I'm about to join the legions of parents who express a deep and abiding hatred for the cartoon character Caillou.
My hairless baby unfortunately looked a lot like him, although we mostly got Charlie Brown references, thankfully. But why is Caillou hairless? He's like 4. Does he have cancer? Lice? A lazy artist?
No, insists publisher Chouette, from whose books PBS made the titular series. Caillou -- pronounced "ki-YU" -- is bald so that he can relate to all youth. According to Chouette's website:
"Caillou stands for all children. He doesn’t have curly blond hair, a carrot-top, brown hair, glasses, or ethnic features, because he represents all children. We wanted to make Caillou universal so every child could identify with him. And they do! Caillou’s baldness may make him different, but we hope it’s helping children understand that being different isn’t just okay, it’s normal."
Give me a break, Caillou is NOT representative of any other kid than a lily white one. He has parents with Caucasian skin, mousy brown hair and schlumpy clothes, and a little sister with plenty of orange hair. It's sort of creepy, in a vague, break-away religious cult kind of way.
And he is such a whiny brat of a boy. His incessant, plaintive dialogue is made all the more irritating by the high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound that comes out of his mouth.
The narrator rubs me the wrong way too. She's always so very impressed with Caillou's antics, whereas I just want to tell him to shut the hell up and go sit in his room and read a book.
Even when raised in the most supportive, cognitively developed way, no child is going to pick Caillou when asked which cartoon character is most like him or her.
The PBS website claims that the show has evolved since the days I first suffered through it with Gabe. There seems to be a big focus on playing make-believe and building self-esteem and cultivating a child's imagination.
Are there children out there who are not imaginative? Is this a skill that has to be taught? Are we doing something that squelches imagination in children? I think Max will be fine without this show.
And besides, the new synopsis raises a red flag for me:
"Like other children, Caillou spruces up reality with a healthy dose of imagination. Each episode begins with an everyday event from Caillou's life that, through his mind's eye, quickly turns into a fantastic and larger-than-life adventure."
Hmm. I don't think I want my child concentrating that much on removing himself from reality all the time. I loved, loved, loved "The Neverending Story," but this show's premise just sounds like an early exposure to mental illness.
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