Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello, everyone, You're in for a treat today.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do battle on behalf of my three
Speaker 1: year old against some of the leading intellectuals of our day.
Speaker 1: My producer says this is her favorite revisionist history episode ever.
Speaker 1: As they say on the internet, big if true. If
Speaker 1: you missed it. We opened this many season with two
Speaker 1: episodes about the death of George Floyd, which I hope
Speaker 1: you listen to if you haven't already, and coming up soon.
Speaker 1: My colleague Benda daph Haffrey gives us the real story
Speaker 1: about well, I'm not going to tell you. All I'll
Speaker 1: say is when I listen to it, every single fact
Speaker 1: Ben relates in that episode was something I'd never heard
Speaker 1: of before. Oh and one last thing. I mentioned it
Speaker 1: last week. I'm doing my tour with No Small Endeavor
Speaker 1: and Drew Holcombe April ninth in Louisville, April tenth in Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: and April eleventh in Grand Rapids. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. If you live anywhere near those cities,
Speaker 1: you gotta go check it out at No Small Endeavor
Speaker 1: dot com. Okay, off we go. Enjoy everyone. Every night,
Speaker 1: after bath and just before bedtime. My three year old
Speaker 1: and I settled down in front of the television.
Speaker 2: Pomcho.
Speaker 3: Pomcho will be there on the double never there's a problem,
Speaker 3: rounded bench base.
Speaker 1: If you're not a parent of a young child, it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible you have no idea what pap Patrol is.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Before I had children, I had never heard
Speaker 1: of it either, So let me explain. It's a multi
Speaker 1: billion dollar franchise centered around a band of puppies who
Speaker 1: are called upon in each episode to rescue someone in peril.
Speaker 1: There's a police dog named Chase, a fire dog named Marshall,
Speaker 1: a helicopter pilot named Sky, a roadworks puppy named Rubble.
Speaker 1: They stop when we trains, They fight fires, They repair
Speaker 1: the damaged flying saucers of adorable stranded aliens with enormous eyes.
Speaker 1: You get the picture. Among toddlers, pow Patrol is bigger
Speaker 1: than Elmo. It's bigger than Mickey Mouse. Just ask my
Speaker 1: daughter Pa Patrol.
Speaker 4: We're on the double wherever it is. Alb Don invent today,
Speaker 4: rather is the female popule Gold and Fee Today. Marshall, Wobble,
Speaker 4: Jay's Lucky new a guy I like Luck, Foculous.
Speaker 1: And yet for some reason, every parent I know, every
Speaker 1: student of children's television, every adult who has more than
Speaker 1: a passing interest in the intellectual and moral development of
Speaker 1: our young hates pop Patrol. Like the Reddit thread, Paw
Speaker 1: Patrol has ruined by child's brain quote. Everything about Paw
Speaker 1: Patrol is awful. The yelling and constant panic, the stereotypes,
Speaker 1: the terrible design, the tropes. I wish it would disappear
Speaker 1: from the face of the earth and take all of
Speaker 1: its merch with it. Go to TikTok. They hate the puppies.
Speaker 2: There's some things that really piss me off when it
Speaker 2: comes to Popatrol. It's pretty simple. It sucks. My sun
Speaker 2: watches Paw Patrol. I hate it.
Speaker 1: Everyone hates it except for me. And this episode is
Speaker 1: my attempt to convince you that I'm right and everyone
Speaker 1: else is wrong. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Revisionist History, my podcast where I like to argue
Speaker 1: on behalf of things that all common sense suggests are
Speaker 1: not true. The following defense of Power Patrol is squarely
Speaker 1: in that tradition. It is a search and rescue mission
Speaker 1: for a show about search and rescue missions in all
Speaker 1: my long years of doing revisionist history, I have never
Speaker 1: tackled a more forbidding task. I started by calling people,
Speaker 1: anyone who I thought could help, asking the same questions
Speaker 1: over and over again. First to a parent who had
Speaker 1: lived through what I'm living through right now, we are
Speaker 1: here to discuss poor Patrol, which looms large in my
Speaker 1: life at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Then again to an intellectual someone I admired. I don't
Speaker 1: understand that the amount of hatred the show gets. And again,
Speaker 1: this time to a sociologist, someone who has published in
Speaker 1: academic journals on the Pow Patrol phenomenon. I am calling
Speaker 1: you because I spend every night watching Paw Patrol.
