Notebook:"What's your favourite idea?"
Notebook: "Mine is being creative!"
MatPat: Oh yeah?
MatPat: Well, mine is unraveling the mysteries of insane viral videos.
(Wicked distorted title sequence!)
Hello, Internet!
Welcome to Film Theory,
The YouTube version of
your uncle who thinks that everything's a conspiracy.
"Why, yes, Uncle Bob!"
"I DO think it's strange that you
never see a baby pigeon."
"And I'm definitely interested
"to hear your theory about the government's involvement in that!"
"Please tell me more!"
And it's that kind of mixture of insanity and analysis that
brings us to today's topic,
the independent internet darling,
'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared.'
If you're unfamiliar with DHMIS,
It's a series of short films with puppets that
that looks to be inspired by shows like Sesame Street.
BUT HOLD ON THERE, all you neglectful parents raising your kids off of YouTube videos!
If any of you are looking it up right now to show your children,
you're probably gonna want me to finish this sentence first.
Because each episode of 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared,' features a bit of a dark turn towards the end.
Like arts and crafts with a real heart!
Or a giant can eating a duck alive!
Oh, yeah! You're in THAT part of YouTube again!
But, even though 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared'
is genuinely one of the weirdest things I've watched on YouTube, I really like it!
It's really, REALLY well done and you should absolutely watch it!
At its core, this series is all about YouTube.
'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' s creators, Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling
pretty much started this from scratch on the site.
The first episode came out only three months after I uploaded my first ever
episode of Game Theory.
It's a long time ago, so I feel like we have a kindred history, here.
But also, I like it because this show refuses to be categorized.
It's got puppets but it also has animation in a lot of different styles.
And then, if you wait long enough, it also has some live-action sequences.
All of these different styles are one of the things that makes it really hard to interpret.
These videos aren't interested in playing by anybody else's rules.
And that makes it really exciting to watch.
But last, and probably most importantly, is the amazing attention to detail these videos have.
The number of callbacks and easter eggs in every episode is astounding!
Some of them, you have to practically watch frame by frame to even see!
And you know that's the kind of stuff that makes me,
and obviously tons of other Theorists out there,
really excited! There are a lot of different ways to interpret 'Don't Hug Me,'
But today for our first theory on this series - That's right; I said, "First."
More on that later. - we're going to talk about what the whole thing means.
An overview of the main themes of the whole series.
Granted, we're not the first people to try and do this. YouTube and Reddit were
flooded with theories when the last episode went up, but I really tried to do
my homework on this one, and I got an explanation for 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared,'
that will convince even the most skeptical of theorists. Be warned,
comprehensive Spoilers lie ahead,
but then again this entire thing is on YouTube, and it's just 6 episodes that
are between 3 and 8 minutes each. So just go watch it. Like right now.
Anyway,
Y'all ready? Faaantastic! Let's get, creative!
If we're hoping to explain what's going on in 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' we first
need to establish what kind of world we're in. A lot of theories look at
bizarre events in this series as evidence of something sinister such as
the three main characters to whom I'll be referring to from here on out is
The Red Guy, The Yellow Guy, and the Duck, being stuck in purgatory or some sort of nightmare.
To that I say,
Occam's razor, my friend. A better explanation is one that's a lot simpler...
These three are just stars of a children's television show.
Granted, it may not be a very nice children's television show, but the
evidence is there.
There are several instances in which we see the inner workings of a television
show.
We see clapboards and cameras right in episode one, at the start of the
creativity montage.
Then again in episode 4, when The Red Guy follows the computer wire to the next
room, and in episode 6, as The Lamp explains dreaming to The Yellow Guy.
You can also tell that most of the time these characters are on sets. This is
most obvious when Duck revolts in episode 5, saying "Enough, I don't want to do this anymore!"
The perspective of the video changes. Indicating that Duck has hit the camera that's filming him, and
with the camera looks upward, we can see the characters aren't actually in a
house with a ceiling, but in a studio with lights overhead. The other obvious
tip off, is that our three main characters are basically archetypes of
what you see on Sesame Street. The Yellow Guy is a human puppet like Burt or Ernie,
The Duck is an animal puppet like Snuffleupagus or Big Bird, and The Red
Guy is some sort of humanoid monster, like Grover or
Oscar The Grouch. Or those aliens that go "MEEPEPEPEPEPEPE,
uh-huhm, uh-huh" all the time. Those things utterly freaked me out by the way. And if
this is indeed a TV show it would explain some of the easter eggs we keep
seeing in later episodes. As 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' progresses, we start to see
some of the same props appearing over and over again. At the beginning of
episode 4 we can see a statue of Malcolm, from the previous episode, on the fire
place next to the clock. At the start of episode 5 we see the number chart
that the computer uses
in episode 4 attached to the refrigerator, and then there are other
props like the red, blue and yellow baseball cap that keeps showing up
episode after episode.
