#24 Bada Bing!
05/08/20 17:46
There’s actually a change.org petition demanding the cancellation of this week’s show, due to its malign influence and bad language. Watching my 485th episode the other day, partly just listening to the dialogue as I made fish fingers, it struck me that there is a LOT about Bing that is irksome, and it’s not just the hero’s whingeing and propensity for poor verb conjugation. It’s a weird, disturbing and subversive set-up all round. Having given it some serious consideration, scrutinising a few more eps to seek clarity, I’m now ready to outline my Bing philosophy.
For the uninitiated amongst you, Bing is a children’s animated TV series about a pre-school anthropomorphic rabbit who wears dungarees and learns about the world. In each episode, he and his friends Sula (an elephant) and Pando (a panda) stay at home, or go to the playground or the shops, and something happens, like Bing nicks a lolly, gets bollocked and realises it’s bad to steal. At the end, he recounts the life lesson and his guardian Flop concludes by summarising the subject and saying ‘It’s a Bing thing!’ Sharing is a Bing thing. Skipping is a Bing thing. Purloining is a Bing thing. And so forth.
OK, let’s back up a bit here. Who the fuck is Flop? Bing calls him by his name, so he’s obviously not his dad, unless they’re really hippy liberal types – I guess the dungarees might suggest that. But Flop looks nothing like Bing; he’s much smaller than his charge, and of indeterminate species. In fact, he just looks like a limp knitted toy. He’s also voiced by Mark Rylance, which makes it even odder. Flop has a gentle, whimsical way about him, often just making benign, indistinct noises to indicate vague emotion, never once losing it with Bing, who is a bit of twat. There’s one episode where Flop is ill – I smell hangover – and Bing just bumbles about being annoying, spilling things, shoving his Hoppity Voosh up in Flop’s grill. I’d have flipped my lid, but Flop is endlessly, flaccidly patient in a way that makes me want to grab him and shake him like… a rag doll. Hmmmm.
If we turn our attention to Sula, Bing’s best friend, the plot thickens. Sula is looked after by Amma, who could be another ambiguous carer, except that both of them are elephants, indicating some sort of genetic link. But, like Flop, Amma is much smaller than her ‘daughter’ and has more abstract features. Pando is minded by Padget, who runs a corner shop and looks like a green variation of Flop. Unlike Flop, Padget has a schoolmarmish tone, and I suspect might be dealing with some anger issues. Amma and Flop are clearly banging each other on the side, leaving Padget painfully aware of her spinster shopkeeper status.
There are a few online conspiracies about this freaky state of affairs. One is that Flop (and by implication, the other ‘adults’) are actually symbolic representations of either/both parents. But if they were, they’d be more of a raging two-headed monster, simultaneously wiping up sick, looking for socks, and screaming ‘in a second!’ Another theory is that Flop is a figment of Bing’s imagination. That’s the one I’m currently running with. I think each carer is one of the kids’ toys, brought to life by them (not really, FFS), and that the whole thing is just an elaborate made-up game. Which begs the question: WHERE ARE THE PARENTS? Who is letting this motley crew of oversized toddler-animals run amok round Howly Woods on their own? Are the parents invisible? As someone whose requests are regularly ignored by my children, who gaze straight through me when I deliver their morning toast, it seems like a possibility. Another mystery is why my kids (8 and 4) are so transfixed by this shit. Mostly they watch YouTube, play Minecraft and generally act like little gangstas, so I don’t understand why, come dinner time, I can put the Alexa on and watch them go glassy-eyed as Pando takes his shorts off again.
There’s one particularly controversial episode where Bing accidentally kills a butterfly, the little turd - just squishes it, then acts all sad and repentant like he isn’t a dumb bunny with stupid ham-fists and a cottontail scent for blood. Flop has to explain to Bing and his friends about death, a concept he conveys in a series of kindly grunts and mumbles. They all contemplate the bleakness of annihilation, and put their butterfly pictures along the hedge where they buried the insect, like a bunting-decked Lepidoptera shrine. In the recap, Bing vows to let butterflies find their way out on their own in future, and fucking well not interfere. Which was a lesson loaded with meaning and metaphor. I felt quite moved, but it was six-thirty, and I’d hit the wine by then, so it might’ve been that.