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry, sorry to hear that.
Speaker 1: I spent so much time googling Pow Patrol. Google started
Speaker 1: feeding me Paw Patrol content, like the actress Kia Knightley
Speaker 1: on The Tonight Show explaining what it's like to be
Speaker 1: the mother of a three year old. Wait for it,
Speaker 1: baby's a toddler. Baby's not a baby.
Speaker 2: It's not anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's huge, three and a half, three and a half.
Speaker 2: Are you into uh? Are you into Paw Patrol?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Everyone is sorry. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm into Paw Patrol and I'm not sorry. Paw Patrol
Speaker 1: takes place in two imaginary towns, Adventure Bay and Foggy Bottom.
Speaker 1: The group has as its headquarters what looks like a
Speaker 1: giant postmodern air traffic control center, complete with a really
Speaker 1: cool fire station poll that moves the members of the
Speaker 1: Paw Patrol from the briefing room to their waiting vehicles,
Speaker 1: vehicles which are all, by the way, available separately for purchase.
Speaker 1: In a typical Paw Patrol episode, and I say typical
Speaker 1: when I really mean every single Paw Patrol episode ever,
Speaker 1: someone in the greater Adventure Bay Foggy Bottom metropolitan area
Speaker 1: has a problem. They call Rider, who is a little
Speaker 1: boy in charge of the Paw Patrol operation. He summons
Speaker 1: the pups from whatever adorably cute leisure activity they are
Speaker 1: engaged in.
Speaker 6: They come running, mighty pups too long, lookout, Rider needs us.
Speaker 1: And without fail, the problem is solved.
Speaker 7: No job is too big, no pump is too small.
Speaker 1: For example, in season seven, episode thirteen, Pop Patrol pops
Speaker 1: save Election Day, a particular favorite in the Glabal household,
Speaker 1: Mayor Humdinger of Foggy Bottom has decided unexpectedly to run
Speaker 1: for are of Adventure City, precipitating a crisis. Humdinger is
Speaker 1: wreaking havoc on the campaign trail, causing all kinds of
Speaker 1: chaos downtown. This leads Alex, an adorable little boy who
Speaker 1: happens to find himself in the midst of the mayhem,
Speaker 1: to call for help.
Speaker 4: It all happened because Mayor Hundinger's kidneys are launching the
Speaker 4: election stuff everywhere.
Speaker 1: We'll be right there, Alex. There's a short briefing in
Speaker 1: the situation room. Writer gives that instructions.
Speaker 4: So for this mission, I'll need Chase.
Speaker 3: I need you to use your net to.
Speaker 6: Stop mister porters out of control skateboard ride. Chase is
Speaker 6: on the case, and Marsha, I'll need you to use
Speaker 6: your lender to help get Danny Dun from that big billboard.
Speaker 4: I'm ready for a rough, rough rescue.
Speaker 1: And off the pops go. Hey guys, Hey, malcolme, how
Speaker 1: you doing.
Speaker 2: How's it go ahead?
Speaker 1: I called up Cal Brunker and Bob Barlin, the writers
Speaker 1: behind the Paw Patrol movies. I asked them why they
Speaker 1: thought kids loved the show so much.
Speaker 3: The structures are so clear and consistent from episode to
Speaker 3: episode that it really it pulls them in and they're
Speaker 3: able to feel comfortable and confident in that world of storytelling.
Speaker 1: Oh I forgot to mention that in addition to eleven
Speaker 1: seasons of Paw Patrol television shows, there have been two
Speaker 1: Paw Patrol movies, which to get a grossed three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 3: The structure of the show is really quite smart in
Speaker 3: how they go about every every rescue that takes place.
Speaker 3: Writer tells the pops what they're gonna do, and then
Speaker 3: they show up and they do the same thing that.
Speaker 2: He's just told the audience.
Speaker 3: So I think the participation level from a child is
Speaker 3: able to be so much more because it's less surprising.
Speaker 1: I did not grow up with the television, so this
Speaker 1: experience is all new to me. Maybe that's why I
Speaker 1: like Pop Patrol so much. Everyone else groans in silent
Speaker 1: agony over the thought of watching, say, Pop Patrol the
Speaker 1: movie for the fourth time. Me I'm like, what new
Speaker 1: fresh insights can I glean this time around about Chase
Speaker 1: the police dog, a German shepherd who struggles with feelings
Speaker 1: of inadequacy.
