I've read fantastic, dark - often very political analyses - of TV shows like Thomas the Tank Engine, Teletubbies, Mr.Blobby, and Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch.... but I'd like to find some more. What other dystopian, playful, surreal, philosophical, deconstructive readings of kid's television shows/characters are out there? I am more interested in kid's TV shows, rather than movies, because there is more material to go with, but certain classic films, like Willy Wonka perhaps, would be appreciated too

Films are made with two key variables: time and money. Filmmakers also employ editors. We’ll be kind and say this Turkish TV show ran out of money and couldn’t afford to pay editors to remove the final scene in this (unintentionally hilarious) video, which was broadcast widely.

In David Cronenberg’s 1983 film Videodrome, the president of a cable company discovers, on a pirate satellite, a plotless show (the titular “Videodrome”) depicting the graphic torture and murder of anonymous victims.

Exhibition trailer for the Precious Commodities show at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 2 March-5 May 2013. For more information, visit openeye.org.ukCast: Mishka HennerTags:

AT MIDNIGHT WE ALL ENTER THE BLACK LODGE

Leaper A fusion of ‘above’, by GIFMovie, and vintage Amiga Module sounds, by Doctor QE / tahoma59

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Television Animated GIF made by otolythe from Berlin-based artist Stephan Tillmans’ “Light Point Arrays:” still photographs which capture the exact second in which tube televisions are switched off and the image breaks down.

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The BBC children’s television programme Teletubbies is, evidently, based upon an SF conceit. But how meaningful is it to call it SF? Whilst conceding science-fictional elements to the show, most viewers, I suppose, would not think of it as belonging to the SF genre. And yet there is a point in making the identification.

The Teletubbies live in Teletubbyland, a sort of hi-tech hobbiton of green fields and hills, dotted with coloured flowers and grazing rabbits, under a bright blue sky. The four Teletubbies themselves live in a sunken dome, tended by technological gadgets of various sorts: a robotic vacuum-cleaner called ‘Nu-nu’ who cleans up all messes, food-producing and other machines, and periscopes that rise spontaneously from the turf to talk or sing to the Teletubbies.

The ’tubbies are differentiated from one another in various ways, and each has a favourite toy or prop. They are, in descending order of size: Tinky-Winky (who is purple, his antenna a triangle shape, his favourite ‘prop’ a handbag); Dipsy (lime green, his antenna a straight-up phallic thrust, his favourite prop an enormous black-and-white top hat); La-La (yellow, her antenna curled like a pig’s tail, her prop a ball); and Po, the littlest of them (red, his antenna a circle, his prop a scooter). The show’s conceit is that these curious space-alien-creatures represent toddlers at different stages of development, such that Tinky-Winky has the greatest (although still severely limited) linguistic capabilities, and Po talks in baby-talk. They are also differentiated in terms of character: they all have racially ‘white’ faces and hands, except for Dipsy who is racially ‘black’ (quite apart from his pimp hat, Dipsy adopts rather patronisingly stereotypical hip-hop dance postures). La-La likes to sing. Po likes to ride around on her scooter. All four of these beings have television screens inset into their bellies: which is, of course, the feature that gives the show its name.

Spockvision

Wherefrom comes this urge to expose such traumatic interiors? After all, hoarding can be nothing new – it’s easy to imagine a Cyclops’s cavern stuffed to the roof with sheep bones, cheese rinds and the remains of hapless Argonauts. The splurge of reality obesity shows that the explanation is simple: schadenfreude. We look upon those poor wobblers being shaken to their core by life coaches and think to ourselves, I may be a little on the tubby side but – Jesus! – I’m not that bad. Actually, my suspicion is that the compulsive hoarder craziness is an even more craven attempt to affect such a catharsis. As the crack team of cleaners goes into the bungalow, black bags and bug spray at the ready, we sit on the sofa watching and, for a few dreamy minutes, can forget all about the landfill-in-waiting that surrounds us.

Cybernetic Sherlock

I like the BBC test card, because it's a wonderful example of how practical industrial design can develop into an enigmatic work of art. But even better is knowing that the image isn't just art, it has an objective purpose worked into it, a secret meaning that reveals itself under scrutiny. The architecture of industrial design is filled with these subtle codes, and together they create a world around us filled with hidden meaning.

If we look at the BBC test cards, the colours and patterns framing Carole have a fairly obvious purpose, providing reference points for colour and contrast. The white triangles aligned with the cardinal points are there to check if the edges of the image line up with those of the screen.

In test card J, the X on the noughts and crosses board marks the exact centre of the screen. Even Carole was chosen for a reason – her skin tone makes it easy to spot if something is wrong with the colours displayed, while Bubbles is there to add some green, so that all th

It seems significant, somehow, that Infinite Jest—the big buzzy signature meganovel of the nineties—was set at the end of the aughts. Most of the book’s action appears to take place in 2009, which means that we’ve all just survived the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. It also means that David Foster Wallace’s prophetic window has now (at least in the most literal sense) closed forever, in the same way Orwell’s did when we reached the actual 1984. And in fact Infinite Jest’s vision of the future does, these days, look slightly dated. One of the book’s nightmare scenarios is the existence of an entertainment so addictive that people watch it until they die—a film they access via a machine Wallace calls a “teleputer,” which turns out to be some kind of ungodly hybrid of HDTV, computer, telephone, and VCR; it crunches data on “3.6-MB diskettes” and plays films off actual physical cartridges. All of which carbon-dates the novel’s creation precisely back to the early-to-mid-nineties (i

To many, the A30 is just a road, but to retired civil servant Arthur Boyt it's more like a delicatessen. Arthur eats roadkill. He has sampled cat, barn owl, squirrel, hedgehog and badger. But his lifestyle is under attack. His isolated cottage on Bodmin moor has started receiving abusive calls from disgruntled locals. His wife, a vegetarian he met in Watford, is so afraid that she refuses to leave her bedroom. But Arthur refuses to change.

Star Trek has long been described as a cult phenomenon…but is it an actual cult? Some anthropologists think so. Following the example of anthropologist Margaret Mead, they lived among the natives and studied their rituals-that is, they went to Star Trek conventions and fan clubs. Here's what they found.

Their conclusions? Writes cultural anthropologist Michael Jindra in the journal Sociology of Religion:

When I undertook this research, my first intention was to focus on how ST [Star Trek] draws a picture of the future that is attractive to many Americans. But early on I realized I was dealing with something much bigger and more complex than I had anticipated...it had features that paralleled a religious-type movement: an origin myth, a set of beliefs, an organization, and some of the most active and creative members to be found anywhere…Religion often points us to another world; ST does the same.