Children’s TV series is ‘positively dripping’ with classical music
Daily Comfort ZoneIf you don’t know Bluey, you clearly don’t have much to do with under-sevens.
It’s an Australian series about a family of dogs that has been praised variously for its parenting advice and its grown-up humour. The episodes about buying a house and playing cricket are brilliant in their appeal to two age groups.
But here’s one thing we missed.
Sarah Caissie Provost writes:
… Bluey is positively dripping with classical music. The very first scene of the first episode shows Bandit miming playing a wild “Rondo Alla Turca” on Bluey’s stomach. It makes a certain kind of sense because Bluey is aspirational at its heart. Dad Bandit is an idealized portrait of a modern gentle parent, with ample time and energy for pretend play. Even the Australian Broadcasting Company, Bluey’s original commissioner, admits, “We can’t all be Bandit Heeler.” Cultural romanticization is at work too; little sister Bingo creeping around, making household objects “heavy” with a feather wand, as every family member plays along, wouldn’t be quite right without Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”
The show’s creator, Joe Brumm, insisted in a 2022 interview that the classical music in Bluey is not an attempt to indoctrinate our children into recognizing the superiority of the Western classical oeuvre. But I must point out that, even as the classical music world I work in is rightly invested in diversifying the classical canon, Bluey sticks to standards from the white male composers people tend to recognize. And there is ample evidence that parents do want to expose kids to erudite musical culture. …
More here.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Great stuff! ‘Sleepytime’ is an absolute gem and Holst’s music elevates the story to a whole new level.
Using public domain classical music is not much of an accomplishment, but is still more welcome than junk.
Perhaps this is second best to having no tv.
I love classical music. And I hate Western European While Male Composers!
How long does it take for “Western European While Male Composers” to become acceptably transsexual?
As a small boy in the 1950s, I picked up quite a bit of classical music used as signature tunes or music links for BBC Children’s Hour segments. These included bits of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and the Big Sneeze from Kodaly’s Hary Janos. Many years later, and in a different country, I got to hear these works in their entirety broadcast by what was then the Australian Broadcasting Commission, now the Australian Broadcasting Corporation …