Speaker 3: Chase has got a backstory, and I mean that at
Speaker 3: its highest level. Chase believes that being scared means he's
Speaker 3: not a hero, and so he should be part of it.
Speaker 3: And he learns that heroes get scared too, but keep going.
Speaker 3: That's what makes them hero.
Speaker 1: Writer has that scene with him where they relive when
Speaker 1: he found Chase for the first time. Yes, I love
Speaker 1: I love to hear you saying that brings y on
Speaker 1: what is clearly University avenue. That's, by the way, remember
Speaker 1: that reference University avenue. What am I referring to? A
Speaker 1: small clue to my grand unified theory of power patrol,
Speaker 1: A clue which I'm guessing all the other parents missed
Speaker 1: because they run their phones checking Instagram. Now that so,
Speaker 1: because there is what's really interesting is it there? When
Speaker 1: my daughter was watching that, she the first we've seen
Speaker 1: it more than once, that movie, and the first time
Speaker 1: she saw it, I think she was genuinely affected by it.
Speaker 1: I mean it was clear it was a different kind
Speaker 1: of emotional experience and she'd been getting from the TV shows.
Speaker 1: In the second and third time. Gripping my hand tightly,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what the corporate benefactors of the Paw
Speaker 1: Patrol franchise desire a bonding moment between a dad and
Speaker 1: his daughter over a disconsolate puppy. Was my daughter wearing
Speaker 1: Paw Patrol pajamas as this was happening, Yes she was.
Speaker 1: And yet there are people, lots of people who look
Speaker 1: on that picture of family togetherness and cry foul? Can
Speaker 1: you explain this? On several occasions, in the course of
Speaker 1: almost a decade now of revisionist history, I have called
Speaker 1: on Angus Fletcher, neuroscientist turned narrative theorist genius in residence
Speaker 1: at Ohio State University. Remember, for example, back to our
Speaker 1: three part revision of the ending of Disney's The Little Mermaid,
Speaker 1: arguably the intellectual high watermark of the entire revision's history.
Speaker 1: Corpus Angus provided the intellectual firepower. And remember when we
Speaker 1: did a whole series on the greatest movie scripts that
Speaker 1: never got made? Angus had one, of course he did.
Speaker 1: Angus is much much smarter than I am. More important,
Speaker 1: Angus is not hopelessly sentimental like I am. He would
Speaker 1: not be derailed by the gentle pressure of a three
Speaker 1: year old stubby fingers. And when I remember that Angus
Speaker 1: also has kids. I called him up now a small
Speaker 1: thing before we go on. Normally, when we interview people,
Speaker 1: we edit the tape. I interject with commentary. The whole
Speaker 1: thing is compressed and annotated. We give you snippets, but
Speaker 1: snippets do not do justice to Professor Angus Fletcher. So
Speaker 1: you're going to get Angus unbound. I want to start you.
Speaker 1: You too went to a Paw Patrol period with your children?
Speaker 1: Is this correct?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so my son likes Paw Patrol and I had
Speaker 8: an immediate horrifying flashback when you brought the subject up,
Speaker 8: because I went back and tried to watch a couple
Speaker 8: episodes just to remind myself and immediately had to shut
Speaker 8: them off, actually for for self preservation.
Speaker 1: But there are many things to unpack here. First of all,
Speaker 1: how long did your son still actively watch Pow Patrol?
Speaker 2: No? No, absolutely still alive.
Speaker 8: So so we managed to we managed to save him
Speaker 8: in time.
Speaker 1: You're so, you're and why you were watching it with
Speaker 1: your son? Why?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Why did this show not appeal to you? What is
Speaker 1: it about it that's like hitting you the wrong way?
Speaker 9: It's designed to anesthetize your brain. I mean, I feel
Speaker 9: like I am mainlining Horse trenqu Wiser. It's a show
Speaker 9: that is studiously designed to interrupt active thought. I mean,
Speaker 9: that's like the purpose of the show, and it's it's engineered.
Speaker 2: Brilliantly to do that.
Speaker 9: It's like it's like the kind of like diabolical apotheosis
Speaker 9: of hundreds of years of figuring out how to how
Speaker 9: to make audiences more and more.
