PAW Patrol is in trouble. Like Ryder and the pups, Malcolm comes to the rescue. Get ad-free episodes to Revisionist History by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is PAW Patrol and why is it popular?
Pushkin.
You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. as they say on the internet, big if true. If you missed it, we opened this mini-season with two episodes about the death of George Floyd, which I hope you listened to if you haven't already. And coming up soon, my colleague Ben Nadav-Haffrey gives us the real story about, well, I'm not going to tell you.
All I'll say is, when I listen to it, every single fact Ben relates in that episode was something I'd never heard of before. Oh, and one last thing. I mentioned it last week. I'm doing my tour with No Small Endeavor and Drew Holcomb, April 9th in Louisville, April 10th in Indianapolis, and April 11th in Grand Rapids. It's going to be a lot of fun.
If you live anywhere near those cities, you got to go. Check it out at nosmallendeavor.com. Okay, off we go. Enjoy, everyone. Every night, after bath and just before bedtime, my three-year-old and I settle down in front of the television. If you're not a parent of a young child, it's entirely possible you have no idea what Paw Patrol is. That's fine.
Before I had children, I had never heard of it either. So let me explain. It's a multi-billion dollar franchise centered around a band of puppies who are called upon in each episode to rescue someone in peril. There's a police dog named Chase, a fire dog named Marshall, a helicopter pilot named Sky, a roadworks puppy named Rubble. They stop runaway trains. They fight fires.
They repair the damaged flying saucers of adorable stranded aliens with enormous eyes. You get the picture. Among toddlers, Paw Patrol is bigger than Elmo. It's bigger than Mickey Mouse. Just ask my daughter.
Paw Patrol, we're on the double. Whatever the problem on Adventure Day.
And yet, for some reason, every parent I know, every student of children's television, every adult who has more than a passing interest in the intellectual and moral development of our young, hates Paw Patrol. Like the Reddit thread, Paw Patrol has ruined my child's brain. Quote, everything about Paw Patrol is awful.
The yelling and constant panic, the stereotypes, the terrible design, the tropes. I wish it would disappear from the face of the earth and take all of its merch with it. Unquote. Go to TikTok. They hate the puppies.
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Chapter 2: What are the main criticisms of PAW Patrol?
It's pretty simple. It sucks.
My son watches Paw Patrol. I hate it. Everyone hates it, except for me. And this episode is my attempt to convince you that I'm right and everyone else is wrong. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast where I like to argue on behalf of things that all common sense suggests are not true. The following defense of Paw Patrol is squarely in that tradition.
It is a search and rescue mission for a show about search and rescue missions. In all my long years of doing revisionist history, I have never tackled a more forbidding task. I started by calling people, anyone who I thought could help, asking the same questions over and over again. First to a parent who had lived through what I'm living through right now.
We are here to discuss Paw Patrol, which looms large in my life at the moment. Yeah, I'm sure. Then again, to an intellectual, someone I admired. I don't understand the amount of hatred this show gets. And again, this time to a sociologist, someone who has published in academic journals on the Paw Patrol phenomenon. I am calling you because I spend every night watching Paw Patrol.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that.
I spent so much time Googling Paw Patrol, Google started feeding me Paw Patrol content. Like the actress Keira Knightley on The Tonight Show explaining what it's like to be the mother of a three-year-old. Wait for it.
Baby's a toddler. Baby's not a baby. Baby's not a baby anymore. Yeah, she's huge. Three and a half. Three and a half.
Are you into Paw Patrol?
Oh.
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Chapter 3: How does PAW Patrol influence children's development?
I'm sorry. Everyone is sorry. Well, I'm into Paw Patrol. And I'm not sorry. Paw Patrol takes place in two imaginary towns, Adventure Bay and Foggy Bottom. The group has as its headquarters what looks like a giant postmodern air traffic control center, complete with a really cool fire station pole that moves the members of the Paw Patrol from the briefing room to their waiting vehicles.
Vehicles which are all, by the way, available separately for purchase. In a typical Paw Patrol episode, and I say typical when I really mean every single Paw Patrol episode ever, someone in the greater Adventure Bay, Foggy Bottom metropolitan area has a problem. They call Ryder, who is the little boy in charge of the Paw Patrol operation.
He summons the pups from whatever adorably cute leisure activity they are engaged in. They come running.
Mighty pups, to the lookout! Ryder needs us!
And without fail, the problem is solved.
No job is too big. No pup is too small.
For example, in Season 7, Episode 13, Paw Patrol Pup Save Election Day, a particular favorite in the Gladwell household, Mayor Humdinger of Foggy Bottom has decided unexpectedly to run for mayor of Adventure City, precipitating a crisis. Humdinger is wreaking havoc on the campaign trail, causing all kinds of chaos downtown. This leads Alex...
an adorable little boy who happens to find himself in the midst of the mayhem to call for help.
