28th October 2020
Some time ago I've posted an article about the meaninglessness of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. I was completely wrong about it. I missed the point by a million miles. It does seem to have an important message, which I'm trying to explain below.
This will sound somewhat defensive, but I may understand one reason why I misinterpreted this video so badly. I've never watched American or British TV, so I've never encountered this type of moronic children's shows DHMIS is trying to mock.
My tl;dr summary of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (episode 1) is the following:
The ruling class (media, culture, government) is violently repressing and redirecting parts of the human nature connected with Freud's id or with the Jungian shadow, as they're deeply, deeply concerned about their destructive potential. After all, you have to destroy something in order to create something else. You cannot get rid of the chaotic without getting rid of the creative.
That is why, since our childhood the media and the education departments are funneling our creativity into benign, moronic, useless field of expression, like body modification or bullshit DIY stuff. Creation of real art is of course not encouraged, as it's often an unrestrained manifestation of the id's creative/ transformative/ destructive potential.
The creators of DHMIS 1 seem to warn the repressors, that restricting creativity is like clogging of a gas pipe. It works for a moment, but then the pressure inevitably mounts and the system might erupt. The real destruction brought about by this will be much, much worse then the change brought about by unrestrainded creativity.
Thus the video ends with the words: now we all agree, never to be creative again.
Let's dissect this video now.
The first scenes show us that we will be taking a look at a kid's show. We see a plushy room and some puppets. A somehow confusing element is the paper „The Right Wing” - I think this is a hint that the general agent behing this type of productions is the capitalist-corporate-state conglomerate, which is trying to bend the minds of the youngest generations to suit the consumerist lifestyle. It is also a hint that these groups will try to put propaganda into their productions.
Get creative – this phrase will be a recurring theme in the video. It's obviously a joke, as you cannot teach kids creativity by making them sprinkle glitter over potatoes or make paper cut-outs. It's also a dark irony, as the point of the kids' shows is to kill the creativity in children. After all, if a million kids watch the same show, they will all have similar ideas. If this million kids each did something else, the general amount of creativity in the world would have been bigger.
What's your favourite idea? Mine is being creative - the first singing teacher says that the best idea is not to actually have important ideas, but to try being „creative”, which means doing random DIY stuff.
The walking orange – talking objects (e.g. fruit) is not something creative. It's a blatanlty overused cliche, one that was being laughed at by the Annoying Orange, among others.
I use my hair to express myself – an individual's „freedom” in the Western world has been shifting towards the freedom to look whatever you like (like a moron, for example), as long as you actually don't have any dissenting ideas, you consume, follow one of the ruling parties and patiently sit in your cubicle. Maybe it's so important for the Western people to dye their hair blue, pink and green, wear weird body modifications and dress like clowns, because it's the only channel through which they can express the last bit of freedom they have. You should express yourself through „hair color” instead of actually speaking about important issues.
That sounds really boring – the red guy actually has a bit of brain left, so he noticed that the notebook says bullshit. He knows this is not creativity.
The clouds – again, an overused cliche. There's nothing creative in seeing shapes in clouds. Everyone did it since they were children and you don't need directions from a dumb TV show to do it. DHMIS mocks the clouds relentlessly: „I can see a ladder leaning on a log” - xD
Using your minds to have a good time – don't use your minds to think, use them to enjoy yourself.
The picture of a clown – real acts of uncontrolled creativity are too dangerous for the hegemon to be allowed. Art has often been a tool of ideological resistence. That's why DHMIS brutally breaks the decorum of children's shows and the notebook destroys the painting with black paint, even though it's harmless at the time.
Green is not a creative color – this is the most brilliant one liner from the show. Why is green not a creative color? Because even when engaging in random acts of meaningless pseudo-creativity, you will still be restricted by the dominant culture. There's just things you cannot do and topics you cannot engage into.
Listen to your heart – another cliche. And there's also a second aspect to it. You can either listen to your heart or listen to the wisdom of the elders. These are two important modes of being. Listening to your heart means following your instincts and doing what you feel like doing (being animals, we feel like eating, drinking, getting high, having sex and fighting – that's the outcome of listening to your heart if it has not been sublimated). The dominant culture has been weaponizing Freud's discoveries of the human unconscious for a lot of time now. Make the people do what they feel like doing and create certain areas to absorb the human energy (sports, pornography, fast-foods, shopping).
Just to clarify, I'm not against following the Id! I love it and I think we should not repress it too much. We have to find proper balance between the Id and the Superego. That's why I wouldn't argue for listening to your heart in the kids' show – you should listen to your heart, but you should also listen to the wisdom of the ages.
Listen to the voices in your brain – I don't understad this one completely. I don't think that it's a praise of rationality, because when you have been brainwashed since childhood, the voices in your brain will not tell you anything smart.
Let's get creative – this part brutally mocks creativity. Again, being creative is NOT sprinkling glitter over colorful paper. Being creative is developing psychoanalysis or generative grammar or building a Falcon rocket. What our kids are told to do is not creative at all.
The crescendo leads to the climactic, chaotic scene of... somewhat more authentic creativity? I read this as a warning against a real activation of the creative/ chaotic potential of the human being. Please remember that symbolically speaking, chaos is the birthplace of creativity. Creativity cannot exist without a place where it can express itself in an unrestricted manner. The hegemonic culture seems to be saying: we must repress real creativity and indoctrinate people with a fake one, so that they don't activate the deeply dangerous and destructive forces dreaming within them.
Also the video is a warning – the restricted creative/ destructive potential might explode one day. The above might not be to coherent, although I think it captures the main point of the video. I don't have time to write more about it, as there's like a million things I want to analyze and write about.
I will be writing about DHMIS 2, 3, etc. later. Just to give you a quick note, DHMIS 2 is rougly about the notion of time as a tool to control the population, DHMIS 3 is about the twisting and shallowing of the notion of love (love is something a million times deeper then pink, fluffy clouds, red hearts and the search for a "soulmate", ugh).
dd
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