Bluey is an animated show targeting pre-schoolers, produced by the Australian based Ludo Studio & co-commissioned by both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and our own BBC. It premiered on ABC kids but is now available on both the BBC (broadcast and iplayer) and all episodes are available to stream on Disney+
The story revolves around a six year old Blue Heeler pup called Bluey, her mum (Chilli), dad (Bandit) and younger sister Bingo. Each episode is a seven minute, self contained, narrative that usually centres around a typical childhood experience and the joys, pitfalls, revelations & confusions that these experiences bring. Titles of episodes such as: Markets, The Creek, Zoo, Horsey Ride, Daddy Putdown, Camping and The Beach - should give a representative idea of the kind of life experiences that the show covers.
Like all good animated kids show - there is plenty of bright colour, lots of slapstick humour & importantly the stories are told from Bluey's point of view - the young audience is positioned to understand the world from her perspective and this is achieved realistically through a well written script that includes plenty of idioms & colloquialisms that anyone with children will recognise. This positioning makes the 'morals' of each story more easily understood and there's plenty to learn from each episode, whether that be about being patient or respectful, waiting your turn or being yourself - all fairly standard tropes for kids TV but done well without being heavy handed or overly preaching.
Bluey's real genius, however, is its ability to also speak to adults or specifically, parents. The show has the ability to make them laugh, cry, think & learn in pretty much every episode. Look out - here comes the theory bit...
Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding model posits that those who produce the media encode it
with ideologies - those who consume the media (the audience) will decode those ideologies. However, because the audience is such a diverse range of people with different attitudes, beliefs, experiences & ideas that there is no guarantee that a decoding will follow necessarily from an encoding. In other words - just because your product has got something to say doesn't mean that your audience will accept, or even understand, what you are talking about!
Instead, Hall says the audience will adopt one of three positions - the
Dominated/Hegemonic/Preferred reading if they understand and agree with the ideologies & intentions of the product; the Negotiated reading if they accept some but not all of the text's embedded ideologies; or the Oppositional reading if the audience understands the encoded meaning but decides to reject them based on their own experiences and ideologies. Hall also discusses the concept of a 'Misreading' whereby the complexity of the encoding may lead to some of the audience not fully understanding the text.
As a father of two young girls I have well and truly fallen hook line & sinker into the preferred reading camp with Bluey. Time and time again, I will laugh out loud to the situations that Bandit finds himself in or is placed in as well as his attempts to escape for a small amount of time to 'adult'. I aspire to his commitment as a parent as a parent to play every game and teach the rules of life in a fair and open way. Without doubt I align to the softly, softly, learn through play, liberal ideological stance that this TV show is depicting - and it is a comfort to see the difficulties and challenges of parenting being portrayed on the screen.
There is also little doubt that all of this is intentional - practically every parent I've spoken to about Bluey agrees with me - the lessons to be learned are useful and feel encouraging not guilt inducing like a lot of advertising or Mumsnet style websites!!
So where does this leave the kids? They are still laughing at the show, still learning new games and new life lessons - but they're not getting the extra stuff that I get. They're definitely not recognising the intertextual references to 80s music and movies (great Indiana Jones ref in the episode Yoga Ball) and, of course, they are not appreciating all of the whimsy and they definitely aren't letting out a deep sigh as they wipe the tear from their eye and exclaiming: "It's funny because it's true." So what does this mean for Hall - are the kids making a Negotiated reading or a 'Misreading' because they don't fully understand the complexity of the text?
That feels a little bit strange and it makes us question exactly what the show's purpose is. Overall I would argue that these kids are still taking a Preferred Reading - after all the intention of a kids show is to entertain kids whilst also gently delivering little life lessons along the way. Meanwhile I would argue that I, too am making a Preferred Reading - or perhaps using the alternative phrase of Hegemonic Reading is more appropriate here, after all I'm not just enjoying the humour but also coming back because of my alignment with the progressive, liberal outlook of the show. Maybe this reveals that we should also use the term 'Dominant Reading' for a child's response - as presumably there are more children than adults watching.
Overall, Bluey is indicative of both the strengths and weaknesses of Hall's Reception Theory - I think that its strength is in that it recognises the importance of the ideological in our consumption and responses to the media. Whereas those from the more effects based theories would argue that the media shapes our attitudes - I would say that I am definitely drawn to the show because it chimes with my sensibilities - not that the show has caused me to think this way. Gerbner would argue that it reinforces my ideas and he'd be right, but Hall recognises how some might not read the same into this or be affected in the same way as myself. I have read reviews which suggest that the show represents the kids as getting away with far too much bad behaviour, which I think is harsh (but then I would do - considering the reading I take), I also spoke to a friend about the show who aligns completely with the messaging but at the same time felt that the parents' constant concessions to Bluey & Bingo's demands meant that it set up unrealistic expectations for parents of themselves - which I think is a really interesting Negotiated Reading. Perhaps the most unexpected reading I have come across was largely very positive but suggested that the show celebrates paganism by focussing far more on the natural world than the religious one - as yet I can't decide whether this is Negotiated or Oppositional as it's tricky to know for sure what the intentions of the show are - but it also highlights the problem with Hall as well...
...as with the different reasons why kids and adults who take the Preferred/Dominant/Hegemonic readings of the show - Hall's theory doesn't really take into account the fact that modern media often has a number of different ideological concerns at once - and sometimes these can be conflicting and sometimes these can mean that audiences can have very different experiences of a text. The category of 'Negotiated' reading is too much of a 'catch all' to really explain how a modern audience works with the media.
Perhaps a theorist such as David Gauntlett helps us understand this relationship better when he discusses how we are much more likely to pick out the messages and ideas from a text that we can align with and ignore the others. That media doesn't offer us a singular message about life but many that we can choose from. (Maybe there are parts of Bluey that I wouldn't agree with but I'm not seeing because I'm conveniently ignoring them?) The media is undoubtedly more complex in a modern era and Bluey with all its layers and references is a perfect example of this.
*One amazing reading of the show suggests that Bluey's parents are actually international criminals - check out the video from TikTok - satirical obviously, and certainly an interesting talking point for other audience theorists such as Henry Jenkins regarding Textual Poaching, but what category would Hall put this in?
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