‘CBeebies’: Vibrant Colourful Upbeat Children’s Channel or Sinister Recruiter into Fascism.

           

Was I meant to grow up when I became 27? Or at least I thought I would be progressing in the right direction. But no, it seems I am not. It seems 2011 is the year that I have got heavily into children’s television. And not, just any children’s television; children’s television that is specifically aimed at the age range 0 to 6. Yeah, take that society. You can’t tell me what I can watch or do. Some might say I’m an equal rights freedom fighter.  Others may have compared me to Emily Davies from the suffragette movement, except instead of running courageously in front on the King’s horse, I watch ‘Rastamouse’ courageously in front of my high definition television. Ok, maybe it’s not exactly the same, but there are some similarities. Possibly?

Breaking ageist regimes aside, there are reasons why I enjoy ‘Cbeebies’. Living the life of a stereotypical student, I am subject to daytime television. Although I would say that most ‘Cbeebies’ shows are of a better quality than most television throughout the day. However, daytime television is especially drab and depressing. Monotonous pointless antique shows, where you’re meant to gaup at crap that has lost its functionality. If it was useful or pretty it would still be made, people! Soul destroying house programmes, that only serve to show you what you can’t afford or achieve, but emphasise the point that you really need it. Horrible ‘car crash’ talk shows, that if you are already worried about the pointlessness of human existence or the fallacy of western community, only act to make you angry, so angry.

‘Cbeebies’ have positive, inventive and educational programmes. And the colours, bright soothing colours. Colours that put a smile on my face and a warm feeling in my heart (In a soppy emo way, and not in the way a warm heart is actually a heart attack). What would you prefer to watch; the red team on ‘bargain hunt’ making a measly £10 profit or an amusing tale about a badger, who is unsure if he has an imagination? Or would you like to know the price of an old piss pot or that sharks lose teeth every week? If you answered with the first suggestion in any of those questions, you have no soul and should really consider suicide.

I must say I did enjoy the episode of ‘Big City Park’, where Billy the Badger was worried about whether he had an imagination. It had many avenues to go into at the end; firstly I thought it might have ended by telling us that Badgers have limited intelligence and no theory of mind, so cannot process data at the same rate as us, and therefore have no ability to imagine. And that, the only reason you could think he does, is at a very early age we anthropomorphise animals (attribute human characteristics on animals). Secondly that true imagination is a fallacy. We can never imagine anything that does not already exists or is an extension/collaboration of things that already exist. ‘Big City Park’ could possibly developed this further, and comment on the philosophical thought that we merely just react to the environment and chemical reactions in our body and have no real free will or free thought.  There are a lot of levels to ‘Big City Park’. Instead though, they decided that Billy had an imagination, he just didn’t know it. This meant that at the end of the programme he engaged me with a story and song, so it probably was for the best.

I realise I have discussed the positives of ‘Cbeebies’ at length, possibly to assure myself that it’s ok to watch it. However, you will realise from the title of the post, ‘Cbeebies’ may not just be amazing colours and philosophical intuitive badgers. It may have an inner darkness. Don’t be ridiculous I hear you shout, it’s just a kids channel. However take ‘In the Night Garden’ for example. It is an idealised world, which could not operate in real life civilisation. A self appointed omnipotent narrator/leader dictates what goes on and keeps a big brother type eye on all proceedings. Lastly and most incriminating; the power hungry narrator demands that all the residents should go to sleep. Which they fearfully agree to, and unless they can fall asleep in a nano-second they are obviously pretending to, fearful of the repercussions. Many of the residents are also forced to sleep on the ground, highlighting their poverty in contrast to the obviously wealthy surroundings they live. When there finally is a dissident, Iggle Piggle. Who finally stands up to this dictator, and refuses to go to sleep. He is chastised and when he finally goes to sleep, he is next seen on a boat floating into the open sea to his inevitable death. Another freedom fighter dead before his time. If you disagree with this, watch the end and this is actually what happens.

‘In the Night Garden’ is not a one off example. The whole channel delights in telling us what is morally acceptable, how we should live our future life, together with mindless chants and thrusts an impossible utopia for the viewers to aim for. This is clearly fascist ideology. There is a chance I may have over thought this, and in my sick mind I want to destroy something that I love. But, what if I am right?  Am I being indoctrinated into fascist ideology, or worse still is the British youth being indoctrinated?