Speaker 1: Pass What do you what do you mean? Okay, break
Speaker 1: that down, tell me exactly what you mean by that.
Speaker 9: So it's the quintessence of this thing that we call narrative.
Speaker 9: We have a term for this in narrative theory.
Speaker 2: It's called vacuous agon.
Speaker 9: Vacuous agon, and basically what that needs is like when
Speaker 9: there's a conflict, but there's no stress, there's no anxiety
Speaker 9: in the viewer because you know that it's going to
Speaker 9: work out. And this is a I have to give
Speaker 9: credit to who coined this term. It's it's a brilliant
Speaker 9: member of my lab. His name is Mike Bevinissi. He
Speaker 9: coined the term after watching Phoeneas and Ferr, which is
Speaker 9: a Disney show, with his three children. And the point
Speaker 9: of vacuous agon is that you're constantly being presented with
Speaker 9: problems that are solved immediately.
Speaker 2: At the moment that you are presented with the problem.
Speaker 9: And I think it's probably obviously few having I'm sure
Speaker 9: watched several episodes of the show. How mechanically what the
Speaker 9: show does is it gives you a problem, and then
Speaker 9: immediately Rider shows up like a helicopter parent, like the
Speaker 9: ultimate helicopter parent, and tells everybody exactly what to do
Speaker 9: so the problem will go away, and then we just
Speaker 9: kind of watch as a problem goes away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. So and you think that's problematic, because.
Speaker 2: It's not that I think it's problematic now, and it's
Speaker 2: that I know it's problematic.
Speaker 9: So I don't know if you're aware of this, but
Speaker 9: there for the last thirty years, it's been.
Speaker 2: This crisis in American schools.
Speaker 9: American kids have been getting less creative, and because they've
Speaker 9: been getting less creative, they've been less able to solve
Speaker 9: their own problems. And because theyre less able to solve
Speaker 9: their own problems, they have these rises and anxiety and anger,
Speaker 9: you know, losses of stuff, and I'm gonna see resilience
Speaker 9: all these kinds of things and you know the major
Speaker 9: reason for this is that we are either.
Speaker 2: Solving their problems for them.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that we're coming in and solving their problems for them,
Speaker 9: or we're essentially suspending them in this state of giving
Speaker 9: them artificial problems. So an artificial problem is like a
Speaker 9: math problem or standardized test or something that doesn't exist
Speaker 9: in the real world, and you know, and you learn
Speaker 9: the formula, and which you learn the formula, you know
Speaker 9: how to solve it. And so kids are developing this
Speaker 9: ability to get better and better and better and better at.
Speaker 2: School, and then they just keep failing at life.
Speaker 9: And this TV show is a paradigmatic example of that
Speaker 9: entire process.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean it solves all the problems before you.
Speaker 5: There's no ability you have to exercise any curiosity because
Speaker 5: the moment a problem happens, like literally, you're told these
Speaker 5: two dogs are going to go solve it in exactly
Speaker 5: this way, there's no opportunity for the brain to engage
Speaker 5: what we.
Speaker 9: Call on counterfactual cause while thinking these processes that are
Speaker 9: currently encounter a problem. The whole reason for imaginative literature,
Speaker 9: the reason that things like Curious George and Winnie the
Speaker 9: Pooh were created or to stimulate these processes in young shoulder,
Speaker 9: because at the age of four is actually when they
Speaker 9: develop the capacity for irony, for.
Speaker 2: Narrative irony, and all those.
Speaker 9: Books and reading with your children for reasons we can
Speaker 9: discuss if you're interested, stimulates all those processes.
Speaker 2: And when you watch this show, it nukes them.
Speaker 9: So it's not bad in the sense that like giving
Speaker 9: your children ice cream isn't bad.
Speaker 2: Right, they can have ice cream. But if all you
Speaker 2: give them is ice cream, what happens to them? Right?
Speaker 2: They become diabetic. And it's the same thing with this show.
Speaker 1: And yeah, God, I feel bad now. You filled me
Speaker 1: with a kind of degree of self loathing and guilt
Speaker 1: over the damage I'm doing to my daughter's imagination, her
Speaker 1: ability to problem solve. This is what you do. I
Speaker 1: should point out how strange this is. A generation ago
Speaker 1: people love children's television. The invention of children's television was
Speaker 1: one of America's signature cultural Triumphs. Intellectuals wrote love songs
Speaker 1: to children's television. I remember once in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties when I discovered Sesame Street for the first time.
