I think that's it. I mean, it's a show that's very available to see. It's a show that's very available to see on actual TV, as well as, yeah, on, you know, streaming and apps and things like that. But to me, my explanation would be that,
yeah, it's just very, there's a lot of Paw Patrol stuff out there. If you walk around, you know, you do drop off or pick up at an elementary school or a kindergarten, and you're just going to see a lot of backpacks and sweaters and things like that with Paw Patrol stuff, print it on it. There's a lot of like second-hand Paw Patrol inhalation going on in America's schools, whether or not, you know, the kids themselves are really invested in it. Okay, then the second question, is it
copaganda or is it not that dude? That's a real toofr question. Yeah, how do you answer this one? I think before we did this recording, I read a lot of the sort of think pieces that were circulating during the pandemic and during the civil rights marches about this show in particular, because I think it got a lot of, and I can't really reconstruct the genealogy of how this happened necessarily specifically, but it felt like Paw Patrol became a sort of marker of what copaganda looks
like in popular media. Amanda has, at the New York Times, has a really good piece about it that I thought did a good job kind of summarizing the controversy and why Paw Patrol is at the center of it. I think all shows, all world building, whether it's a kid's show or whether it's madman or whether it's, you know, the MCU or something, are built around kind of fundamental assumptions about the world that they live in and they don't have to focalize any particular thing if it's sort of
part of the bedrock of what the story world is. I think Paw Patrol, I think a lot of shows assume that, you know, police officers are always doing good and they're people who can help you if you need help. You know, it pops up, you know, more, I think than you would imagine in a lot of different kids' shows. I think the fact that Paw Patrol puts it front and center is one of the reasons why it sort of stood out. I think in the sense of copaganda, as it's talked about, yeah, it is. It's
copaganda, you know. It is a show that's like cops are good. Yeah, it's one of the main points of it. I mean, to be fair, it's also about other emergency services, right? So it's about how firefighters are good too, right? Right. So it's not, you know, it's not like the Paw Patrol is not as a holy police force, right? It includes a police officer. Part of what it is doing is sort of flattening all of those emergency services, right? So like, yeah, of course, people who drive ambulance are good.
Of course, you know, firefighters who put out the fire at your house are good, right? And the police are folded into that too. So I think that's part of why it sort of it becomes such a sort of flashpoint and became such a flashpoint as we were sort of culturally sifting through even the most seemingly innocuous media and asking like, where does this narrative come from? How does this get
rehashed and rehearsed and learned ultimately? Right. I imagine if you were to like talk at length with the creators, there would never be a point where the creators would be like, you know what? We love cops. Like we wanted to make a show that just was like cops are awesome. Right. And instead, it's more like, how do we make a morally legible show that involves tropes that are already familiar to kids that we can build on? Right? Like, and then also make them dogs.
So they're cuter. Yeah. You know, and also the melodrama of it all, which in so much as we're talking about like a morally legible universe where there are like, people are good, people are bad. How do you find those people in any scenario? Like, it's just easy. Like, if anything, it's a lazy world building less more than like a pernicious one. But it can be also be permanicious if it's lazy. So yeah, part of the way this works is through the reproduction of uncritical assumptions about
the way the world works on the part of writers. And part of the reason you're getting all these questions about Paw Patrol is that it's not that parents are more exposed to Paw Patrol than other shows. It's that they dislike Paw Patrol more than they just like the other shows. It's not a very good show. I mean, I think that's at the heart of it. And part of what you're saying is like laziness or clumsiness about about the themes is a part of that. It's invoking stuff that people should be
thinking about more critically than they are thinking about it. And reproducing it relatively uncritically. And I think that that's one of the things that makes this not, I mean, it's an example of propaganda for just the sort of textual reasons that it is. But it becomes egregious. It becomes a sort of flashpoint for it. I think because it's just not really thinking about it that much. Right. It's just doing it because this is what you do. Why wouldn't I do this? Right.
