CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The writers behind ABC’s hit kids cartoon Bluey have today neutralised an echo chamber culture wars debate that had the potential to end up in University curriculums if it was not addressed immediately.
Australia’s most internationally successful TV product since Who Dares Wins made it big in the subcontinent, Bluey has finally done well enough to be dragged into a pointless argument about why some of these fictional canines aren’t adhering to the same performatively diverse checkpoints as non-cartoons on the ABC.
Earlier this week, an online opinion column from the ABC posed the question: can Bluey be more representative?
The article explored the the appalling lack of diverse representation in childrens television shows about dogs who can talk, eventually finishing with this spectacularly ABC interrogation of the most successful Australian Kids TV export: “Where are the disabled, queer, poor, gender diverse, dogs of colour and single-parent dog families in Bluey’s Brisbane?”
As expected, the conversation is currently being dictated by commentators who may not have experienced much multiculturalism outside of their own experiences, as this new flurry of online articles and Twitter pile-ons seem to be unaware of how inappropriate it would actually be to have cartoons of British dog breeds performing corroborees, or eating with chopsticks, just because someone living in a terrace house had run out of shit to tweet about.
However, despite the pointlessness of this whole conversation, the writers have have today responded to the media class dominated debate about diversity – by introducing a character from a background that very few social commentators can empathise with: the low socio-economic.
Bluey’s newest character, Chainsaw, is a rescue pitbull from the hood – who was saved from dog fighting by a mob of passionate purple-haired lesbians.
His character is severely damaged from a life of traumatising violence and neglect, and descends into a violent rage at least once an episode.
The same upper-middle-class tone police from Twitter have since gone quiet on the issue of diversity, but it has been reported that many of the blue tick neoliberal woke crowd are disappointed that the writers would introduce such a ‘thug’.
