The mystifying Teletubbies are back

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2015 (4161 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Get ready to say “eh-oh” to Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-laa and Po. The Teletubbies are back.

The bright-hued, bottom-heavy, mostly incomprehensible foursome is all over the place right now.

The big news is that the Teletubbies TV reboot is solidly underway and the kooky quartet will be back on the BBC later this year, hypnotizing the preschool crowd while confusing anyone over five.

Meanwhile, over in sports, “Sad Wisconsin Teletubby” became the meme of NCAA’s March Madness. That guy in the Po outfit looking like the world ended as the Badgers loss to Duke in the men’s basketball final is now the universal face of despair.

And finally, a creepy Tubby-themed YouTube video has just gone viral. A guy named Christopher Brown has figured out that slowing down Teletubby footage, draining out the colour, and backing it with a suicidal Joy Division song can transform normally cheerful Teletubbyland into a terrifying existential hell. Another popular video mashes up Teletubby images with American Horror Story audio, and the results are all jump-scares and looming Tubby threats.

We basically have Teletubbies coming at us from all sides right now, and nobody can quite decide whether they are happy or sad or scary. That, of course, is the Tubbies’ fascination and always has been. That might also be why the Tubby resurgence has some fans saying, “Again, again!” while another faction is shouting, “Run away, run away!”

Whether the Tubbies were heedlessly rolling down hills, hopping up and down, eating custard and toast in their grass-covered bunker, taking orders from a talking voice trumpet, or receiving television transmissions through their tummies, their show was always ineffably weird.

Originally produced from 1997 to 2001 with a total of 365 episodes, Teletubbies has become part of the venerable tradition of trippy children’s TV — think H.R. Pufnstuf and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

Like those series, Teletubbies had a core audience of very small children, ironical university students and stoners. I didn’t fall into any of those categories, but I remember watching the program through the buzzy, sleep-deprived haze of early motherhood and finding it strangely serene, sometimes hallucinatory.

Though it might seem like deranged babbling or a psychedelic dream state, Teletubbies is, in fact, carefully engineered to appeal to very young children. It relies on bright colours, large movements and simple slapstick, and its structure is ritualistic, repetitive and slow — very slow. From an adult point of view, nothing happens. Check out this Wikipedia plot summary for episode 17, for example: “The Teletubbies sing Humpty Dumpy and Po has a falling down day.”

This is how the PBS Kids website explains it, in its program viewing tips for (non-stoned) grown-ups: “You may not immediately understand what’s going on, or why your child is so enthralled.

“Adults often wonder how helpful the constant repetition, slow pace, baby talk and silly noises can be to a young child’s development.”

Anne Wood, co-creator of the original show, described it in a 2013 interview this way: “There was an innocence, as well as a glorious silliness, to the series… We were trying to reflect children’s experience back to them.”

Toddlers get Teletubbies at a primarily preverbal level. Most grown-ups don’t seem to be comfortable at the preverbal level. We’re not content to just roll down hills and laugh at malfunctioning Teletoasters. While small children take the Teletubbies as they are, we seem desperate to project our own meanings onto them.

Critics of the series viewed it as dangerous nonsense. Right-wing televangelist Jerry Falwell accused Tinky Winky of promoting the “homosexual agenda.” (The resplendently purple Tinky Winky often carries a handbag and likes to dance in a tutu.)

Other conspiracy-minded types believed the show was slipping in Illuminati symbols or tempting our tots into pagan sun worship. Still others saw it as a plot to hook our kids on technology. (OK, that one might have come true.)

Others adored the show for what they viewed as its hidden messages, especially anything that seemed dark or dystopian or arcane. Fans saw overtones of Stanley Kubrick’s Star Child from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the Teletubbies’ Sun Baby, or found echoes of the eerie, artificially happy landscape of The Prisoner in the Teletubbies’ meadow.

All these questions about the true meaning of the Teletubbies will be back as they make their official return to television later this year. It might be worth revisiting the words of Kenn Viselman, the marketer and producer who brought the show to the U.S. in the 1990s. During the Tinky Winky controversy, Viselman warned against overthinking the giggly, guileless creatures.

“I think we should let the Teletubbies go play in Teletubbyland and not try to define them,” he advised, and he might have a point.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca