In that regard I must thank Katrin for sharing the news that the Australian children’s cartoon Bluey has fallen foul of the Woke commissariat.
Bluey concerns a dog who lives in Brisbane, and is popular among pre school children. Those of us with children who were once less sophisticated creatures than their current manifestations will be familiar with such matters.
Twenty years ago I knew all about a Siamese twinned Catdog, large rabbits who were bouncers and “had issues,” mice who played baseball, and so on.
Anyway, Bluey is a talking dog and he and his family and friends walk on their back paws, own mobile phones and do all the other stuff that you might expect of talking dogs with houses and mortgages. It is fair to say that they are not generally representative of the broader dog community.
However, that is not their offence. Which, according to Australian ABC commentator Beverley Wang is that as a “parent of colour”, she finds old Bluey and the pups to be unrepresentative. Specifically, she demands to know:
Indeed. More’s to the point, where are the Jaysus dogs with the mobile phones and cars? Even at the zenith of my drinking days, I don’t ever recall meeting one. And I am not sure I want Bonnie and Barney to see this dreadfully anti diverse cultural appropriating monstrosity, because I’m not sure whether they would get insurance, and phones would certainly lead to an exponential rise in takeaway food bills.
The controversy over Bluey has opened yet another chapter in Australia’s increasingly fraught culture wars. Even reasonable and witty ripostes to Wang have been depicted as “hate speech,” which of course now is somewhere on the level of proposing a vote of thanks to Comrade Trotsky at the Minsk tractor factory union AGM in 1938.
One of Australia’s prominent political correspondents, Amy Remeikis of the Guardian has added her tuppence worth.
Well, none of us is actually a “white, able bodied and working/middle class” dog. I think that is fair to say. And to quote John Prine once more, apropos flying saucers, “And if I ever seen one, I’d keep it to myself.”
Woof.
Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. |
Being the token Ozzie I found this helpful for the background to Bluey
ReplyDeletehttps://www.the-father-hood.com/article/bluey-how-a-cartoon-dog-became-your-ultimate-guide-to-fatherhood/
And that journalist should either create something as good or better, or get the fuck off their high horse about it and quit always trying to be the victim.