Bluey is great, but…

First of all, this is a blog aimed at people who are already familiar with Bluey and, preferably, already fans of the series. If you don’t know what I’m talking about… well, it’s hard to explain how an otherwise — I hope — fairly sane adult can be so enthusiastic about a preschool cartoon series. But it’s a refreshingly down-to-earth and very well put together show that has a lot to offer to both kids and parents. Go watch it. Not convinced? It’s rated close to Breaking Bad on IMDB. No joke.

Internet discussions on this series are interesting. First of all, I highly recommend just going into the Bluey subreddit or other discussion forums. It’s full of… lots of different people, to a surprising degree. There are actual kids commenting, there are teenagers, and there are parents. Sometimes talking to each other without realizing the age and context difference. Often very obviously differing in opinion due to their almost diametrically opposed life experience.

But while it’s common that the good role models and surface-level psychology are getting discussed, I want to go deeper and talk a bit more about the agenda of Bluey. No, I’m not going to tell you about the secret cabal making Bluey woke or anything like that — I’m not Alex Jones — but I do want to talk about how it’s possible that I consider Bluey one of, if not the greatest cartoon of all time while simultaneously being a parent and being quite vehemently opposed to a large part of its pedagogy and never wishing that kind of an upbringing for my own children.

It all started with Baby Race

So, the first thing I saw of Bluey was Baby Race, the story of Chilli talking about parents always (subconsciously or not) trying to find ways in which their child is ‘better’ than other children, and feeling like a failure when things don’t align with their idea of a perfect upbringing. Simultaneously, it’s about Bluey following an alternative path of learning to walk than most, being a roller and bum shuffler rather than a crawler and puller-upper. I’m sure all of you reading have seen this episode by now, but if you haven’t, what are you doing with your life?

This episode wrecked me completely. It’s like they looked into me and my partner’s life when our firstborn was around 1–1.5 years old. After sobbing for a bit and rewatching the episode a couple of times, my emotions turned to stupefied anger. What the f*&k, this is a cartoon for five-year olds. This is a cartoon sponsored by the Australian government. What government allows — and this isn’t hyperbole — world-class storytelling (how they condensed this into 7 minutes is not understood by science yet), obvious tearjerker scenes, genuine connection with common parental struggles all at the same time as making a humorous and coherent story that can be enjoyed by kids ages 3–10? It’s like PBS writing Better Call Saul. Scrubs, presented by the European Council. This is one of those flash in the pan unique episodes, right?

As it turns out, no! It’s not, there are 150+ episodes and at least a quarter are absolute bangers. There are more banger episodes of Bluey than banger episodes of all the cartoons I ever watched as a kid. What?! How!? Is this why the world went through covid?

Copycat, Army, Flat Pack, Sleepytime, Double Babysitter, Onesies, Space, Dirt, Stickbird, Dragon

All of these episodes should be illegal, in my opinion. In a good way. I haven’t quite worked through all the metaphors in all episodes yet, but the fact that off the top of my head I can name 9 episodes with HEAVY topics in them is… unprecedented in any other cartoon? Joe Brumm, the maker of the show, says he took inspiration from Peppa Pig, but I watch lots of Peppa and never saw:

• Coping with death (Copycat)
• Overcoming insecurity about neurodivergence (Army)
• Evolution and aging simultaneously (Flat Pack)
• Growing up in general (Sleepytime, you WILL dehydrate watching this)
• Forming relationships and finding love as an adult (Double Babysitter) what the fuck man
• INFERTILITY (Onesies) WHAT THE FUCK
• Attachment/abandonment issues (Space)
• Generational trauma (Dirt)
• Dealing with overwhelming emotion (Stickbird)
• COPING WITH THE DEATH OF A PARENT (Dragon)

None of this belongs within an Earth’s orbital diameter of children’s cartoons. But it’s done so, so incredibly well. To be clear, to a child, all these episodes are some variation of hilarious or playfully engaging. They don’t understand the subtext. My 3-year old has 3 more lifetimes to go before any of the metaphors start hitting.

Meanwhile, I’ve been using Bluey as a cheap replacement psychologist and pedagogy expert. I use the technique from Stickbird to deal with stress. I’m trying out the Wagon Ride technique with my 3yo. Like, if you’re able to make episodes like Sleepytime, I will believe literally anything you say and follow every parenting technique you throw at me. I’m not just a fan, I’m fully indoctrinated into the cult.

For real though, Bluey is fantastic

You thought I’d go and turn it around now and talk about the bad stuff? No, I think it’s important to underline explicitly what is so good about Bluey before I feel comfortable criticizing my newfound religion.

