Ok Prof M...you got me thinking! I was lucky enough to avoid Teletubbie-ism as my daughter Lauren was too old to watch them when they broke into public television. Kai is actually out-growing them! She loved them when she was a little less than a year and now she chooses other shows over Teletubbies. I think babies and young children love the show because it is so simple yet colorful and musical. I found them perfect for afternoons when Kai was not sleeping and I had gotten a collective 4 1/2 hours of sleep-- in two days. They're just the right level of non-educational tv we all need on occasion. But the reference to gender you asked about in terms of kids tv-- well, how could I not dig up the stuff about Tinky-Winky possibly being gay because he carried a "purse?" Perhaps he was public television's first transgendered child's character? I'm being unfair :) It was really a "magic bag" and the rest is in the imagination of totally homophobic folks like Jerry Falwell:
Tinky Winky Controversies (from Wikkipedia)
One of the Teletubbies, Tinky Winky, started a still hinted-at controversy in 1999 due to his carrying a bag that looks much like a woman's handbag (although he was first "outed" by the academic and cultural critic Andy Medhurst in a letter of July 1997 to The Face).
A February 1999 article in the National Liberty Journal, published by evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell, warned parents that Tinky Winky could be a hidden homosexual symbol, because "he is purple, the gay pride colour, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle, the gay pride symbol". [2]
A spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co., who licenses the characters in the United States, said that the bag was just a magic bag. "The fact that he carries a magic bag doesn't make him a homosexual. It's a children's show, folks. To think we would be putting sexual innuendo in a children's show is kind of outlandish", he added.
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