Did Iggle Piggle die for nothing, and if he didn’t surely he should be seen and respected like a modern day Martin Luther King.

Iggle Piggle had a dream that one day he and his friends could live free and not destitute. Is that too much too ask?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/

Alcohol: Berated Saviour of Humanity

It’s Friday night and I’ve just danced, fallen over and high fived a policeman. Was I a menace to society? Maybe a little, but in a fun and charming way. Was there a reason for me for being a little bit over excited and silly? I think so. As a student prison teacher, I have to complete essays, monotonous bull shit forms and complete agonisingly meticulous lesson plans that I deliver to students, who prefer to spend class time socializing and throwing paper. Is that because I’m a rubbish teacher? Yes. I fully admit that I am, but is it my fault?  Could it be because, the course I do prefers to tell me ‘how to change the font on a word document’ then teaches me how to teach, or that my mentor has no control over her class so how am I meant to control them. Hey, I’m not complaining…….

Alright I’m massively complaining.

I’m complaining so hard that if I was a film starring Bruce Willis; I would have complained so hard that the word ‘hard’, would just give up its right in the dictionary, and become the word ‘complain’. The repucussions being that the film would become ‘Die Complain’. This makes little sense, but as much as the stand alone sentence ‘Die Hard’. What does Die Hard mean?

‘Hard to kill’ would insinuate that the lead protagonist would be difficult to kill, not ‘die hard’. It also doesn’t work in the sense that the villains of the film, are dying in a horrific rough justice kind of way. That would be ‘dying in a rough justice kind of way’. The only thing I would state that the title suggests is that either; people in the film will be dying with erections or with some kind of super efficient rigor mortis, that effects you just before you die. Which I think is what Mickey Rouke suffers from.

Anyway I digress...

This current lifestyle is indirect conflict with my lazy, slovenly and work shy existence.

This in turn creates a great amount of tension. The way I dealt with this tension is to drink copious amounts, make a fool of myself and basically for a few hours of a day return to a state of childishness, where there are no worries or issues. A huge cathartic release is what happened on friday as I goaded a taxi driver, and cued for a night club only to have it explained to me that I needed money to enter. Imagine my surprise…..

Drunk idiot, or space efficient genius?

This point was then extended and explained very poignantly by the comedian Stewart Lee, on an episode of  This Week.* Where he raised the point of  alcohol has indeed meant to have cost the country a huge X amount. However, the statistic of what it makes the country is not included, not in terms of tax and business. But, in terms of the public’s need for a release at the end of there week. That in fact the only thing that gets them through the week is the thought of getting trashed at the weekend.

We live in efficiency and time obsessed country, binge drinking is the product of that. We have always drunk, but now having a drink to relax at lunch time is now frowned upon and sitting down with the odd wine is not conducive to our hectic lives. We need that drunken release and we have given it a tidy couple of hours on the weekend, where the need to become reckless is upon us.

People often state that we drink more, and -especially- binge drink more than our foreign counterparts. This is true, however our working week is often longer in terms of hours, we live in a highly material society that advertising exploits to give us the feeling of poor self worth and emptiness. It is encouraged at work to always do something extra if you are going to succeed, society constantly pressures you try to succeed in terms of wealth and fame with hard work. Which 9 out of 10 of you, will not get any reward for. This is not always apparent in other countries. Taking into consideration the brilliant book ‘Affluenza’, written by Oliver James.** He explains that apart from war torn countries, English speaking countries have the highest rate of depression and anxiety.

I agree there are other ways of dealing with your problems, and ones that are much better than having a drink. However, as an Englishman; I feel I am not alone at being a reserved gentleman that is far too polite to shout at my inept lecture, or gleefully taunt my students to get back some self worth. I am left with too alternatives; either i cry myself to sleep, while using my own tears to lubricate my inadequately sized penis or too drink. Drinking seems to be the solution.

Plus my friend always comes in to see if I’m ok if he hears me crying, with disastrous results.

Alcohol or our use of alcohol is not the problem. Society is. I’m not saying it is the solution, but it is a very effective cathartic aid.    

So, the next time you wake up hung-over, embarrassed or wearing the skin of a murdered dead prostitute it isn’t your or alcohols fault. You are just simply exercising your right for a weekly cathartic -tension destroying- release.

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/7928142.stm

** http://www.selfishcapitalist.com/affluenza.html