Speaker 1: I was so entranced that I went to the Sesame
Speaker 1: Street studios and just hung out there for what seemed
Speaker 1: like days. I was there during the great Slimy episode.
Speaker 1: Maybe you remember this Slimy, the adorable Sesame Street worm
Speaker 1: becomes an astronaut, and so the Sesame Street staff brought
Speaker 1: in Tony Bennett, whose signature, son of course, was fly
Speaker 1: me to the Moon to sing.
Speaker 2: Slimy to the moon.
Speaker 9: And when this worm arrives, you'll find.
Speaker 7: He'll take a leap that small for him but huge
Speaker 7: for all worm God.
Speaker 1: I was there for that, standing this close to the
Speaker 1: legend himself, who acted like this was the greatest moment
Speaker 1: of his entire career. My point is, back in the day,
Speaker 1: the leading cultural figures of our time would happily make
Speaker 1: the pilgrimage to a random TV studio in Queen's to
Speaker 1: make light of their own work on behalf of Toddler's Everywhere.
Speaker 1: But now the cultural luminaries and the intellectuals have abandoned ship.
Speaker 1: By eleven minutes into his denunciation of Bob Patrol, Angus
Speaker 1: had mentioned Dickens, the A team, Plautus and Aristophanes. Now
Speaker 1: he'd moved on to explaining the phenomenon of new comedy
Speaker 1: and contrasting it with something he called old comedy.
Speaker 9: And what happens in old comedy is you're presented with
Speaker 9: real problems. So an example of a real problem would
Speaker 9: be war or the breakdown of democracy. And then the
Speaker 9: comedy goes on and the problem gets worse, and it
Speaker 9: gets worse, and it gets worse and it gets worse.
Speaker 2: And then eventually the comedy falls apart. It just ends.
Speaker 2: And basically the comedy is saying, that's a big problem.
Speaker 2: You guys in the audience, better figure out how to
Speaker 2: solve that.
Speaker 9: So it forced people to think about hard things in
Speaker 9: a public place where they get kind of oppress, up
Speaker 9: with it and solve their own problems. Then what happened
Speaker 9: was the emergence of new comedy, which is essentially light entertainment.
Speaker 9: And what happens in light entertainment is a fake problem
Speaker 9: is posed, a fake problem is posed, and then just
Speaker 9: if you might be getting stressed about this fake problem,
Speaker 9: the comedy answers it for you by the end, so
Speaker 9: you can relax. So what's diabolical about paw Patrol is
Speaker 9: it takes real problems in terms something to imaginary problems.
Speaker 9: It's like it's like the end it's like the year
Speaker 9: of comedy, because I mean, there are real problems that
Speaker 9: it seems to embrace, you know, it don't seem to
Speaker 9: get in trouble and stuff like that, you know, but
Speaker 9: then it just reveals that they're all, you know, not
Speaker 9: a problem and you don't have to worry about them
Speaker 9: because you know, writer will just show up or there'll
Speaker 9: be some like weird gizmo gadget thing that will solve
Speaker 9: the problem for you. So, you know, just relaxed, preschooler,
Speaker 9: don't worry about this big bag world you're entering in
Speaker 9: because it's just fine.
Speaker 2: Don't even use your brain. Why why were you even
Speaker 2: giving a brain? What's the point of a brain?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: You need to solve problems. Everything's already solved like a
Speaker 2: perfect I.
Speaker 1: Know, I promised you that I was going to play
Speaker 1: Angus at full length, Angus unbound. And if this was
Speaker 1: a Joe Rogan experience, and I bring up Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: for a reason, by the way, because revisionist history is
Speaker 1: coming back to Joe Rogan big time in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1: If this was a Joe Rogan experience, I'd have just
Speaker 1: run it all efit. Who among us does not have
Speaker 1: a spare three and a half hours to listen to
Speaker 1: a perfect stranger speak about the weightlifting routines. My assumption
Speaker 1: is that you, unlike the many millions of Roganites, have jobs.
Speaker 1: So from here on out, I'm just giving you the
Speaker 1: good parts. So what would happen if you showed an
Speaker 1: old comedy show to a child? What happens if in
Speaker 1: paw patrol they don't solve the problem? What does my
Speaker 1: daughter do?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So this is great, So your child will become concerned.
