As a new film of the kids’ cartoon hits cinemas, the puppies’ popularity has made it a fascinating case study for the cultural politics of a generation
Bad news for parents of children under the age of seven this week: PAW Patrol: The Movie has landed on
UK screens, all the better to spoon-feed a generation of Covid-hardened kids with authoritarian neoliberal propaganda in the guise of an upbeat cartoon about puppies. That’s right: the early years TV show that criminology professor Liam Kennedy suggests is complicit in “a global capitalist system that produces inequalities” is back!
PAW Patrol’s astonishing popularity has made it a fascinating case study for the tastes and cultural politics of a generation. The show’s move from small to silver screen has highlighted many of those peculiarities. The first thing to say – though it seems obvious – is that parents can’t simply leave their children in front of PAW Patrol: The Movie, as you might with a television show. Perhaps because the film-makers know adults will be watching, it has somewhat dialled down its usually frantic goings-on. Indeed, a somewhat pointed early scene in the film involves a fireworks display in which all the rockets go off at once in a pandemonium of colours and noise, and the man in charge says: “Hey – I’m trying to build momentum here.”