Film Theory: The Tragic World of Arthur Exposed! (PBS Arthur)

You know, looking back, Arthur may not be the wholesome PBS Kids cartoon we all thought he was. I mean, he had an episode where everyone at school struggled with addiction to strange ingredients in the chocolate bars they ate, which is certainly worrying for the entire

world

. seems to operate under unspoken social prejudices and hierarchies, I mean, did your six-year-old self ever notice the fact that reptilian characters only do jobs that require a lot of manual labor? It's true, it's almost enough to make you clench your fist. angry, but there's another dark truth about this show that you may have missed in preschool.

Heck, the adults watching this with their kids have still to this day missed a dark truth that will make your brain melt and that my friends is what we're covering today Hello Internet, welcome to Film Theory, the show that He has an original point of view, like everyone you meet when you walk down the street. Here's a question, what is the longest running American cartoon if you said The Simpsons? Well, you probably also watched our king of the hill episode and you're right, congratulations, but you know what the second longest running cartoon in America is. He's our friend Arthur the aardvark, who's been growing up while learning family lessons on TV screens since 1996.

This would be the part where I say only '90s kids will remember him, but after 22 seasons, Arthur It's still on the air, it's amazing that my son can grow up watching the same shows that were on TV when I was a kid and I'm glad. That Arthur never left because all children should grow up in a

world

where we can learn to work, play, and get along with each other. Arthur is also one of those shows that is great to come back to as an adult because a lot of the jokes were totally included for parents who had to see what their kids were watching and if you were a kid, well, you probably missed a lot of those. references the first time, sorry Sue Ellen, it's a brothers and sisters race, maybe there will be a loneliness contest. children after this they are just children dw a lonely child is what you are going to be when he sells you Holy God Arthur when you sell your sister what am I going to make run away literally join the circus my mom knows a good plastic surgeon but there is another Something that you may have missed seeing Arthur as a child.

Something that is not so bright and cheerful. It may be a wonderful day, but we wouldn't be

film

theory

if we weren't willing to ruin those wholesome childhood memories by exposing the dark and

tragic

truths behind them now if you're somehow one of the people who didn't grow up watching this classic of pbs when they were kids

arthur

is a show about an anteater named

arthur

and his sister dw as they go to school with their friends including a rabbit named buster a monkey named francine a bulldog named binky a bear named brain everyone in the world is an animal in in case you missed the pattern and um that's pretty much what you need to know in typical fashion kids learn life lessons they shadow each other you know how Polly Lock works that's where you keep the most important stuff and special.

I thought you might want to put this in there. No, thanks. I'm going to put a photo of my cat. Oh, and they burn the spelling. of anteater in your brain so completely that literally decades after watching that episode you still hear it in your mind a-a-r-d-v-a-r-k a-a-r-d-b-a-r-k no joke that's still how I remember how to spell that word even as I write this that song is playing constantly in the back of my brain and that's what you get if you're the target demographic, but if you ever stumble upon an episode of this show as someone a little older after learning about the birds and the bees, you might wonder how in a society of animals, internal interspecies romance works but it's a joke, the show is already one step ahead of you even though Arthur lives in a society with many different types of animals, most families seem be of a single species.

Arthur and his sister are both anteaters. and both parents are also anteaters buster baxter is a rabbit with two rabbit parents francine is a monkey with two monkey parents and so on, we now know that interspecies intra-species romance isn't exactly taboo, for example, back in 2019, Mr. Ratburn , who you may have already guessed, is a married rat and an anteater, and while that episode was apparently controversial enough to be banned from television in Alabama, I bet the outrage was more due to the fact that Mr. Ratburn was a man who married another. man and not so much the fact that it was a rat marrying an anteater in this world apparently there is nothing that says that an anteater cannot date or marry a rat, but when it comes to biology and reproduction, the universe of Arturo seems to follow pretty similar rules. to ours, if you're an anteater looking to make some anteater babies, you'll have to find another anteater or at least that's what it seems at first until you start digging deeper and notice a strange trend, e.g. molly and james mcdonald are both rabbits and although their father is a rabbit their mother is a dog emily here is also a rabbit with a rabbit mother and a monkey father and carl is a rabbit who has an anteater mother and there are no other parents we can At first, these three examples might seem to refute the idea that interspecies romance in Arthur's universe cannot result in reproduction, but there's another thing they all have in common: Molly James, Emily, and Carl, the four characters who have at least one father. that do not correspond to their own species are all rabbits that does not seem like it could be a coincidence in a world full of anteaters monkeys bulldogs and all kinds of animal species it just so happens that children who have parents of different species are all predominantly rabbits When you see a pattern like that, it's the kind of thing that raises questions and demands answers.