The big theme of Bluey, like Peppa, is to depict a realistic model family. Not just a textbook model family where everything always goes right, not a larger than life family where all kinds of hijinks go on all the time, and not a family that panders to contemporary happenings and sentiments. It’s an evergreen depiction of family life, centered entirely on the family members themselves and with the environment being little more than background to the family dynamics and relationships between cast members in the context of being kids. The show is really good at staying at childrens’ level with storytelling, not pandering to them and not talking down to them, but being entirely in their own space. With very rare (and actually really good!) exceptions, imaginative play is depicted as it is in real life rather than how it is in the heads of the kids, but the kids’ conception is always taken seriously.

Likewise, the parents are godly role models, but not in that they never make any mistakes, FAR from it. They’re godly in how they handle mistakes, always taking the non-toxic, responsible route. They engage in the kids’ games on their terms, never dictating to them what to do in their own space, but asserting the parents’ dominance when appropriate outside of play. Every father watching the show aspires to be Bandit, every mother aspires to be Chilli.

Episodes are short, and that seems to force the writers to be really careful about every single word, scene and transition they put in an episode. It shows — the show has impeccable editing, both in the script and visuals. Word choices are almost always about as good as they come, and that’s super important for a show that kids will quote and internalize. Because of the shortness of each episode, there is usually just one story arc, but it’s always there and always very well thought out. There are episodes I don’t like, but even those are technically very competent. And it’s amazing that the show has stayed so consistent in quality through 3 seasons of 50 (!!) episodes each.

OK now it’s time

I won’t bury the lede — my main criticism of the show is that every episode is not as good as Sleepytime. Alright, criticism over.

Joking, joking, I do actually have substantive criticism. I think it’s fair to say that Bluey has a definite agenda. I know that word carries a lot of negative connotations, but I mean it more neutrally. It’s hard to make such a deliberate and thoughtful piece of art without some of your politics and convictions bleeding through. And, well, identity, politics and religion is where irreconcilable differences lie.

Australian focus

First of all, I know a little bit about Australia despite being Dutch myself. Australia is… well, a bit of a nanny state. The government has a surprising amount of influence and censorship power in media, something that Mr. Pork Barilago can say something about. In children’s media, that censorship power is generally well-intentioned, e.g. censoring an episode of Peppa about spiders so as to avoid children playing with deadly Australian spiders. But with Bluey, I can’t help but ask what the editorial influence has been of the Australian (and UK — through the BBC) government. Brumm has stated that he wanted the series to be reflective of real Aussie family life and that seems to definitely ring true, including a Footy and Cricket episode.

But, you know… it’s a fine line to walk. To be clear: criticism is different from blame. I’m not blaming Bluey forbeing Australian and wearing that on its sleeve. But to an international audience, this makes it harder to connect. I’m not saying Bluey should become completely universal international viewing devoid of cultural clues, but there’s a bit more of a middle ground that would broaden its appeal, especially for really young kids. Teletubbies and Sesame Street both come to mind as good examples.

Emphasis on learning through imaginative play

But my main problem with the series is also its greatest strength. I think Bluey can only exist and be as good as it is by depicting imaginative play with the family. But like a family member that seems really cool at first because he likes legos, only to later find out every available surface in his house is covered with lego models — Bluey’s not just doing this for fun. Brumm stated that he’s had his children struggle in formal education, and Bluey explicitly doesn’t do any of that despite ostensibly being an educational children’s show. Instead, it always focuses on social and emotional education — learning how to go about dealing with your friends, family, emotion and the many complicated scenarios that emanate from that.

By going all-in on that, I feel Bluey is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Formal education is, I feel, demonized by the show’s pedagogy. And don’t get me wrong — not all children thrive in a classical school setting with rigid rules, punishments for inattentiveness, manners and noncompliance and a focus on formal educational goals like reading, writing and math. Some children genuinely do need a more freeform environment.

But, like, I wasn’t that kind of child! I spent my afternoons studying a globe or atlas and learning all the capital cities of the world at 6. I was already doing basic math at 4–5 and loved it, and I was utterly bored in classes that didn’t challenge me in the formal subjects. My 3yo child also already shows a spontaneous interest in letters and numbers, and I’m all about engaging my kids in their own space — even if that space is formal education!

Steiner-Waldorf schools

And it goes even further. The school that Bluey (the character) attends is a Steiner-Waldorf school. Again, I won’t bury the lede, this is a cult school. The things Mr. Steiner and Mr. Waldorf believed and put into practice in their methodology are nothing short of baffling. On the less offensive (and honestly quite nice) side of things are school interiors and toys being made out of natural materials with pastel colors, in order to foster a connection with nature. Despite the woo-y connotations, I’d actually prefer that for my children. On the more offensive side, in practice schools have very one-sided and old-school traditions like exclusively celebrating Christian festivities, strongly reinforcing traditional male and female gender roles and not introducing any reading, writing or math until the children are 7 years old.