So I agree with you. There isn't a lot of, I don't think there's like a blue lives matter impulse behind the writing and creation of Paw Patrol. But I think it's doing a lot of that work just on its own. Okay, our next two questions are similar. So we're going to play them back to back. This is from Olivia. How did Paw Patrol get such a hold on us? My parent friends say that it's unavoidable. And they feel like so few people in their years see the problems as a show that
upholds a police state. Is anyone studying the effect that Paw Patrol or other shows with the same worldview are having on our kids? And this is from Cece. Why is Paw Patrol so beloved by kids? What makes it addictive in a way that blue is not? As an adult, I hate watching Paw Patrol for its black and white morality. The bad guy is always bad and painted in a very negative light as an overweight middle-aged man who is selfish and mean. And why can't people solve their own
problems and always rely on Paw Patrol? Also, the clever merchandising, which my kids want. I think it's an example of merchandising opportunity disguised as a show for kids and makes me discuss it. I get the sense that this is a show, like a lot of kids shows, that was almost like reverse engineered, right? They were like, what is something we can merchandise the shit out of?
And then we can figure out a narrative secondarily. Yeah, I think that part of your argument that it doesn't feel pernicious is because the narrative of the show is just an existing narrative, cultural narrative, right? Which is, if you need help call the police, or if you need help call 911. And it's not doing much more than reproducing that narrative and adding puppy characters to it. 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, right? There are things about the show that are controversial, right? But there's nothing controversial about saying that its narratives are sort of deeply embedded in the culture, right? They don't have to do a lot of world-building because the world that this show exists in is basically the one we exist in.
It's just dogs instead of people. I would also say, and because we've got this experience now, a couple of times this year, so if your kid goes to public school or even if they don't, right? Very often, one of the things that you get is like a visit from the fire truck. Yeah. And kids love it. Kids love a fire truck and you get to climb on it and you know, honk the horn or whatever. And it's kind of an interesting, firefighters have this cool object.
They get to sort of signify what they do and get the neighborhood excited about it. Like cops don't have a cool object that isn't a gun to get kids excited about. But what cops do have is dogs. And my, both girls have had visits from like cops with dogs at their schools. And they love it, right? Because they got dogs, right? They got cool puppies so we get to hang out with. I think Paw Patrol, it's not only that it's just sort of reproducing this pre-existing cultural
narrative. It's also taking advantage of like one of the biggest PR advantages cops have with kids is that they've got dogs, right? Kids love dogs, right? What's wrong with dogs? So what if there's a show and the cop is a dog, right? That's just better than you could imagine. And a puppy. Not just a dog. Yeah, that's an old, old stinky, you know, German shepherd. Just going back to the question asker who asked, is it not that deep? It isn't that deep.
There's not a lot of complexity to this show. Even in the way that there is for some of the other shows that are kind of part of it's genre. Like I keep saying Doc McStuffins, but Doc McStuffins, right? There's a slightly more slightly more complex sort of representation of like care and helpfulness within the context of that show. Then there is with this because because they're Doc McStuffins, it's about asking people to help you and people feeling a responsibility to
care for each other. Whereas Paw Patrol, this is their job, right? You just like press the button, you know, and the appropriate dog comes out to help with the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that I think that you're right, there is a it's hard to talk about Paw Patrol to like lend new wants to Paw Patrol because it's just 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.
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. Yeah, the show. So, so you either in this situation, I think that the 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. You're like cool bag. Also, let's watch this instead,
right? I do love that the person points out that like, why won't my kid get addicted to blue week? Because I don't want to I'd like to meet this kid that is incapable of getting addicted to blue week because I that is not my experience. I try again. I don't know. 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, counter program. Yeah, there's a lot of kids TV out there. A lot of it on you know, a lot of it on paid apps and things like that, but a lot of it on regular television and also free V you know apps. There's a lot of different kids shows out there that are doing doing better work than than Paw Patrol is doing. I'm sympathetic to the idea that it's hard to escape because I we didn't escape it, you know,
it's it's everywhere. But you know, there's other kids shows. Our next question is from Kristen and I love it. Melody's going to read it for us. Who wrote the Paw Patrol theme song? It's so loud and aggressive compared to the other kids theme songs. All right, so we're going to play a
little bit of this song. Oh, no. All right, I'm going to press play. Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol will be there on the double. Whenever there's a problem, round adventure bay, ladder and it's team of pups will come and save the day. Marshall.
I like the line. No jobs too big. No pups too small. That's great. So the question is why is it so allowed and aggressive compared to other kid theme songs? Honestly, that just seems like a line with a lot of other kids theme songs. I don't know. What do you think? I think there's two main kinds of kids TV theme song. One is fast explanatory premise based theme song, which I think this falls under the umbrella of all the way back to like duct tails. You know, yeah, so what's the show, right?