It all happened because Mayor Hundinger's kitties are launching election stuff everywhere. Vote for me. We'll be right there, Alex.
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Chapter 4: Why do some parents dislike PAW Patrol?
So for this mission, I'll need Chase. I need you to use your net to stop Mr. Porter's out-of-control skateboard ride. Chase is on the case. And Marshall. I'll need you to use your ladder to help get Danny down from that big billboard. I'm ready for a rough, rough rescue.
And off the pups go. Hey, guys. Hey, Malcolm. How you doing? How's it going? I called up Cal Brunker and Bob Barlin, the writers behind the Paw Patrol movies. I asked them why they thought kids loved the show so much.
The structures are so clear and consistent from episode to episode that it really, it pulls them in and they're able to feel comfortable and confident in that world of storytelling.
Oh, I forgot to mention that in addition to 11 seasons of Paw Patrol television shows, there have been two Paw Patrol movies which together grossed $350 million.
The structure of the show is really quite smart in how they go about every rescue that takes place. Ryder tells... the pups, what they're going to do, and then they show up and they do the same thing that he's just told the audience. So I think the participation level from a child is able to be so much more because it's less surprising.
I did not grow up with a television, so this experience is all new to me. Maybe that's why I like Paw Patrol so much. Everyone else groans in silent agony over the thought of watching, say, Paw Patrol, the movie, for the fourth time. Me, I'm like, what new fresh insights can I glean this time around about Chase, the police dog, a German shepherd who struggles with feelings of inadequacy?
Chase has got a backstory. And I mean, at its highest level, Chase believes that being scared means he's not a hero. And so he shouldn't be part of it. And he learns that heroes get scared too, but keep going. That's what makes them heroes.
Ryder has that scene with him where they relive when he found Chase for the first time. Yes. I love to hear you saying this. This brings me great joy. On what is clearly University Avenue. Absolutely. It's University Avenue.
It feels like it, doesn't it? With the boulevard. The dividers.
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Chapter 5: What is the narrative structure of PAW Patrol?
Now that, so, because there is, what's really interesting is that there, when my daughter was watching that, she, the first, we've seen it more than once, that movie. And the first time she saw it, I think she was genuinely affected by it. I mean, it was clear it was a different kind of emotional experience than she'd been getting from the TV shows.
And the second and third time, gripping my hand tightly. This is exactly what the corporate benefactors of the Paw Patrol franchise desire. A bonding moment between a dad and his daughter over a disconsolate puppy. Was my daughter wearing Paw Patrol pajamas as this was happening? Yes, she was. And yet there are people, lots of people, who look on that picture of family togetherness and cry foul.
Can you explain this? On several occasions in the course of almost a decade now of revisionist history, I have called on Angus Fletcher, neuroscientist turned narrative theorist, genius in residence at Ohio State University.
If you remember, for example, back to our three-part revision of the ending of Disney's The Little Mermaid, arguably the intellectual high-water mark of the entire revisionist history corpus, Angus provided the intellectual firepower. And remember when we did a whole series on the greatest movie scripts that never got made? Angus had one. Of course he did. Angus is much, much smarter than I am.
More important, Angus is not hopelessly sentimental like I am. He would not be derailed by the gentle pressure of a three-year-old's stubby fingers. And when I remembered that Angus also has kids, I called him up. Now, a small thing before we go on. Normally, when we interview people, we edit the tape. I interject with commentary. The whole thing is compressed and annotated. We give you snippets.
But snippets do not do justice to Professor Angus Fletcher. So you're going to get Angus Unbound. I want to start. You too went through a Paw Patrol period with your children. Is this correct?
I did, yeah. So my son likes Paw Patrol, and I had an immediate horrifying flashback when you brought the subject up, because I went back and tried to watch a couple episodes just to remind myself, and I immediately had to shut them off, actually, for self-preservation.
There are many things to unpack here. First of all, how long did your son still actively watch Paw Patrol?
No, no, absolutely. He's still alive. So we managed to save him in time.
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Chapter 6: How do the characters in PAW Patrol contribute to its appeal?
It's designed to anesthetize your brain. I mean, I feel like I'm mainlining horse tranquilizer. It's a show that is studiously designed to interrupt active thought. I mean, that's like the purpose of the show. And it's engineered brilliantly to do that. It's like the kind of like diabolical apotheosis of hundreds of years of figuring out how to make audiences more and more passive.
What do you mean? Okay, break that down. Tell me exactly what you mean by that.
So it's the quintessence of this thing that we call narrative. We have a term for this in narrative theory. It's called vacuous agon. Vacuous agon. And basically what that means is like when there's a conflict, But there's no stress. There's no anxiety in the viewer because you know that it's going to work out. And this is a, I have to give credit to who coined this term.
It was a brilliant member of my lab. His name is Mike Benvenisti. He coined the term after watching Phineas and Ferb, which is a Disney show with his three children. Yeah. And the point of Vacuous Agon is that you're constantly being presented with problems that are solved immediately at the moment you are presented with the problem.
