You may have noticed by now that I tend to get pretty into the TV my son watches. This is by design: if I think something is too idiotic for me, it's too idiotic for him as well and it gets Darwin-kicked out of the house. Our selection is fairly narrow: basically we're confined to Netflix streaming and anything else I care to acquire--that's the word I'm going with on that one. Very 21st century.

The logic is so sound it needs backup singers.
Many Americans don't seem to know about Pingu, the British-Swiss collaborative stop-motion animated series about the adventures of a young anthropomorphic penguin. Although the show originated in Switzerland in 1986, it was bought by HiT Entertainment in 2001 and has enjoyed international distribution since.

One wonderful thing about this particular internationally-syndicated series is that it contains no dialogue in any actual language. The characters speak "penguinese", which is a kind of gibberish in which familiar sounds tend to recur in sequence often enough that if I imitate the language to my two-year-old he knows I'm making a reference to Pingu and requests a viewing on the spot. But the plot is sufficiently action-driven that there is zero language gap with any viewer.

The central cast of Pingu, with the central character in the center.
Another wonderful thing about Pingu is that I seldom mind an on the spot viewing because it is such an excellent TV show there's a good chance I would watch it if I was childless. It's excellent on two levels: on one level, the stories are interesting, the animation is compelling to watch, and the overall production creates an allure that draws and holds the viewer's (or at least these viewers') attention.

On another level it's an excellent show because it is a demonstration of a great set of attitudes toward life with specific regard to parenting.

Pingu's parents fawn over their hatchling daughter, moments after Mother has admonished Father for smoking his pipe around the baby and moments before a little turd turd flies out of the baby's bottom.
Pingu is a complicated character, modeled on what seems to be a five or six year old boy, with a very wide range of emotional capacity and comprehension. His little sister, Pinga, is a very independent and at the same time very sweet and sensitive toddler. His two parents are old-fashioned (the mother doesn't seem to be employed except in the capacity of assisting other community members, the father works as a courier for the postal service and smokes a pipe), yet at the same time, somewhat like real penguins, they split the parenting workload in a very progressive, egalitarian way: both are shown at different times doing the cooking, washing up, disciplining, cleaning, knitting, home maintenance, and egg-incubating. Pingu's best friend is a seal named Robby (I'm not sure how we're supposed to learn the other characters' names except from supplementary reading) who is more often than not the accompaniment to Pingu's lead in the emotional tone of their journeys together, and this dynamic varies in either direction with the rest of the secondary characters.

The themes in the episodes run the gamut from very light to incredibly dark. (Sorry, still doing summary description.) The darkest episodes tend to involve sleeping and night terrors and getting lost, while the lighter episodes deal with social adjustment, and with fear when it's more out in the open: fear of rejection, fear of heights. But the show also deals with more complicated emotions: contrition, guilt, unmet expectations, possessiveness, and many others.

No, that is the walrus.
One ghoulishly dark nightmare sequence contained such a dark scene--in which a giant walrus appears out of the ice and, after tormenting Pingu, eats Pingu's bed (which has become sentient and started running and bucking him off of it), nearly killing him--it was banned from airing in the UK. I'm not sure how you assess the quality of children's television but "banned" is a word that has a tendency to get my attention and eventually make me a fan.

What's amazing to me is that the show is never heavy handed and seldom moralistic. In Pingu's adventures there are consequences, but they're often hidden and unexpected, and while the characters do learn or find lessons in the consequences of things that happen, the narratives seem to celebrate living life to its fullest over playing it safe and never taking the risk of hurting or scaring someone. The show seems to trust that Pingu will learn to be an adult when he eventually becomes one, and doesn't push him to think and behave like one when he is still a child. It celebrates his boyhood, he is allowed to make mistakes, and much of the time he gets away with behavior that, by the standards of most American children's television (or their parents), would be considered unforgivable and punishable by a lot of time-outs and groundings.

