{"id":3217,"date":"2015-10-13T22:54:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T21:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3217"},"modified":"2015-10-13T22:54:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T21:54:31","slug":"watch-with-father-3-bing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3217","title":{"rendered":"Watch With Father #3: Bing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Round the corner, not far away \/ Bing is [Insert Subject Here] today.&#8221; \u00a0So begins &#8211; give or take a subject &#8211; every episode of\u00a0<em>Bing<\/em>, in which an animated three-year-old bunny\u00a0encounters\u00a0and learns to overcome the challenges of toddler life.<\/p>\n<p><em>Bing<\/em>&#8216;s five-minute episodes have a pretty standard formula. \u00a0Bing is doing something\u00a0that makes him happy; something goes wrong; Bing is upset, or scared, or angry, or some such thing;\u00a0but\u00a0the gentle guidance of Flop helps Bing come to\u00a0with things, and all is well again. \u00a0Then Bing recaps the story to end the show. \u00a0(Who&#8217;s Flop? \u00a0We&#8217;ll come back to Flop.) \u00a0All\u00a0scenarios are completely realistic &#8211;\u00a0Bing is scared of fireworks, Bing\u00a0accidentally breaks Flop&#8217;s phone, Bing\u00a0isn&#8217;t patient enough to be quiet so that he can feed the ducks properly. \u00a0That sort of thing.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In that sense, Bing is &#8211; deliberately &#8211; a very grounded show indeed. \u00a0Yes, Bing is a rabbit, and all his fellow toddlers are animals too. \u00a0But so far, so genre-conventional; &#8220;proper&#8221;\u00a0animals show up occasionally as well.\u00a0\u00a0And their world is plainly a human city, with houses, cars, shops, a park, and so forth. \u00a0It&#8217;s a\u00a0stylised city,\u00a0and beautifully so, with jazzy incidental music, curvy houses, and bright colours. \u00a0But it&#8217;s still the world outside your window.\u00a0 All episodes take place in real time, and the children\u00a0sometimes talk over one another. \u00a0In that sense, it&#8217;s\u00a0fundamentally a real-world kind of show.<\/p>\n<p>Except for one thing. \u00a0All the kids are accompanied by a little talking doll-type figure. \u00a0In Bing&#8217;s case, that&#8217;s Flop, but the others\u00a0have one too. \u00a0Visually, Flop is clearly a\u00a0toy &#8211; he has a knitted texture, he has a seam down\u00a0the side.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y4c09L-LroU?list=PLoOc9M0VgduPIu1HPazSfjJU-nkmL14J8\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0he doesn&#8217;t act like a toy, and he&#8217;s not treated as a toy. \u00a0The show is\u00a0intentionally vague\u00a0about what Flop actually is. \u00a0Bing and the other children\u00a0always refer to their companions by name, which\u00a0sidesteps having to directly\u00a0spell out what the relationship is. \u00a0Official publicity material\u00a0calls them &#8220;carers&#8221;, and ultimately, there&#8217;s no room for doubt that they&#8217;re being written as the responsible adults. \u00a0While Flop appears to be a full-time carer, one of them\u00a0runs\u00a0the shop at the end of the road, and another can be seen driving off to work in the opening credits. \u00a0If the plot calls for some other random adult to show up, they&#8217;re depicted in the same style as Flop. \u00a0If the kids are on a play date, the dolls tend to leave the kids to it and wander off for a nice cup of tea in peace and quiet.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it&#8217;s kind of odd if they&#8217;re\u00a0<em>literally\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0parents, because, well, they&#8217;re a fraction of their charges&#8217; size, and they&#8217;re made of wool. \u00a0And interestingly, they all seem to be solo acts; there is never any suggestion of anyone having two carers. \u00a0The implication seems to be more that in the world of\u00a0<em>Bing<\/em>, Flop and his kin\u00a0exist instead of parents. \u00a0(Do not think about what happens to the kids when they grow up. \u00a0That line of thought strays beyond the boundaries of the show. \u00a0That way lies madness.)