#We joke about Bluey etc today

[bumblingbabooshka]

Have you guys ever watched The Dummi Bears? It's for preschoolers but it has surprisingly mature, well-executed themes and honestly the aesthetics alone make it stand out from other shows in a simi- [Patreon | Commissions]

[ramoth13]

But, in all actuality, that's what we ALWAYS do.

I have pointed out a million times in classrooms (both as student and as professor) that THE Bard, Shakespeare, while a genius, makes fart jokes, dick jokes, sex jokes, and many other obscene jokes besides constantly, but academics and scholars treat him as though he is the most serious aristocratic writer to have ever lived.

Geoffrey Chaucer is considered by some as one of the greatest medieval writers of all time, but read the Miller's Tale (part of the Canterbury Tales) and you might find yourself blushing like a sheltered pubescent learning about sex for the first time.

And let us not forget the fact that before they were considered "classics" Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, and even Charles Dickens all wrote for young people/kids. Many (and in some cases all) of their stories were for kids, the equivalent of today's Sesame Street or Bluey (both excellent shows that should be critically engaged with). The Hobbit, now exalted as one of the most influential "adult" fantasy novels of all time (it is), is at its core, a children's story. It's why it is so entirely different from the Lord of the Rings.

Frankenstein (AKA The Modern Prometheus) was a serendipitously published horror story inspired by a man known to have drug-fueled dreams in which he heard poetry spoken to him.

Scholarship and the academic study of bar tunes, pulp fiction, comedy plays, and cartoons are all elements that show what critical engagement is all about; the study of the HUMANITIES is not limited to high-brow, high society "great" works of art. The study of humanity shouldn't be reserved for anything, but given to every aspect. Critical engagement works at every level, and we must remember that there are only two reasons that this has not always been the case: first, because education has never before been so readily available to so many, and secondly, because as "high-brow" arts (poetry, orchestral music, art, opera, etc.,) were becoming more open to a public that could understand and enjoy them, an effort was made to eradicate any art that might bridge the social classes. Shakespeare MUST be done only in middle-English, the kind that the general populace wouldn't understand without the proper education. Beautiful scenic art gave way to abstract art, art that "someone like you just wouldn't understand" and suddenly no one put out/sponsored any operas in English... why is that? Is English not allowed in an opera? Most of the time only the well-educated in the English speaking western societies could speak more than one language. See the trick?

Art that inspires education is beautiful, but nothing should be excluded from the humanities; memes, jokes, kids cartoons, and tiktok are all part of it, as they should be.

Critically engage with all of it!

I look forward to being either way too old or beyond the grave as Bluey is discussed with sincere and passionate vigor and articulating how and why it is the artistic genius it is.

nothing brings me more joy than critically engaging with media that was clearly not designed with critical engagement in mind. it’s the media studies equivalent of like, idk, trying to skateboard up a flight of stairs.