Is what this theme song is an answer to. And then you have the kind of like bouncy enigmatic iconic theme song that like the blue theme song, for instance, yeah, where it's just a little earworm that you get stuck. There's no lyrics. There's no real need to explain what's going on. But this is this is like if you took a pamphlet about regional community services and asked Blink 182 to turn into a song for like a rock opera.
The best part is that Melody looked up who wrote the theme song and it's co-written by like a bunch of Christian rock stars from like the early 2000s. Really? Well, he wasn't like Sandy Patty. Okay, so it's two composers, two songwriters from very different genres. There is the Christian guy or at least he wrote songs for Christian musicians, Christian stars and the early 2000s. Like Sandy Patty, FFH, point of grace, Jackie Velasquez, like everybody I listen to in 2001.
Sandy Patty was like kind of kids music though, right? I never got into her. Yeah, no, that was like that was it. But it's a match up. It's the Christian guy. Sorry. I'm going to edit myself out of this. So maybe you're not you're going to be. This is like conspiracy corner. The other songwriter has written songs for like Kesha, cold play, the pussy catgalls. So it's like really a mashup.
I just like this song is so bad. Why does it need so many composers? But I think that you're right. It's like it's so simple. It's just what they do. It's like how you know sometimes freelance writers. They just have to like do copy editing sometimes to like put together a feasible salary. I don't know what this is what Kesha's co-writer is doing. I'm looking now. I'm seeing this as being banquered by the random corporation. Halibut? No, I'm kidding. That was my Michael Moore reading.
I'm like, what the hell is this? George HW Bush wrote this song. The police. Staying from the Pompadreville Park. Do you think that our parents like hated the ductails song or like the ductails like premise? Just like diving into money? I don't know. My parents did not, you know, co-watching is like the strategy now and my parents never watched cartoons with me. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to mount too big of a defensive ductails, but I feel like there's a...
Yeah, the class politics of ductails might be interesting to dive into. There is, he is like Scrooge McDuck is kind of on the outs though. It's it isn't... Yeah. Enduring to everyone that he has that much money, it's useful to Huey Dui and Louie, but it's not necessarily... Right, like he's grouchy and so you're supposed to learn that if you have too much money, you're grouchy. It's bad. I don't know which one. Next question. This is about Kid's TV more broadly. And it's from Anya.
Why is the trope of one girl character in a group of boys so persistent in Kid's TV? You see it on the Muppets, you see it on the Smurfs, you see it now in Paw Patrol, it's even the Stranger Things. How are we still doing this? Yeah. Man, yeah, what are your thoughts on this? So this show was made in... Was it 2013? Am I right about that? Wow. It's that old? Yeah. And a lot of other shows were around then that don't have this problem. So like, Daniel Tiger's neighborhood is roughly that vintage.
And it's got pretty good splits, you know, for representation. It feels anachronistic for the show to be this bad at gender representation. Yeah. In other words, given that 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, a dog on the show because it feels like, well, why would you make that mistake? 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. Or, and I was reading about it and they tried after the first season they added a... they added Everest to try to sort of address this problem. But, but like, at what point during the production process did somebody not bring that up, you know, that it was going to be a thing?
I mean, I think part of it is, you know, there is, and 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. Yeah. And, and I think, you know, the same thing is true of super wings. The same thing is basically true of octanats.
On the other side of the ledger, there are a lot of shows that are very focused, shows in this like pre-K, you know, CGI space that are really focused on little girls in particular. Or, who's like point of view character is a little girl. So like, Doc Mcsteffan's or Jesse and Nessie or the rocketeer, Shimmer and Shine shows like that.
I mean, I watch Shimmer and Shine. Oh my god. Yeah. There's a lot of problems. It's Shimmer and Shine. There is one boy character on Shimmer and Shine. And he is just a complete moron. And every episode is basically structured around the idea that there's this like elaborate thing happening with these genies. And he's just completely unaware of it. I'm not saying this is I'm not advocating for Shimmer and Shine. I think Shimmer and Shine is, is as problematic as as Bob Patrol in some ways.
But I think that there's a, there are shows that feel very catered towards particular audiences based on gender. And I think Paw Patrol in some ways is in that, that mix, but also is kind of ham-fisted in the mistakes it makes in that, in that respect. 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. Or oftentimes exploring mountains or that sort of thing. Like that to me seems like more of where, if you're trying to be mindful about this stuff, then you don't have a main character.