Mm-hmm.
And I think it's probably obvious for you having, I'm sure, watched several episodes of this show, how mechanically what the show does is it gives you a problem, and then immediately Ryder shows up, like a helicopter parent, like the ultimate helicopter parent, and tells everybody exactly what to do so the problem will go away, and then we just kind of watch as the problem goes away.
Yeah, that's exactly right. So, and you think that's problematic because...
It's not that I think it is problematic, Malcolm. It's that I know it's problematic. So I don't know if you're aware of this, but for the last 30 years, there's been this crisis in American schools. American kids have been getting less creative. And because they've been getting less creative, they've been less able to solve their own problems.
And because they're less able to solve their own problems, they have these rises in anxiety and anger, you know, losses of self-advocacy, resilience, all these kinds of things. And, you know, the major reason for this is that we are either solving their problems for them. Yeah. So we're coming in and solving their problems for them.
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Chapter 7: What insights do experts offer on PAW Patrol?
And then they just keep failing at life. And this – TV show is a paradigmatic example of that entire process. I mean, it solves all the problems before you. There's no ability you have to exercise any curiosity. Because the moment a problem happens, like literally you're told these two dogs are gonna go solve it in exactly this way.
There's no opportunity for the brain to engage what we call counterfactual, causal thinking, these processes that occur when we encounter a problem.
The whole reason for imaginative literature, the reason that things like Curious George and Winnie the Pooh were created, are to stimulate these processes in young children, because at the age of four is actually when they develop the capacity for irony, for narrative irony.
And all those books and reading with your children, for reasons we can discuss if you're interested, stimulates all those processes. And when you watch this show, it nukes them. So it's not bad in the sense that like giving your children ice cream isn't bad, right? They can have ice cream. But if all you give them is ice cream, what happens to them, right? They become diabetic.
And it's the same thing with this show in your brain.
Yeah. God, I feel bad now. You filled me with a kind of degree of self-loathing and guilt over the damage I'm doing to my daughter's imagination, her ability to problem solve. This is what you do. I should point out how strange this is. A generation ago, people loved children's television. The invention of children's television was one of America's signature cultural triumphs.
Intellectuals wrote love songs to children's television. I remember once in the late 1990s when I discovered Sesame Street for the first time. I was so entranced that I went to the Sesame Street studios and just hung out there for what seemed like days. I was there during the great Slimy episode. Maybe you remember this. Slimy, the adorable Sesame Street worm, becomes an astronaut.
And so the Sesame Street staff brought in Tony Bennett, whose signature song, of course, was Fly Me to the Moon, to sing...
He'll take a leap that's small for him, but huge for all worm kind.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from PAW Patrol?
But now, the cultural luminaries and the intellectuals have abandoned ship. By 11 minutes into his denunciation of Paw Patrol, Angus had mentioned Dickens, the A-team, Plautus, and Aristophanes. Now, he had moved on to explaining the phenomenon of new comedy and contrasting it with something he called old comedy.
And what happens in old comedy is you're presented with real problems. So an example of a real problem would be war or the breakdown of democracy. And then the comedy goes on and the problem gets worse and it gets worse and it gets worse and it gets worse. And then eventually the comedy falls apart and it just ends. And basically the comedy is saying, that's a big problem.
You guys in the audience better figure out how to solve that. So it forced people to think about hard things in a public place where they could kind of wrestle with it and solve their own problems. Then what happened was the emergence of new comedy, which is essentially light entertainment. And what happens in light entertainment is a fake problem is posed. A fake problem is posed.
And then just if you might be getting stressed about this fake problem, The comedy answers it for you by the end so you can relax. So what's diabolical about Paw Patrol is it takes real problems and turns them into imaginary problems. It's like the end. It's like the nadir of comedy. Because, I mean, there are real problems that it seems to embrace.
People seem to get in trouble and stuff like that. But then it just reveals that they're all not a problem. You don't have to worry about them because Ryder will just show up or there'll be some weird gizmo gadget thing that will solve the problem for you. So just relax, preschooler. Don't worry about this big, bad world you're entering in because it's just fine. Don't even use your brain.
Why are you even given a brain? What's the point of a brain, right? You need to solve problems. Everything's already solved. Look how perfect.
I know I promised you that I was going to play Angus at full length, Angus Unbound. And if this were the Joe Rogan experience, and I bring up Joe Rogan for a reason, by the way, because revisionist history is coming back to Joe Rogan big time in the coming weeks. If this were the Joe Rogan experience, I'd have just run it all. F it.
Who among us does not have a spare three and a half hours to listen to a perfect stranger speak about their weightlifting routines? But my assumption is that you, unlike the many millions of Roganites, have jobs. So from here on out, I'm just giving you the good parts. So what would happen if you showed an old comedy show to a child? What happens if in Paw Patrol they don't solve the problem?
What does my daughter do?
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