I Have Some Questions About the World of Teletubbies – By Sophie Gilbert (The Atlantic) / December 30, 2021
Where do they come from? Are they prisoners? Are we complicit in their captivity? Why do my children love them so?
There is a dome, post-Soviet and colorful, wired with the kind of technological doodads you might see in a Bond villain’s lair— revolving modernist chairs, disembodied voices rising out of metal speakers issuing orders for the day. A giant ball bounces ominously in the background. People disappear from time to time, but nobody leaves. Everyone seems to be constantly being watched.
I’m describing the avant-garde 1967 mystery series The Prisoner, but also the children’s television show Teletubbies, which, thanks to unfortunate life circumstances, I’ve watched more this year than anything else. First of all, a disclaimer: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that no child watch television until they’re at least 18 months old, advice I fully intended to follow until I idiotically had two babies at once. By the time they hit 16 months, I would have bitten off my own arm for an uninterrupted 10 minutes or the chance to drink coffee that hadn’t already been microwaved four times. We started with Postman Pat, a gentle stop-motion series about a slow-witted English mailman, but although my toddlers moshed wildly during the theme song, they ignored everything that followed.
One day, I threw on Teletubbies, an acid trip of a show about portly humanoid creatures whose life in a verdant CGI landscape is routinely interrupted by videos playing on screens embedded in their bellies. My daughter stared at the screen, mouth agape. She laughed hysterically as the tubbies jumped out of a hole in the ground. She watched for a whole delighted five minutes, and I took videos of her the entire time instead of enjoying the precious mental vacation, because children corrupt your brain.
CONTINUE > https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/12/teletubbies-reboot-children-tv-shows/621120/
