I would like to introduce to you a children’s show called Lazy Town. Created by some Icelandic chap about five years ago, it mixes creepy looking puppets with humans and song (a la the Puzzle Place), and encourages kid’s to be active, to be nice, and to be creative. The thing about this show is that it is actually unique in it’s delivery but also odd at times.
A lot of mom’s seem to find the protagonist/antagonist sexually attractive, which adds to the creep factor.
The antagonist (“Robbie Rotten”) is actually just the protagonist (“Sportacus” because he’s athletic, get it?) without the molester-stache and spandex, and with more prosthetics on his face. It seems to be humoursly done much like Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Count Olaf in A Series Of Unfortunate Events, portraying such characters as Captain Sham and Stephano. A few of the clips I’ve seen have always had me more interested in what Robbie Rotten was doing than the “good guys”, for some reason.
The human girl character, Stephanie, is an explosion of pink colours and roguish innocense and happens to be the obsession of many pedophiles. She also likes to dance…. a lot. She has this sweet smile that can be read as both, “I am trustworthy and wise” as well as “I will break your heart and eat the remains.” It’s this ambiguity that keeps a lot of people intrigued, and it’s the main inspiration between many online memes and video remixes. One example, dubbed the “Stephanie Remix”, seems less than innocuous despite the uploader’s statement saying that they are not a pedophile but the video alone is funny. Uh huh, right. See for yourself.
Other memes include screenshots and animated gifs from the show that can be perceived inappropriately or altered to seem as such. This is done in a distasteful way as well as humourously. Following are a few NSFW examples.
The surprising thing is, that despite what Encyclopedia Dramatica may tell you, it does have some entertainment factor, even if slightly WTF. The Pirate Song, for instance, is kind of catchy though the random techno breaks are slightly off-putting. Plus Robbie Rotten’s many attempts at trying to sabotage the efforts of Sportacus and Stephanie can be amusing, as mentioned before, simply because he’s obviously an asshole but no one will just SAY it. Maybe it’s because he’s an entertaining asshole.
Like many children’s shows it is full of dubious content that is just vague enough to keep it on television (like Teletubbies), but it does portray one very important message that I think all kids should be ingrained with: Don’t dye your hair bubblegum pink or you may get molested. Oh, and get out of the house and exercise regularly, etc. But mainly that first one.