These aren't just cool Easter eggs they're there for a reason. To decorate the set
with props they've used before, instead of having to buy entirely new props and
set pieces every time. This is common not just within TV shows, but also across
productions as a way to save money.
There are examples of this practice all OVER film and TV, like the newspaper from
'No Country For Old Men' showing up in the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and even better
'Modern Family'. The armor from StarShip Troopers also makes an appearance in
'FireFly', or 'Star-Trek' literally reusing an entire space station in two
completely separate productions!
There's one other juicy bit of Theorist Bait in episode 6, that strongly points
in the whole thing being a TV show as well. When The Yellow Guy is in bed, looking
through a scrapbook,
we see a picture of The Red Guy, who wasn't in episode 5 except for the credits.
And who's bed is empty at the start of episode 6, wearing a graduation cap. Other theorists have suggested that this means that Red Guy is a teenager,
who grew up and went out to the real world, but going off to college is also
a way for a television show to explain the sudden absence of a main character. For
instance, at the end of season 4 of 'Blue's Clues,' the original host Steve announces
that he's leaving Blue to go off to college, when in actuality that was just
the show transitioning to a new host letting Steve go and do whatever weird
artsy films that he's working on now and NO, internet, he did not go off and
die of a heroin overdose he just did a TV show like three years ago.
Fact check internet. MAN,
you guys are dark! Then again we are talking about a series of videos where
one of the puppets dies in a vat of oil and another gets his intestines ripped
out. So...yeah.
Internet is dark dark place. Alright, great! So 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' is a
kids TV show. Awesome, but what does it mean? What the heck are the makers of the
show trying to say?
Well the first part of this is fairly obvious: television messages that are
delivered to children are corrupting them as much as they're helping them.
Those episodes of 'Sesame Street'? Oh-ho yeah!
Leading your kids down a dark path of brainwashing destruction!
I'm looking at you, Big Bird! At least according to the DHMIS. You don't think so?
Just look at each episode! The pattern here is pretty clear: each one has a
theme you expected the other show like 'Sesame Street': creativity, how time works,
love, technology and computers, healthy eating, and dreams. But in every instance
that message gets corrupted and not just by decaying flesh or catching your dad
watching porn or a human heart covered in glitter.
Let's take it episode by episode. Episode 1 is all about the virtues of creativity,
except it portrays certain types of creativity as being right and wrong,
claiming that green isn't a creative color and that The Yellow Guy's picture
of a clown deserves to be destroyed because it's somehow creative in the
wrong way.
Episode 2 tries to explain the concept of time, but that explanation is overly
simplistic and teaches that time is important
even though kids still can't understand it from the way it's being taught. The clock
answers questions about time like "But when did it start?" "And when will it stop?" with weird
evasive answers like "Time is simple
and I am a clock." Then when The Duck finally tries to explain time scientifically, The
Clock
yells until Yellow Guy's ears literally start to bleed! In episode 3 the Yellow
Guy learns about love from a butterfly-- "Pesky bee!" or bee-- "A little baby pigeon." or
little baby pigeon or...whatever, and teaches him about feelings. But then
later learns that love is only ok when it's followed in a certain way,
particularly as it applies to religion.
Episode 4 is all about computers and how they can teach us a lot about the world,
but at the end simply conclude that in the digital world people end up doing
frivolous things like fashion and shopping and mindless entertainment.
They're literally getting sucked into a computer and distracted with all these
superficial things rather than the information they were looking for in the
first place. Then in episode 5 the characters are supposed to learn about
how to eat healthfully, but the advice of the can
meat is confusing and contradictory. And this food pyramid is just
terrifying! "The food groups can easily be sorted using the simple health shape." It's
also about how certain name-brand products are good for you and others are
bad.
The underlying theme here is clear: the kids show these three characters are in
throughout the entirety of 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' sets out to deliver lessons
about the world, but either fails miserably or succeeds and intentionally
brainwashing kids to a specific point of view. But why? Why are the creators of the
show so cynical about kids programming?
Are they trying to say that there's some big conspiracy behind kids TV shows? Well,
yeah, actually.