Nanny-banging, child-neglecting, self-deluding, murdering, shallow grave-digging. It’s a Bing thing!
For the uninitiated amongst you, Bing is a children’s animated TV series about a pre-school anthropomorphic rabbit who wears dungarees and learns about the world. In each episode, he and his friends Sula (an elephant) and Pando (a panda) stay at home, or go to the playground or the shops, and something happens, like Bing nicks a lolly, gets bollocked and realises it’s bad to steal. At the end, he recounts the life lesson and his guardian Flop concludes by summarising the subject and saying ‘It’s a Bing thing!’ Sharing is a Bing thing. Skipping is a Bing thing. Purloining is a Bing thing. And so forth.
OK, let’s back up a bit here. Who the fuck is Flop? Bing calls him by his name, so he’s obviously not his dad, unless they’re really hippy liberal types – I guess the dungarees might suggest that. But Flop looks nothing like Bing; he’s much smaller than his charge, and of indeterminate species. In fact, he just looks like a limp knitted toy. He’s also voiced by Mark Rylance, which makes it even odder. Flop has a gentle, whimsical way about him, often just making benign, indistinct noises to indicate vague emotion, never once losing it with Bing, who is a bit of twat. There’s one episode where Flop is ill – I smell hangover – and Bing just bumbles about being annoying, spilling things, shoving his Hoppity Voosh up in Flop’s grill. I’d have flipped my lid, but Flop is endlessly, flaccidly patient in a way that makes me want to grab him and shake him like… a rag doll. Hmmmm.
If we turn our attention to Sula, Bing’s best friend, the plot thickens. Sula is looked after by Amma, who could be another ambiguous carer, except that both of them are elephants, indicating some sort of genetic link. But, like Flop, Amma is much smaller than her ‘daughter’ and has more abstract features. Pando is minded by Padget, who runs a corner shop and looks like a green variation of Flop. Unlike Flop, Padget has a schoolmarmish tone, and I suspect might be dealing with some anger issues. Amma and Flop are clearly banging each other on the side, leaving Padget painfully aware of her spinster shopkeeper status.
There are a few online conspiracies about this freaky state of affairs. One is that Flop (and by implication, the other ‘adults’) are actually symbolic representations of either/both parents. But if they were, they’d be more of a raging two-headed monster, simultaneously wiping up sick, looking for socks, and screaming ‘in a second!’ Another theory is that Flop is a figment of Bing’s imagination. That’s the one I’m currently running with. I think each carer is one of the kids’ toys, brought to life by them (not really, FFS), and that the whole thing is just an elaborate made-up game. Which begs the question: WHERE ARE THE PARENTS? Who is letting this motley crew of oversized toddler-animals run amok round Howly Woods on their own? Are the parents invisible? As someone whose requests are regularly ignored by my children, who gaze straight through me when I deliver their morning toast, it seems like a possibility. Another mystery is why my kids (8 and 4) are so transfixed by this shit. Mostly they watch YouTube, play Minecraft and generally act like little gangstas, so I don’t understand why, come dinner time, I can put the Alexa on and watch them go glassy-eyed as Pando takes his shorts off again.
There’s one particularly controversial episode where Bing accidentally kills a butterfly, the little turd - just squishes it, then acts all sad and repentant like he isn’t a dumb bunny with stupid ham-fists and a cottontail scent for blood. Flop has to explain to Bing and his friends about death, a concept he conveys in a series of kindly grunts and mumbles. They all contemplate the bleakness of annihilation, and put their butterfly pictures along the hedge where they buried the insect, like a bunting-decked Lepidoptera shrine. In the recap, Bing vows to let butterflies find their way out on their own in future, and fucking well not interfere. Which was a lesson loaded with meaning and metaphor. I felt quite moved, but it was six-thirty, and I’d hit the wine by then, so it might’ve been that.
Nanny-banging, child-neglecting, self-deluding, murdering, shallow grave-digging. It’s a Bing thing!
- Bing, CBeebies, a million episodes