Right. You have many main characters who are all interested in skilled and different ways. And that is kind of the lesson of the show is that we collaborate to do things. And like oftentimes they meet an expert who imparts knowledge. And also they rely on the knowledge and like curiosity and innovativeness of the younger kids who make up this, this larger world view.
I mean, in my experience, thinking about shows that have been produced during and have had sort of like some sort of cultural purchase during the eight years that I've been apparent. It feels like a convention at this point for shows to sort of foreground some some aspect or multiple aspects of of representational diversity on screen.
Like it doesn't feel weird to me when there's a show that has a cast of characters who represent a sort of broad swath of different races and ethnicities and genders. It's stranger to encounter a show that feels very boy focused or feels very white, right? In a new show, right? I think this is a, that's important because it's been such a huge problem in kids media and in media in general.
But just watching what what we watch on TV, I think that for kids shows, I mean, I think it's very obviously been a point of emphasis in kids television production over at least the last several years. I keep thinking about like they didn't necessarily need to gender the dogs. Like what if they just like just gave them weird dog names like spot and then they're just like this is a dog.
Like to me, that would be interesting and cool. Like to just think about like here are dogs that are doing work and we don't have to focus on like giving them pink hats or whatever.
So our last question is a great example of why I love culture study readers. It is from Mandy. Are the pups on call all the time? When do they get breaks? How they not burn out? Is the show promoting underfunding of public services and reliance on privatization of complex work, as well as exploitation of nonprofit workers in this case dogs. I thought about this too much.
What do you think? Well, yeah, you've thought about it too much, but everybody's thought about it too much. That's the way of watching that we, I think sometimes occupies that we overthink these things. And again, I think the reason why Paw Patrol becomes a target here rightfully is that when you start to overthink Paw Patrol, it immediately falls apart.
If it's something those are shows, at least can like hold up to the sort of projections of parents in the audience, right? There are inconsistencies in Daniel Tigers and neighborhood, but you get the sense that there's a real like world there. Whereas as Paw Patrol is like a you know, it's like two tonal shifts away from being a nightmare. Yeah, yes, and so just like a dog factory where they're always like, when's my collar gonna ring? Like, oh my gosh, I'm always on call.
Yeah, dogs with like stress disorders. Yeah, I'm just a human boy and all my friends are dog police officers and everybody's always in trouble. And they're a couple of adults and they're malicious and in fact, middle aged involved. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They show. I mean, do you think, um, is there a show like as a means of wrapping us up? Like is there a show that you have taken particular delight in watching?
And not because it's like a show that has jokes for adults to because I think sometimes adults fall into that trap. Like, the show that you think is delightful on all levels and isn't doesn't fall apart the way that Paw Patrol does. Yeah, so. So I think blue is the obvious example that that comes up in part because that's a show that that is just about being in a family. And what it's like to be in a family.
I think that in this particular like genre space, even the good shows are a little bit trying. I think we talked about who we're talking about your kids you hang out with, who kind of grew out of this show. And I think this type of show, right, whether it's Paw Patrol or Daniel Tiger's neighborhood or Wishing Poof or, you know, the rocket here, this like this super formulaic CGI pre K show really is the kind of show that kids grow out of.
You know, 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 and what level of trust. You know, the imagined viewer of Paw Patrol is meant to put in the police is that yeah, to show kids grow out of, but it's a show they encounter during a very formative period of their development.
And so I admit that it is silly that I ask questions about about whether you know Daniel Tiger's neighborhood is a constitutional monarchy or is the the king a figurehead.
How is Miss Alena the child of a puppet and a human man like how I admit those questions are silly right. Yeah, but their questions I think the questions that your readers ask about Paw Patrol are are also silly, but they're also important because kids are going to answer them at a time when they're coming up with answers for a lot of the questions they have about the world, right.
And so Paw Patrol slots right in there as a kind of public service announcement for the fire departments for sure, but also for the police, right. And that's the kind of thing that they just sort of can take with them. At its heart that show is just a show about helpfulness and being a part of a community, but I think there are there are other shows that are about that too. I think Wonder Pets is a really good one.