<\/p>\n<p>This conceit is a stroke of genius, because\u00a0visually, it completely recasts the father\/son relationship which is at the\u00a0heart of the show. \u00a0Precisely\u00a0<em>why <\/em>the parent figures are all dolls is left ambiguously open to interpretation. \u00a0One reading is that it&#8217;s the world from a toddler&#8217;s rather self-centred perspective. \u00a0Another is that\u00a0Flop is the ultimate unthreatening parent figure; he can cajole, charm, and offer wisdom, but ultimately his ability to control\u00a0Bing stems solely\u00a0from his ability to\u00a0command Bing&#8217;s respect. \u00a0It\u00a0also poses an interesting challenge for the animators, which is worth looking out for on its own &#8211;\u00a0sets have to be scaled for Bing, but adult things have to be usable for Flop. \u00a0That leads to some\u00a0oddly\u00a0proportioned props which the designers have rather brilliantly managed to blend seamlessly into the vibe.<\/p>\n<p>Which is interesting, because\u00a0<em>Bing<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0adapted from a series of books by Ted Dewan, which take a\u00a0different tack altogether. \u00a0Like the TV show, the Bing books generally feature\u00a0Bing attempting some activity or other &#8211; music, dressing, making something &#8211; with Flop in tow. \u00a0Like the TV show, something will go wrong. \u00a0Like the TV show, Flop will offer a suggestion that sets things right. \u00a0Like the TV show,\u00a0it&#8217;s all\u00a0colourful and\u00a0stylised.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike the TV show, only Flop and Bing are seen. \u00a0And unlike the TV show,\u00a0Flop&#8217;s pretty clearly a toy. \u00a0Sometimes\u00a0this is ambiguous (and it&#8217;s now complicated by the fact that there&#8217;s now at least one book\u00a0which is a\u00a0back-adaptation of a TV episodes),\u00a0but\u00a0the books\u00a0include scenes that clearly show Bing sleeping with Flop in his bed, and one of them is entirely about Flop helping Bing to make a present for a mysterious, unseen &#8220;Daddy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s\u00a0<em>why<\/em> Flop looks like a doll in the TV series. \u00a0And the books are pretty good, in point of fact &#8211; their more stylised art hangs in there in the show in the closing segments where Bing recaps the plot &#8211; but it&#8217;s the recasting of Flop as a parent figure that really makes the show work.<\/p>\n<p>The voice casting\u00a0is\u00a0well judged too. \u00a0Wisely,\u00a0they&#8217;ve taken the common modern approach of getting an actual child to do Bing (Elliot Kerley, who was nine at the time). \u00a0He&#8217;s good. \u00a0More surprising is the casting as Flop of Mark Rylance,\u00a0who was also seen this year playing\u00a0Cromwell in\u00a0<em>Wolf Hall<\/em>. \u00a0Rylance is in his\u00a0mid fifties, and\u00a0pitches it as the voice of older wisdom, pushing Flop somewhere further into a vague territory between father, grandfather, and\u00a0miscellaneous mentor.<\/p>\n<p>Children&#8217;s television, especially for very young children,\u00a0has\u00a0two audiences &#8211; the kids who are its official\u00a0viewership, and the accompanying adults who can\u00a0be assumed to be in the room too. \u00a0The traditional way of entertaining both audiences is to throw in some gags for the adults. \u00a0<em>Bing<\/em> takes a different approach. \u00a0Broadly, it&#8217;s trying to do vignettes of recognisable situations which both parents and toddlers will respond to. \u00a0The toddlers see a show about a small child learning to overcome problems. \u00a0The adults see a show about <em>teaching<\/em> a toddler to overcome problems &#8211; for us, it&#8217;s essentially a show in which Flop tacitly dispenses parenting tips.<\/p>\n<p>Because the\u00a0parent\/child relationship is at the heart of the show,\u00a0<em>Bing<\/em> gets away with riding both horses like this. \u00a0It&#8217;s not\u00a0an especially funny show &#8211; it&#8217;s not meant to be &#8211; but its design sense and clever\u00a0central gimmick \u00a0give it a lot of appeal, perhaps not to adults generally, but certainly to the\u00a0parents of the very young. \u00a0Who, after all, are the adults who are going to see it.<\/p>\n<p>Next time:\u00a0<em>Kerwhizz<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Round the corner, not far away \/ Bing is [Insert Subject Here] today.&#8221; \u00a0So begins &#8211; give or take a subject &#8211; every episode of\u00a0Bing, in which an animated three-year-old bunny\u00a0encounters\u00a0and learns to overcome the challenges of toddler life. Bing&#8216;s five-minute episodes have a pretty standard formula. \u00a0Bing is doing something\u00a0that makes him happy; something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-watch-with-father"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3218,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions\/3218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}