Wednesday 16 August 2017

CBEEBIES: The Dystopian Limbo Of Bing, And Other Theories

I wasn’t planning on doing another Cbeebies post so soon.  But since the last post, where we mentioned Bing only in passing, my wife and friends have put forward their theories about his parentage.

Then a Den Of Geek article last Thursday was solely devoted to the subject.  Obviously this is a hot topic, and it can’t be long before the scandal orientated tabloids will be knocking on Flop’s door, demanding the truth.

But who is Bing?  Bing is a loud and large rabbit, with a penchant for red checked dungarees and being a pain in the hole.  He has several friends of different species, who are roughly the same age and roughly the same size.  Sula, for instance, is an elephant, but is quite happy to play with Bing instead of trampling him underfoot because they take the same size in trousers.

Bing and his friends are analogous to toddlers.  They have parent figures - Bing’s is called Flop.  Flop is the real star of the show as far as parents are concerned, because he manages to solve Bing’s most recent meltdown so calmly - suavely even.  

A usual Bing plot is that Bing is playing with one of his friends (Sula seems to be a regular victim), or maybe just hanging out with Flop; something goes wrong for Bing, whether it’s that he lost at a game, or found out someone is better at doing something than he is, or they’ve not got food he likes in for tea; Flop patiently explains to Bing, in a very calm voice, why he’s behaving like an arse and what he can do to improve; happiness prevails.  The episode alway ends with Flop saying “[episode subject matter] - it’s a Bing thing!”  This means that a lot of seemingly everyday things are actually Bing things, including shadows, ice creams and growing.  Maybe the show is trying to claim everything that exists is Bing’s, step by step.


Flop has extraordinarily good parenting skills, especially with patience like his, and is an excellent role model for young Bing.  The reason why Bing’s parentage is of such curiosity is that Flop is a small orange soft toy about a quarter of the size of his charge.  And what takes this out of the realms of curiosity and into the land of very odd indeed is that every single animal in Bing’s town has a similar parent figure.  

Flop is definitely, in no shape or form, a rabbit (or any other sort of animal).  My longstanding pet theory is that he is, but in the land where Bing is set, children just happen to look like animals until they reach adulthood - when Bing becomes an adult he will overnight turn into something rather like Flop (it’s heartening to see that this exact theory was endorsed by the Den of Geek post).  My wife’s theory is that Bing and all of his friends are in foster care, and that the town is essentially a foster town, with altruistic bean bags taking on animal children from broken homes.

After posting the previous post, which wasn’t even about Bing, several theories from friends came forth on Facebook, including:

“Bing exists in a dystopian limbo in which young animals with learning difficulties are banished to be cared for by pastel-coloured knitted golems.”

“I've always seen Flop and his ilk as social workers or foster carers, but then coco's equivalent appears to be a very busy business 'woman', dumping them on anyone that'll take them, doesn't even say hi or thanks to flop for babysitting. Rude.”

“I've spoke to [my daughter] about it, and she very much thinks that Flop is Bing's dad. “

The Den Of Geek article covers several of the above theories and several others (and the internet at large has even more).  It’s obviously a matter of growing national concern, and it’s only a matter of time before the heavyweight journalists get involved and bring us the truth.  Unless Flop is bribing them to keep his story safe.


However all of this parentage stuff is a bit of a distraction from the main issue I have with the problem which is that Bing is an insanely irritating character.  He has an extremely whiney voice, and almost anything he says is bound to annoy me - but the worst is in the title sequence, where he trips, Flop says “are you alright Bing?” and he replies “yuh-hu-uh!”.  I don’t know why this bothers me as much as it does.  It’s probably the lack of basic vocabulary - I expect more from a cartoon toddler rabbit on the BBC.  But as a character he is also very prone to being selfish and just always has to be the centre of attention - he’s very much a drama queen.  If I owned a rabbit like that, I’d probably try to give him up for adoption to a bean bag creature myself.

In closing, it should be noted that my son cares considerably less about Bing than I do.

Spot The Celebrity Voice - Mark Rylance (yes, RSC trained, Wolf Hall star Mark Rylance) as Flop.  The first celebrity voice I noticed on Cbeebies, it blew my mind how many famous actors were on the channel at first.  These days it seems odd if I don’t recognise any names at all.

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