The first question I had was whether there might be some particular quirk to the rabbit's biology that might allow it to breed cross-species. It's not something unheard of. so that after all there are genetic hybrids, for example you may have heard of mules, well they are descendants of a horse and a donkey, there are also many varieties of zebroids that result in crossing zebras with other species , you know what you get when you cross a zebra with a horse a zorse what do you get when you cross a zebra with a donkey a zonkey and those are not jokes those are real animals that can be created through crossing we assume that molly james emily and carl were all rabbits based on their distinctive rabbit-like characteristics, but could it be that they are the result of some type of crossbreeding?

Well, science doesn't seem to back it up. Rabbits are not genetically similar enough to dogs, monkeys or anteaters to interbreed with them. You could argue that the Arthur universe has different rules here - after all, all animals are genetically similar enough to walk upright on two feet and talk to each other in English - but even if that were the case, it still doesn't explain why. What are they just rabbits? that we see as children in these internal relations of species; However, there may be a biological explanation as to why it's always the rabbits that seem to be raised by non-rabbit parents and this gets into territory that has some pretty worrying implications for Arthur's set.

One thing we've been doing this whole time in the universe is operating under the assumption that all these rabbit children are the biological children of the parents they live with, but as we all know, the real world is full of many examples where Parents and children are not related by blood, obviously adoption exists and there are many children with divorced parents living with their stepparents. In summary, as I see it, there are two key possibilities that can cause this trend: a divorce is more common in rabbit couples or two rabbit children are being put up for adoption more frequently, so let's start with the possibility that a Divorce is common in rabbit couples.

You see, this

theory

already seems plausible considering that divorce exists in Arthur's world. Buster Baxter has parents who are separated, also a pair of rabbits and there is A real world explanation for this is that real world rabbits do not tend to mate with a single partner throughout their lives, they are not monogamous, you could say that They jump from one couple to another, which you know could cause some tension in a relationship when Bity Baxter is finding her husband boyfriend in the neighborhood with another woman except there's one problem with all of this: rabbits aren't alone in this very category.

From a genetic point of view, reproduction is about ensuring the survival of your genes in the next generation, so you want to have as many opportunities as possible with a relatively wide range of couples. Monogamy is costly because it requires an individual to put all of their reproductive investment into their partner's ability to put all their eggs in one basket, literally, and in Arthur we see different types of animals, from anteaters to bulldogs, goats, monkeys, moose, pigs, sheep. In total, I counted about 20 different species of animals that are shown as functional members of this society. and the fact is that most of these types of animals would be dealing with the same marital problems if monogamy were actually a concern in this universe, so it doesn't seem like divorce here is causing the problem, which means it has to move on to option two. adoption, but why would so many bunnies be put up for adoption in this universe?

Well, I think it's actually a result of two contributing factors. You see, it's no secret that rabbits are famous for their mating skills. The phrase raising like rabbits is something that exists. For good reason, rabbits can become pregnant at a young age and some species can hit the ground running, so to speak, as early as four months of age. Added to this is the fact that the female can become pregnant for all but three days. per month and now you have an open window for babies, that alone would be pretty unique in the animal kingdom, but there are a few other factors that make rabbits amazing breeders.

You see that a mother rabbit usually gives birth within 32 days of becoming pregnant and is ready to become pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth, so if they wanted a mother rabbit could have a litter of babies almost every day. months, almost 12 in a year, which is incredible compared to humans, where the gestation period is 266 days, but what makes rabbit breeding really crazy is that each of those litters can have between 1 and 14 babies, with an average of six compared to other animals we see in Arthur's universe anteaters one baby every seven months monkeys one baby every two years or so dogs cats bears foxes, you name it, they all have more pregnancies long and smaller litters, which means that there will be many more rabbits in this world than any other type of animal and this is something that is actually confirmed by the show's roster of characters.