Speaker 9: Your child will become concerned, and then your child will
Speaker 9: probably turn to you as the authority figure in her
Speaker 9: life and be like, I'm kind of concerned. What's going
Speaker 9: to happen to that truck that's suspended over that cast
Speaker 9: and or whatever other paw patrol the problem there is, right? Yeah,
Speaker 9: And then you're gonna look very seriously at them and say,
Speaker 9: I don't know, what do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 9: And then they would have to pause, and then they
Speaker 9: would think, and then they would have to imagine themselves
Speaker 9: solving the problem.
Speaker 2: And that's the value.
Speaker 1: I'm a new parent, just over three years into the experience,
Speaker 1: and I have all the insecurities that come with being
Speaker 1: a rookie. I don't know what I'm doing. I put
Speaker 1: my daughters in bed at night and pray they fall asleep.
Speaker 1: I make them oatmeal in the morning and pray they
Speaker 1: eat it. I help build castles made of magnetiles and
Speaker 1: pray they don't destroy them. And all the while I
Speaker 1: ask myself, who are these mysterious creatures over whom I
Speaker 1: have recklessly been given dominion? And now Angus, who I
Speaker 1: admire like few others, was telling me I was doing
Speaker 1: it all wrong.
Speaker 9: You're deleting their capacity to develop an awareness of other
Speaker 9: answers to problems. You're removing that source of natural creativity.
Speaker 9: You're also removing the pressure on them to try and
Speaker 9: find that perspective to solve those other problems. And so
Speaker 9: this entire part of their brain is just atrophying at
Speaker 9: the exact critical moment when as human beings were supposed
Speaker 9: to have it and it's supposed to come online.
Speaker 1: This is devastated. This has been a devastating conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: When we come back my grand unified theory of pow
Speaker 1: patrol I said way back in the beginning that there
Speaker 1: was an important clue in my conversation with the creators
Speaker 1: of the Paw Patrol movies, something crucial to understanding my
Speaker 1: stubborn affection for the Paw Patrol franchise. Something about University Avenue.
Speaker 1: I remember that you might have wondered what University Avenue
Speaker 1: I was referring to. Well, it's the one in Toronto.
Speaker 1: University Avenue is one of the central boulevards that runs
Speaker 1: through downtown Toronto. It is the Broadway of Toronto. In
Speaker 1: the Pow Patrol movie, it appears as a little visual
Speaker 1: clue that tells you something crucially important about writer and
Speaker 1: his band of Mary Pops. Something I realized, as I
Speaker 1: prepared to rect bond to Angus's attacks, that even the
Speaker 1: mighty Angus had missed. Now but wait, now, I feel Angus,
Speaker 1: your arguments are so compelling and overwhelming. I feel foolish
Speaker 1: in offering my defense of poor Patrol. But I should,
Speaker 1: I think, I feel I should do it anyway. The
Speaker 1: key to understanding Pow Patrol, so this is This is
Speaker 1: the alternate Po Patrol theory. And the key to the
Speaker 1: alternate Po Patrol theory is understanding that it is a
Speaker 1: Canadian show. Pow Patrol is conceived, made and distributed from
Speaker 1: my home country of Canada. It is as Canadian as
Speaker 1: maple syrup, as Canadian as a flock of geese streaking
Speaker 1: across the sky. And what pow Patrol is doing is
Speaker 1: enacting a fantasy of municipal competence, which is absolutely essential
Speaker 1: to understanding what understanding Canada. That's what Canada is, right,
Speaker 1: is a country which has which is formed. What is
Speaker 1: the you know, the essential credo of the United States
Speaker 1: is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, an individualist credo.
Speaker 1: What is the parallel credo of Canada that was embedded
Speaker 1: in the Canadian Articles of Confederation? It is peace, order
Speaker 1: and good government?
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 1: What is popetrol? Pow Patrol is an homage and it
Speaker 1: is it is the elaboration of the notion of peace,
Speaker 1: order and good government. And the key thing in the
Speaker 1: po Patrol song at the very beginning they go pop Patrol,
Speaker 1: Pa Patrol. Whenever you're in trouble, pot Patrol, Pop Patrol
Speaker 1: will be there on the double.
Speaker 2: That's crucial.