Definitely seems that way. Dig a little bit deeper and there's evidence that the
show's creators are railing against not just kids TV but the makers of kids TV
and what their goals really are. Not educating kids but in making money.
Throughout the series we see visuals all about earning money, such as the very
first thing you see in 'Don't Hug Me,' a newspaper which reads "Stocks Flying High,"
along with a figure that seems to imply that the value of the British pound is
increasing. We also have subtler clues like a board game in the background of
episode 4 that's titled "Money Win." But the most important element of this
very small detail. Any fan of 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' knows that each of the
episodes takes place on June 19, but what you have to look closer to see is the
year. You can actually figure it out from episode 1. That newspaper headline
about stocks soaring in the UK is no accident,
and it's not fiction. If you look at stock records for June 19 over the last
hundred years, there's one year in particular where stock markets were
hitting record highs on that date: in 1955. In 1955, stock markets all over the
world, including the US and UK, broke practically every record imaginable when
the market's open. And if it was good evidence in episode 1, in episode 2 we
get our definitive proof. When The Clock mentions that the past is far behind us,
we see a picture of all three main characters with the date underneath that
reads 19-06-55. The 19-06 part obviously stands for Jun 19,
since the Brits put their day before the month, with the 55 confirming our
year. But why? Why 1955?
Well 1955 was actually a huge deal in British television history. Prior to
1954, the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC, held a
monopoly on British television, but it was 1954 that the UK passed
what became known as the Television Act, in an effort to bring an end to that BBC
monopoly. This act led to the establishment of the first alternative
network called ITV, for Independent TV in 1954.
Where the BBC is sponsored by the British government, ITV is
independent, and therefore has to make its money through advertising. Now in
interpreting the series other YouTube channels,
most notably YouTube Explained, have covered this topic, but they've said in the
context of 'Don't Hug Me' that this was a good
evolution. I see it the opposite way, and I'm pretty sure the creators of 'Don't
Hug Me, I'm Scared' would agree,
and here's why: this was THE. FIRST. TIME that advertising appeared in British
television, marking an inflection point at which television went from a medium
to communicate and entertain to a medium to make a profit, thereby giving
executives and advertisers as much and often times more power than the creators.
and Britain was especially sensitive to TV advertising.
I mean in the US we were already used to interrupting TV program with ads,
or not even interrupting them at all. In the US, it was actually standard
practice at the time to believe those regular shows into an ad
so one minute you be watching The Flintstones and then all of a sudden
they be selling you cigarettes.
No joke! Or watching a game show and then being sold dishwasher detergent in the
middle.
One piece of evidence that was used against ads was that in the US, the
coverage of Queen Elizabeth's coronation was interrupted by a commercial with a
dancing monkey named J Fred Muggs. The British considered advertisements like
that embarrassing and quite frankly rude.
You don't interrupt their queen with a monkey! So 1954 and 1955 were years that
were filled with debates about when and how to allow ads onto TV and if the
behavior of Becky and Joe--
'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' creators--is any indication, the issue of ads influencing
TV is a big concern of theirs.
According to the newspaper "The Guardian," Becky and Joe received offers from more
mainstream sources to make episodes of 'Don't Hug Me,'
but turned them all down and funded the project themselves through Kickstarter.
Joe Pelling was quoted as saying, "We wanted to keep it fairly odd and have
the freedom to keep doing exactly what we wanted."
The implication here is clear! If 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' were made for
television, it would have had to have been approved by other people, people
whose interests would have been for profit or popularity, not about the
message of the show. And when you look at these 6 episodes it's pretty clear that
the messages for a positive, good, inspirational, entertaining kids show are
there, but they've been perverted by the influence of an outside force.
'Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared' is ultimately a parable for the loss of control that
artists trade off when they work on bigger screens.
Their messages are manipulated and their morals are poisoned by others with
ulterior motives.
And with that, I'm going to have to leave you hanging. I know! I know! I'm sorry! I
recognize that we're just starting to scratch the surface of this series, but
establishing this series as a launching point was really important for answering
all the other questions that we haven't gotten a chance to touch on today.
Who are these characters, really? What's the significance of June 19? What about Roy,
the ominous lurking figure The Yellow Guy claims is his dad? And what does the
ending mean? But don't worry we're getting to all those questions and more in just
another week! Which means that the lesson of today is subscribing! Subscribing is a
good idea if you want to see the videos when they come out!"
Subscribe! And IN THE MEANTIME, REMEMBER: "That's just a theory! A FILM THEORY!"
and
CUT!