What a wonderful kind of day...

Arthur
Season 14, Episode 9A: "DW, Queen of the Comeback" (11 minutes)
USA / Canada: Cookie Jar Entertainment
CBBC, Monday 30 October, 13:00

And I say "Hey! (Hey!)
What a wonderful kind of day"
If we can learn to work and play
And get along with each other...

Probably everyone under the age of about 35 knows that theme song from their childhood.

Arthur has been going forever (second only to The Simpsons), and still looks and feels exactly the same as it did 20 years ago. It's wholesome, gentle, and in a way timeless. It's explicity designed to be educational, and to encourage reading (suitably enough for a show based on a series of books!). It's officially targeted at children 4 - 8 years old, but personally I think the younger end of that age range would struggle to understand it because it's quite wordy.

A lonnnnng plot recap

This episode focuses on Arthur's little sister, DW, who ends up with a bad haircut because she was squirming at the hairdressers. Two boys in her preschool make fun of her, saying that she looks like a boy, and she is left speechless, so she becomes determined to arm herself with the perfect comeback for the next time she is teased. She ends up seeking advice from her grandmother's friend Mrs McGrady, who tells her an Indian folk-tale.

In the story, a turtle finds that his pond has dried up. Two birds offer to take him to a new pond, by carrying a stick between them, which the turtle holds onto with his mouth. They warn the turtle not to open his mouth while they are flying. However, while they are in mid-air, a third bird appears and teases the turtle. The turtle opens his mouth to answer the bird back, loses grip of the stick, and drops (presumably to his death).

DW learns from the story that even though she is an innocent victim, giving insults back will only make the situation worse. The next day in preschool, the boys tease her again. She replies "call me whatever you want, I really don't care" and walks away. Her teacher sees this and rewards her for her maturity.

Lessons

Not only does this episode give a good moral lesson to children (that although it's unfair to get picked on, it's not worth sinking to their level), but it also gives them a little lesson about another culture: the artwork for the turtle story is drawn in an Indian style, which adds to the "foreign-ness" of the story. Also, the book from which the folk tale came (the Panchatantra) is shown very prominently on-screen: perhaps to encourage the children to find out more about the other stories in the book, or perhaps just to reinforce the idea of reading.

DW is shown to seek advice from her family (brother and grandmother) when she has a problem, reinforcing a message of the family unit. There is also a message of co-operation with people who are different from you, as the characters are from numerous different (anthropomorphized) animal species.


Honestly, the whole tone of the show can be summed up as "wholesome," even down to the nice storybook-style artwork. It's certainly a good influence to children, and has some explicitly educational content. I just wonder if today's children wouldn't find it old-fashioned and dull...

(PS A reference for me to look at later re: Arthur: UCHIKOSHI, Y. (2005). "Narrative development in bilingual kindergartens: Can Arthur help?" Developmental Psychology, 41(3), 464 - 478.)