You know, Daniel Tiger is silly, but it's also a really good one in that sense. There's a show that has been on and off of streaming platforms since it was created, but it's so called Usman Roy that was on max. It was part of the development of the Sesame Street brand into standalone shows. That shows really good if you can find it.
And so, you know, I think that it's a genre that you just don't want to stick around too much in because none of it's great, you know, 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. I will say that Daniel Tiger is the only show that I have like a visceral reaction to when I see it. I'm like, are they trying to anesthetize me?
Like are they trying to make the caregiver fall asleep right now? Last question. Yeah. What was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid? My favorite cartoon when I was a kid. I think probably at a certain age it was Duck Tales. I really love Duck Tales. I was also a big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan. Same. Yeah. 100% no girls except for the female reporter in a jumpsuit. Respectable. I also loved X-Men. I thought X-Men was like really cool and interesting.
I was like, oh, all the gifted kids. Going to go to a mansion. Cool. Love it. I expected advancing the pernicious gifted and talented propaganda. We get a different episode on that. How easy is it to access testing to become an X-Men? How many of those kids? How many of those kids' parents paid for expensive test prep tutors in advance of them getting into the academy? Some but not all. That would be my response. It's been a true to late.
We are going to have you come back on maybe not to talk about children's television, but maybe some other aspect of television. My great dream is to become the David B and Cooley of this podcast. You come in at the end. You know how Lake Terry Gross at the end of Fresh Air has a nine minute TV review. Love it. Where could people find you if they want to find more of you on the internet? You can follow me at PJMACIAK on the various socials and I write very regularly at the New Republic. Awesome.
Thank you so much. Next up, we're going to do Advice Time. Normally, this is bonus content that is just for paid subscribers. But we are making the full version of today's episode available to everyone. Think of it as a holiday gift from me and Melody to you. Speaking of holiday gifts, today's question is about the extra mental load a lot of moms carry around this time of year. So stick around. Welcome back to the Triple A segment, Ask and Anything. I have a special guest for this question.
Michelle Cisa, Hello. Hi Ann. Michelle is joining me because we just finished recording an episode about the Mean Girls trailer that's coming out next month. You do not want to miss it, but our question today is still very much in keeping with this episode's theme of fraudness, generally speaking, and parenting. It's from a listener who wants to remain anonymous, so Melody's going to read it for us.
I'm curious about how it seems that parents, usually moms, have more mental load around school winter holiday events than I remember from growing up. My kids are in elementary school, for example, organizing teacher gifts, spirit weeks, sending things for class holiday parties, kids meeting different outfits for holiday performances. Maybe it was the difference between where I grew up in a smaller town and where I live now outside a big city.
But I don't remember my mom doing any of this. How did we get here? How do we stop and or keep this from creeping on until it takes over even more of our lives? Do some parents enjoy it? I have not met them. I have also not met them for what is worth. All right, there's this sound familiar to you, Michelle. It does. I mean, I have so many thoughts about this as someone who has two children.
I have a theory about where some of this pressure comes from, which is the big thing that's changed between our generation and parents and our parents' generation. That is social media where you are seeing everybody engineering all of these holiday moments, all of these outfits, these activities.
There's this kind of arms race for creating like family memories through this visual medium where you're making sure that you've like, you know, set design your children's birthday parties that you've gone to the pumpkin patch in the fall. And I don't know that anybody enjoys it, but I think when we see other people doing it, we feel compelled to keep up.
And I think that pressure happens at school too, where there is this idea that like, if there's a silly pajama day, you have to send your kids in the silly pajamas. I don't know why schools are so interested because I feel like teachers have enough going on and they also shouldn't feel like they have to engineer this kind of constant holiday magic. I think there's an interesting intersection here with what you were saying about the rise of social media.
The other thing that has happened since we were kids is an incredible decline in school funding. And public support for schools just generally. And so what you have are schools, particularly public schools that are under threat, that are under arrest that it has never been a more difficult time to be a teacher right now. And so I think that builds this like over determined thing about what you get all of the teachers as gifts. I think I used to like color a card.
That was the extent of the present that I gave to a teacher. And that didn't, that wasn't because I didn't appreciate my teacher. I think that the way that we showed that we appreciated our teachers was by paying taxes and paying them a living wage. Yeah. And then the other thing about the school holiday stuff and the spirit weeks, I did a piece on this a while back and we'll put it in the show notes.
