Originally published at: On Teletubbies | Boing Boing
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I’ve always thought it was an Eloi situation.
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Will they be feeding the sun? That would explain a lot… 
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Or – and I’m just spitballing here – it’s a well-researched show for toddlers, who are just learning things like ‘when mom says it’s time for X, then it’s time for X’ and not to be afraid of the vacuum cleaner.
Sorry, I know it’s fun to layer all sorts of existential stuff on top, but really, it’s a kid’s show. Nothing more sinister than that!
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It had my young nieces silently enthralled while simultaneously creeping me out.
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You might have to be a sleep-deprived parent, thrilled that something safe for such a young terror – I mean, child – to find relief rather than horror in the show!
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Good point, I was a nervous baby-sitting auntie.
Youngest niece had a fluffy backpack of the yellow one that was as big as she was, that was definitely cute 
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They had a certain aesthetic that we, erm, borrowed for subversive purposes back then.
(I’m the guy who built the pirate radio station whose logo described therein featured on our bumper stickers and T shirts.)
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It’s a farm. They grow up to be processed into THC gummies.
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Indeed.
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Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po, each a different shade of headache-inducing fuzz
Or, perhaps, each a different headache-inducing shade of fuzz. Right? We mean that the colors (or, rather, colours) induce headaches, not the texture.
I’d feel bad about getting so nitpicky about word order if the topic were not a close reading of a kids’ TV show.
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In my mind/memory the Teletubbies are stored in the same compartment as Tony Blair and Geri Halliwell.
I just know this is going to be problematic in my latter years.
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Did they later give up on the notion in the name? That is, their bellies are televisions (“tellies” for Brits), heads have antennas; they’re personified video units in a video recursively. Originally they zoomed in on one’s stomach and showed a video clip.
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funny you should mention THC. my Teletubby anecdote I wanted to share is cannabis related:
in 1997, my MIL (I was quite fond of her) was terminal with liver cancer and had come to stay with us and have hospice care. she smoked a lot of weed for pain and appetite. I would get home from work at 3:00 pm to find her, blazed as can be, laughing and giggling in front of the telly watching tubbies. it was our thing to eat ice cream, smoke weed and watch teletubbies together.
then the wife got home and fun time was over
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In The Night Garden is the title of a horror novel/movie, not a kid’s show. I mean, they’re just priming you to be creeped out here.
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I once ended up watching an hour of BooBahs after a night of magic mushrooms. Although they were wearing off, it was not a pleasant end to the evening
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Yes, it’s that one.
However…
There is something very Blairitic about a show that appeals to babies by just meticulously reflecting them back at themselves, as an end in itself. It’s like how early Blair rhetoric was all “the people’s this” and “the people’s that”, but not in a socialist way, more of a vaporous, culty, Essalen sort of vibe.
Those New Labour types were extremely high on their own supply w.r.t. the “end of history”; their vision was a billion years of everyone being unconditionally delighted by ourselves 24/7 (while still basically living in Thatcher’s Britain).
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Wow our culture is really deeply uncomfortable with naïveté. I find something rather sad about how we keep mapping “creepy” or “unsettling” onto that category.
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