Pingu's conscience shoulders a great deal of the disciplinary burden, which is how it's supposed to work.
But it's not that Pingu is able to be destructive or naughty with impunity. Rather, it's that he is able to make mistakes in the context of knowing that he is understood. By being able to take for granted that he will be at least a little bit understood by others (mainly his family and closest friends) he enjoys a degree of moral wiggle-room that I think is sorely lacking in much of the puritanical American consciousness. Here we tend to raise our kids to assume others will interpret them in the worst way possible when things go sour. "If you don't say 'thank you' people will decide that you are a louse," rather than "people might realize you're a four year old who is only beginning to understand the importance of verbal etiquette."

This wiggle room wouldn't be possible without the fact that his parents are actually really good parents. The decisions they make, the way they react to their children's behavior, are all commendable and in my humble opinion worthy of imitation. They don't parent with their egos, and they are not especially strict or demanding. They seem to operate on a basis of trust, knowing that if they set a loving example to their children, most of their emotional development will be sorted out over time without the need for extensive disciplinary measures. I think I once saw Pingu getting spanked across a knee, and otherwise his parents' disciplinary arsenal seems to consist of Pingu getting yelled at, ignored, or made to apologize.

It hurt me a lot more than it hurt Pingu.
I have no strong opinions about discipline because I don't think it's a simple question of dos and don'ts. I know that with toddlers in public, a lot of the time we're reacting to the things our children do as a show for the other caretakers more than anything else; the other two year old my son just shoved on the playground couldn't care less and is already over it by the time I run over and grab my son's shoulders and look him in the eye and tell him--loudly enough so the other parents and nannies can hear--that we don't push people. Pingu's parents seem to have genuine respect for their children, and I think there's a lot to be said for that. The kids are never undermined or patronized. There is always a big hug waiting for them when they shed a tear of contrition; it is understood as genuine remorse and it is accepted immediately as if it were an apology so that everyone can move on.

When I was young, feeling guilty or sorry for something I'd done sometimes overwhelmed my ability to apologize verbally, standing up, or making eye contact. Many disciplinarians forget, for example, that while eye contact is supposed to be an indicator of sincerity, it is a virtual impossibility in the face of shame, and instead of noticing the shame and addressing it they respond to the lack of eye contact and the kid grows up overly susceptible to guilt complexes, or worse, immune to guilt altogether. I'm not saying that's exactly how I became overly prone to manifesting a feeling of guilt in the aftermath of any given conflict, but it's probably true to some degree.

It's all fun and games until a flipper goes flaccid.
Pingu goes out to explore ice caves and distant snow dunes with his friends. Sometimes they get lost or into trouble, and sometimes they have to get a grownup to come bail them out, and other times they manage to save themselves, but they always get home fine in the end, and Pingu's parents are always happy to have him home. They don't punish him for being adventurous. They don't dwell on what could have happened. They live very much in the present. They allow his conquests for adventure, they encourage his independence, and it is my suspicion that he is safer knowing his parents support his journeys than he would be if he was always sneaking around behind their backs. They always come through for him, and I think that's the deal we have to make with our kids: let them wander and struggle without interfering, but always keep the door open and the light on for them when they return home.

Before I close, I would be remiss if I did not quickly mention a few other cool things about the show:

  1. The score sounds like circus music written and performed by people who are insane. Because the dialogue is in gibberish and the plots are action driven there are also a lot of dynamic sound effects, so if you ever have the show on but are only listening (because you're cooking or something) it sometimes sounds like insane people having sex on a harmonium.
  2. The penguins all live and work in igloos whose interiors are impossibly larger than the exteriors, and that is a very cool thing.
  3. There are many scenes of the penguins and other animals pissing and shitting. Everybody poops and Pingu is here to remind your kids about that fact.
  4. There are hints that the penguins' coloration is indeed comprised of tuxedo coats with tails, which they must lift up in order to sit down on the toilet.
  5. There exists in this world nearly no Pingu merchandise and it is very difficult to come by.
This is a still from an episode in which the penguins participate in an ice sculpture contest. In the background we see that one of the entries is a toilet. I bet the people who work on Veggie Tales haven't even heard of Marcel Duchamp.