Lists all the characters that have appeared in Arthur, you'll quickly see that there are almost 220 unique rabbit characters that have appeared on screen. The second most animalistic species is, unsurprisingly, anteaters, which clock in at around 170 unique characters, but that number is also inflated since our main character is an anteater, so the show will revolve around him and his type of animal. No other animal even comes close to touching the number of rabbit characters on this show. Now it would be tempting to say that All These Newborn Bunnies are causing parents to abandon some of their children, which is terrible and horrible and honestly, it would be a pretty good dark twist for this episode of a show made for elementary school kids. , but I don't think that's the case.

There is no scientific evidence here to suggest that rabbit parents are more negligent than parents of other species, nor does it explain why there are so many single-rabbit households. Now I think there's something else at play here. A basic aspect of biology that separates rabbits from almost every other species we see on the show. Life expectancy. Let's go back to that character frequency table and compare the lifespans of the most common species we see in the Arthur universe. Anteater. years in the wild 23 in captivity brown bear 20 to 25 years in the wild dogs 10 to 15 years depending on the breed indoor cats 13 to 17 years brown spider monkeys 27 years in the wild 33 in captivity rabbit one to two years in state wild five to seven in captivity to borrow from another children's show one of these things is not like the others in arthur's world the life expectancy of animals will probably be longerclose to what they would be in captivity since arthur and his classmates probably don't have to worry about things like natural predators, of course i missed that episode where the brain has to learn to suppress its bear instincts to avoid devouring to their classmates, but even when raised in captivity, rabbits have a much shorter lifespan than anteaters, monkeys, dogs, and bonitos. pretty much every other species we see here on Arthur, with the one major exception being rats, but then again, this is a third grade rat on Arthur.

The guy already looks like he's ready to mortgage a house, so he'd say he's a pretty agent. Real quick, obviously, everything we see in Arthur's universe is not going to be one-to-one with real life. These animals can stand upright on two legs to walk down the street and can learn to work, play, and get along with each other. These animals appear to age at a similar rate to humans, while real-life rabbits are capable of reproducing at ages as young as four to six months. Buster is eight years old and doesn't seem to have hit puberty yet, so if we adjust the lifespan of animals to the lifespan of humans, as we see in the show, it would look like this anteaters 97 years old bear brown 95 years old dogs 42 to 63 years old depending on the breed cats 63 years old monkeys 139 years old rabbits 24 to 42 and this, my friends, explains what sent us down this rabbit hole in the first place, which is why there are so many rabbits They seem to have guardians of other species or simply live in a single rabbit. families, the simple fact is that even if rabbits form families at ages as young as 18, a significant portion of them will not live long enough to see their children finish school, since the lifespan of rabbits is so short that it is no wonder so many rabbit children are being raised by non-rabbits, the surviving rabbit parent probably remarrying out of a desire to have a partner to raise their children with them.

If this is common in Arthur's universe, it wouldn't be so strange for this kind of thing to happen, which would explain why. the characters in the show never comment on it. Arthur has been on the air since 1996 and is just one of those cartoon characters that doesn't age. He's been an eight-year-old third grader for over 23 years, which I have to say is probably a good thing is that if the series really followed the characters for 23 years, they may have already reached the point where Buster's classmates have to celebrate his funeral while everyone else is in the prime of their lives - that, of course, would be after the episode where Buster happens. his midlife crisis somewhere in the middle of high school looking at all the life expectancies of animals in arthur's universe arthur the anteater actually has a pretty decent chance of outliving most of his other classmates maybe he should really marry francine the monkey if he's looking for someone to spend his golden years with oh wait he really does this is something that is confirmed in the show they end up together and strangely have a conversation about buster there's buster baxter lo whatever happened to him huh, whatever happened to buster I miss how those best friends don't end up together in the end and notice how Arthur just doesn't respond right now, he just stares sadly into the distance, it's almost like he has a dear old friend who died too soon and my friends are my feel good episode about the world of arthur's happy childhood and remember it's all just a theory, a

film

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