Valentine – Antenna http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu Responses to Media and Culture Thu, 30 Mar 2017 23:48:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 My TV Valentine: Big Block Sing Song http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2014/02/14/my-tv-valentine-big-block-sing-song/ http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2014/02/14/my-tv-valentine-big-block-sing-song/#comments Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:00:13 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=23586 bigblockMy media valentine this year goes to Warren Brown and Adam Goddard’s Big Block Sing Song. This is a series of animated shorts that play between other programming on Disney Junior in the US, Kids’ CBC in Canada, and Nick Jr. in the UK. Each involves, as the title might suggest, a big block singing. And each is awesome. Part Flight of the Conchords in their parodic sensibility, part sincere, part ethnographic in their understanding of how little kids’ heads work, and funny, relaxing, and thoroughly ear-wormy, they are my favorite thing on television these days. Luckily for you, they’re also on YouTube. I’ve embedded a selection below.

I love how every character has a sense of himself or herself. I think of a quirky public service campaign funded by the Canadian government years back which simply tried to instill self-confidence in kids, and these Canadian segments are at it again. Nor does confidence in oneself need to be performed over others or at their expense: as opposed to the annoying kids that overpopulate kids’ television and films who are jerks to each other, or who learn self-confidence through beating others and winning races and trophies, the characters of Big Block Sing Song live in a nicer world where they just are, and are happy to be.

That’s all I have by way of commentary. Mostly, this post is just about sharing something I love. Enjoy, and I hope yours is a two banana kind of day (note: I’m embedding the Disney Junior official clips, in the hopes that they’re more stable, but that might block non-US readers out? If so, try these for Monkey, Noses, Princess, Different, Hair, and Moose):

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