But a lot of teachers told me that one of the reasons they resort to these spirit weeks is because their teachers or their students are so worn down from school, from like testing and like just really too much stuff going on. And that this is a way to like give students some joy in the school week, right? And to distract and to like just have something fun.
And that to me is a symptom of a larger melez and not connected obviously to like women bearing the responsibility for creating holiday magic. But like it's just a big part of this bigger cluster that's really frustrating. And I mean, one thing I would also gently add is whether, you know, you don't remember your mom doing this because a lot of what our mom's dead when we were children is invisible to us.
Because I think this kind of labor is always fallen on moms and and it's challenging now because I think there probably were more stay at home. And so, like, about 30 years ago, then there are now and the idea that you could devote yourself to, you know, your child's classroom was even then probably an unrealistic expectation for most. But, but now, you know, people are trying to do this on top of full time jobs on top of other caregiving responsibilities.
And it really does feel like this, this decline in supporting our social institutions like school has displaced a lot of labor unpaid labor onto other people. And so, like, I think, I think there's a lot of things that I think, like, are going to be more and more efficient. And so, like, I think, it's a lot of things that we're talking about as falling on teachers who are doing more and more with less and some of it is falling on parents.
And I don't know what my solution for that is besides, you know, vote for better funding, fight for better funding for your public institutions. And I think it's worth, you know, sending an email to your kids school and explaining why you can't, because I think probably teachers would feel relief to see a parent saying, you know what, this is a little too much. I don't think we need to do all this, like, I appreciate it, but I can't participate for these reasons.
Like, give that teacher permission to plan last next year as well. Yeah, and that's the thing is that teachers also say that if they don't participate in this, then they'll have parents who write in and say, like, why aren't you doing this? So if you can, you know, whether it's part of a parent teacher association or just like having a couple other people who write in and say, like, I'm trying to give you permission, like, that you don't have to participate in this. That's great.
The other thing I would say is like, you do not need to get a teacher anything cute. As a present, give them money, like, give them a gift card, give them a gift card to target, give them a gift card to Starbucks, wherever. That is how you say it. And then also have your kids do something that is meaningful. Like, and that is maybe harder than making or buying something cute, but at the same time, it's more meaningful.
And then I think your last point about opting out is so great because it's hard at first, but I have watched a lot of moms be like, you know what? I, there's so much stress in my life over the holiday card. I'm just going to stop. Just stop. Yeah. And once you don't do it one year, it gets so much easier.
And, you know, the truly radical suggestion, if you find that this is all following on you as the mom in the dynamic, perhaps it's time for your partner to write some holiday cards, you know, to make sure that the funny pajamas are cleaned and packed for school. I mean, I see among my friends who are parents so much of this anxiety, I'm a women in in heterosexual marriages with children. And I don't know that like the men in those families are even often aware of these expectations.
And no, that is also something that hasn't changed up with the generations. You know, my mom talks about how my dad was always listed as the first contact for schools to call if we were sick or something like that. And regardless, every time one of us threw up in the classroom, she got the call first.
And, and that has to change too, you know, like make sure if there is a huge volume of domestic labor accumulating around the holidays that you're talking with your partner about either how to share it or just what you're doing. Like, let's make that work visible to everybody. I think that that last point is so important because sometimes I think a lot of us who feel like we're shouldering a lot of the mental load do so in silence. And then at some point it boils over and like you have a fight.
Yeah. And so sometimes just talking about the things that you're doing can be really useful in making that mental load visible. And hopefully if you have an empathetic partner, they will see a lot of what you're doing. Be like, how can I, how can I share that load? How can we like do this together or figure out what, what as a family, not just you as a mom, but as a family.
What do we want to prioritize? What is actually meaningful to us? What matters? I think that that's a great way of approaching it. Make man do more holiday cards. There's our solution. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you so much for listening to the Culture Study podcast. If you like today's advice time or just if you like this episode, you will love being a paid subscriber.
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Next week Melanie says I have to say I'm taking the plunge. Literally. We're going to be talking about cold plungeing and the weird culture that's popped up around it. And the tentative plan is I have to go take a cold plunge. We'll see if this happens. The Culture Study podcast is produced by me, Anne Hill and Peterson and Melanie Raul. Our music is by Pottington Bear.
You can find me on Instagram at Anne Hill and Peterson and the show at CultureStudypod. Thank you again for listening and we'll talk again soon.