The philosophical underpinnings rely strongly on antroposophy and the classic four temperaments, which are all bullshit pseudoscience. Moreover, they rarely use standardized textbooks or methods, relying on either locally generated teaching materials or anthroposophic methods. This is all very worrying, because let’s just talk about my own beliefs here.

I’m an engineer, so my worldview very strongly centers around the world being understandable scientifically and modifiable according to human design. I also very strongly believe that by putting effort into understanding the world in a scientific manner, you can save yourself an immense amount of stress and discomfort because the world becomes so much more understandable. Things that most people find confusing, contradictory or random are, ultimately, just processes that with enough structured thought can be understood and overcome. Math and a formal grasp of language are tools you use daily.

Math, language and many other things (like sociology and psychology) are also incredibly unintuitive. Anthroposophy anchors so strongly in intuitive and self-synthesized development that it tends to forego or brush over things that — for lack of a better term — don’t ‘come naturally’ to people. In my opinion, that is what school is for. School is where you’re, sometimes, forced to learn the things you wouldn’t otherwise learn.

Likewise, children need lots of structure. This is not to say anthroposophic school are structureless, far from it. They have a timetable, they have regular classes, but way less so and on much less of a time crunch than regular schools. It’s important that tasks need to be done within a certain amount of time. It’s important that children should be quiet and listen sometimes. It’s important that children learn to act and internalize matters through purely extrinsic stimuli.

There’s a rabbit hole here, and if you’re interested — I highly recommend reading into schooling methods. Out of all the ‘special’ methods that have seen popular uptake in the past century — Montessori, Dalton, etc. — the anthroposophic school type is IMO by far the worst.

But, and I’m ending on this note to emphasize this point, this doesn’t mean I think it is all bad. Or even unsuitable for (some) children to attend. Especially when talking about really small children with little interest in reading, I think the heavy focus on practical, social and emotional development is… great! If you can find a school without too much woo and religion (which from what I can tell still varies a lot) it’s a great kind of preschool. It’s like a better daycare. And even if I don’t agree with the politics and pedagogy, I think it’s awesome to have a caring ‘Calypso’ type as ‘teacher’ for my children.

Bluey is kind of… tradcon?

At first blush, Bluey to me is an immensely progressive show, depicting Bandit as an exemplary parent. He doesn’t just do regular parenting well, he’s engaging heavily in the children’s play sessions. He does household chores just as much as Chilli, something that should be depicted much more in contemporary TV and movies. He’s an equal parent and therefore much better than most dads in real life. I think that’s hard to deny. And the show is great at depicting this in both a non-pandering and non-judgmental way towards dads and children alike. This just is how things are. Take it or leave it. As a male parent who loves quality time with his kids, this is a breath of fresh air and a great role model to aspire to.

But the more I watch the show, the more I feel like aside from that aspect, the show is still very much stuck in traditional gender roles. Bandit is a great dad, that’s good. He’s also, ostensibly, the main character of most episodes. Aren’t there enough male-dominated shows already? Chilli gets some airtime, but it feels like she’s being depicted very boringly traditional.

Another example of the underrepresented role of Chilli is in The Decider, where… sure, she gets to go to the actual stadium while Bandit stays at home with the neighbors. But the episode doesn’t play out in the stadium, it plays out at home! Bandit (and Pat) get to be the traditional male sports fans and the girls mostly don’t understand what is going on. Again, don’t get me wrong — great episode and Chilli’s 5 seconds on screen are very well spent, but… what will my children learn from this vis-a-vis gendered stereotypes?

Conclusion

What a roller coaster. If you’ve read all the way until now, let me first just get you out of this trance by saying we’re here analyzing a preschool cartoon and criticizing its potential editorial interference by governments, its unscientific pedagogy and potentially insufficiently progressive gender norms. Yes, this is absurd and a little bit overboard. Still, I think the thoughtfulness and incredible quality of the show deserves deep and nuanced discussion.

Because my thoughts aren’t conflicted. I don’t think the show is simultaneously good and bad. I think the show is unambiguously good, among the best audiovisual media I’ve ever seen. My criticisms are, mostly, an expression of being able to love a show that I wouldn’t ever want to be in myself. I can love something and jokingly say it’s my new religion, but actually disagree with almost all of its underpinnings.

Now let’s see if they make an episode where they perfectly encapsulate that kind of sentiment in a 7-minute episode. Oobabakayo!