Speaker 1: It is that not only is every problem assessed, but
Speaker 1: every problem is is addressed in a timely manner, in
Speaker 1: an efficient, competent manner. So that what Papacho is all
Speaker 1: about is that this is, in Canadian terms, is what
Speaker 1: we want our state to do. Right, it is too
Speaker 1: and what is what is pap patrol itself? It is
Speaker 1: it's a It's an example of interagency cooperation, right, Chase
Speaker 1: the police dog, Marshall the firefighter, Sky the pilot, Rubble
Speaker 1: the contractor, all working together. Very Canadian notion that if only,
Speaker 1: if only we join hands and and cooperat across disciplines,
Speaker 1: we can more effectively address the social ills of plague us. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just Canada at all. So what my daughter is
Speaker 1: getting is essentially Canada.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I mean I I've seen on the news
Speaker 9: how perfect things are in Canada.
Speaker 2: Malcolm Sino has convinced me it's a. It's a it's
Speaker 2: a utopian land where everything works out, there's there's no
Speaker 2: there's no problems.
Speaker 1: Better it's a comparative judgment. H this point about the
Speaker 1: central of public sector competence to the Canadian identity, it's
Speaker 1: worth a bit of a digression. It concerns the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one hit single from the band Crash Test Dummies.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you remember it. It was called Superman's Song, and
Speaker 1: it turns on a sociological comparison of Tarzan and Superman.
Speaker 7: Tarzaan wasn't the leadies Man.
Speaker 10: He just come along and scoop my bonder is arm
Speaker 10: like that, quick as a kid him the junngle.
Speaker 1: Superman, the song argues, is Tarzan's antithesis. He's not some
Speaker 1: rapacious propheteer.
Speaker 7: Superman of made anybody receiving the world from silom and grundy.
Speaker 7: And sometimes I've dispilled the global elbows.
Speaker 8: You love the man.
Speaker 1: This is how the lead singer for the Crash Test Dummies,
Speaker 1: Brad Roberts, explained his thinking to a college newspaper.
Speaker 10: Quote.
Speaker 1: Superman, as cast in Superman's Song is obviously a left
Speaker 1: wing political figure. His activity in the community is intrinsic
Speaker 1: to his being. Superman is being juxtaposed against Tarzan, who
Speaker 1: is kind of a lazy faire capitalist type who retreats
Speaker 1: to the forest and rejects the idea of the community.
Speaker 1: He wants to live in a so called animal state,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't want to be bothered with any kind
Speaker 1: of political realities. Unquote. First of all, how great is
Speaker 1: it that rock stars once talked like this second. On
Speaker 1: the basis of this argument, where do you think the
Speaker 1: crash test dummies are from? It's obvious Canada. Of course,
Speaker 1: this is a song that could only have been written
Speaker 1: by a Canadian. Only a Canadian would find something utterly
Speaker 1: reprehensible in Tarzan's naked displays of strength and brute force,
Speaker 1: and only a Canadian would look long and hard at
Speaker 1: Superman and conclude he's one of us.
Speaker 7: Listen, Hey, Bob, Soup had a strange job. Even though
Speaker 7: he could of smashing any banking in the United States,
Speaker 7: he hadn't strength, but he would.
Speaker 1: Not any bank in the United States. Meaning Superman is
Speaker 1: at a place below the border, where the expectation is
Speaker 1: he will use his gifts for his own selfish ends.
Speaker 1: The superhero who puts his community first stands for peace,
Speaker 1: order and good government.
Speaker 7: Sometimes Soup was stopping crimes how bad he was tempted
Speaker 7: to just quit an time bad long Man joint Tarzi Forest.
Speaker 1: The forest clearly referring to anything below the forty ninth parallel, but.
Speaker 7: Stayed in the sanity.
Speaker 10: Cap down, change.
Speaker 7: In clothes in dirty old Fall. Boostelia's work was through
Speaker 7: the in earth and to dom.
Speaker 2: But go home.
Speaker 1: He stayed in the city working out of decrepit foam
Speaker 1: booths because he believed super strength and superpowers ought to
Speaker 1: be deployed on behalf of the public good. When I
Speaker 1: see Superman, I think he's a Paw Patrol character. Before
Speaker 1: we got hooked on Paw Patrol, my daughter and I
Speaker 1: watched Minie's Bowtoons, equally absurdly popular short cartoons about a
Speaker 1: small business run by a Mini Mouse and her best
Speaker 1: friend and maybe lover I'm unclear on that. Daisy Duck
Speaker 1: devoted to selling bows a boutique. And yes, the theme
Speaker 1: song is as good as you might imagine.
