Get in loser, we’re canceling Bluey

When I saw on Twitter that Bluey was the latest victim of cancel culture, naturally my first thought was “who did she say the N-word in front of?”

For those not in the know, Bluey is an Australian cartoon dog who stars in an eponymous kids’ TV show that airs on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC and, in the US, Disney+. She and her family go on a series of adventures that guide viewers through a healthy mix of toilet humor and confronting difficult emotions, in a tenor suitable for the under-tens.

Given her cheeky nature, and the fact that she is Australian, it seemed only logical that Bluey would have met the ire of the mob for saying something racist on an Instagram Live — after which she would be compelled to post an iPhone notes apology, acknowledging her blue privilege and pledging to “educate herself” by reading Antiracist Dingo. Alas, it was another kind of bigotry that Bluey blundered upon.

In an episode called “Exercise,” Bluey’s father Bandit is in the bathroom weighing himself as Bluey bathes. “Oh man, I need to do some exercise,” Bandit says. “Tell me about it,” his wife Chilli replies. “Why don’t you just do some exercise?” Bluey asks her father.

I. Know.

“Huge Bluey fan but watching Bandit and Chilli weigh themselves and openly hate on their bodies in front of the kids was really uncomfortable,” Dr. Kyla Ringrose, an Australian pediatrician wrote on Instagram.

Naturally, “Exercise” has been reedited in order to protect our children from such poison. The Butterfly Foundation, an Australian eating disorder charity, thanked the network for being “so responsive to community feedback in removing this problematic content.”

“Rather than promoting and normalizing negative attitudes about our bodies, we should be encouraging our children to have healthy relationships with their bodies, including engaging in exercise and movement in enjoyable ways,” Dr. Hannah Jarman told the Guardian.

I’m old enough to remember a Bari Weiss column in the New York Times that praised Australians for mercifully not being “in the midst of a raging culture war.” “The faster they can stop caring about what others think… the more interesting and innovative this already great country will be,” Weiss concluded in 2019. Yet here we are, three years later, bowdlerizing kids’ TV shows for “fatphobia” and the fear they might encourage children to be concerned about their health and appearance. Perhaps this is gauche of me, but I can’t help but think such a child might grow up to be slightly more worried about his appearance when a surgeon is sawing off his diabetic foot. 

According to Nielsen, Bluey was the most streamed acquired show in America last month. It teaches Western youth to not take life too seriously and (presumably) how to cheat at cricket. If America has successfully exported the culture war to the rest of the hemisphere, surely it can next send some of the backbone it takes to stand up to the scolds? After a bit of pushback, we’ll probably learn that the critics’ bark is worse than their bite.