Speaker 8: Coming time.
Speaker 2: You always well.
Speaker 1: Every episode of Bowtoons also begins with a problem, which
Speaker 1: the episode resolves through Minie's ingenuity and persistence that.
Speaker 4: Gives me an idea.
Speaker 1: But who is the beneficiary of Minnie's ingenuity. Minis Mini
Speaker 1: and her considerable business interests. There is no community in
Speaker 1: Minnie Mouse's Bowtoons, no civic obligations. There is only the
Speaker 1: profit that ensues to Mini and her shareholders.
Speaker 4: There's no business, let business.
Speaker 1: All of this made me think of the first lines
Speaker 1: of sol Bello's novel The Adventures of Augie March may
Speaker 1: be the most famous opening sentence in all of American literature. Quote,
Speaker 1: I am an American Chicago born Chicago, that somber city,
Speaker 1: and go at things as I have taught myself freestyle
Speaker 1: and will make the record in my own way. First
Speaker 1: to knock first admitted, sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a
Speaker 1: not so innocent unquote. That's Minnie Mouse in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: Many is American Disney born Many is for many. Many
Speaker 1: is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But
Speaker 1: do you know the dirty little secret about sal Bello?
Speaker 1: He was a Canadian, and I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: in an earlier version of Augie March, sal Bello admitted
Speaker 1: to the truth of his birthright. I am a Canadian
Speaker 1: Toronto born Toronto, that clean and tidy city, and we
Speaker 1: go at things as I have been taught by the
Speaker 1: civic institutions of my municipality, through cooperation and interagency task forces.
Speaker 1: First to respond, first to apologize, always an innocent knock.
Speaker 1: Angus Fletcher, genius in residence, made lots of very good points,
Speaker 1: but did he deal with the elephants in the room?
Speaker 1: Tarzan Minnie Mouse, Saal Bella. He did not. I'm simply
Speaker 1: saying that I'm understanding where this notion, the notion of
Speaker 1: the new comedy is so implicit in the Canadian national narrative.
Speaker 1: That's what it is. There are no real problems in Canada.
Speaker 1: Canada is this oasis. We're surrounded by countries with will problems,
Speaker 1: not Canada. We don't pick fights with people, we don't
Speaker 1: have racism, we welcome immigrants, we have national health care.
Speaker 1: It is the Kennedy is the embodiment of the of
Speaker 1: the promise of the new comedy. Every problem can be
Speaker 1: simply addressed through some interagency task force. Right, so my
Speaker 1: daughter is just getting a She's just getting a little
Speaker 1: bit of Canadian propaganda. That's how I would read it,
Speaker 1: Angus said. The Paw Patrol's problem was that it was
Speaker 1: vacuous agon. Paw Patrol's weakness was that it constantly presented
Speaker 1: its little viewers with a problem solved at the moment
Speaker 1: of its presentation. But when I look around me at
Speaker 1: the world, all I can say is, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I could use a little more vacuous agon in my
Speaker 1: life right now. A world where there is a puppy
Speaker 1: optimized for every kind of peril, where help arrives at
Speaker 1: the very moment it is summoned, where the hero's work
Speaker 1: not to benefit themselves but the community in which they live.
Speaker 1: Where the definition of a superman is someone who turns
Speaker 1: down the opportunity to rob every bank and instead toils
Speaker 1: on behalf of his countrymen as a fantasy, an aspiration
Speaker 1: to plant in my daughter's head here and now that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound too bad, sapajo, We are on the double.
Speaker 4: Wherever this is album Don and venturday rather is the
Speaker 4: female possible Go and see today Marshall Wobble, James Lucky
Speaker 4: do It Guy on the Way Long a Popular.
Speaker 1: Provision's History is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence, Lucy Sullivan,
Speaker 1: and Ben Addaph Haffrey. Our editor is Karen Chakerji. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Sam Russick, Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence, Mixing
Speaker 1: and mastering by Echo Mountain. Production support from lup Leman.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks Sarah Nix
Speaker 1: and l Hefe Greta Coom. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. My daughter
Speaker 1: made this whole episode possible. Get add free episodes of
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