Should we let kids watch Veggietales?

I wrote the following article for the Doxa, CMU's student newspaper, it appeared in their February edition. As always, I want to encourage discussion, I welcome you to let me know where you think I've gone wrong in the comments.




Warning: The following article may feel like you just got punched right in the childhood.

If you like to talk to tomatoes
If a squash can make you smile
If you like to waltz with potatoes
Up and down the produce aisle...

Have I got some news to you.

What if Veggietales is actually detrimental to faith formation? What if Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber have played a role in making an entire generation of Christian children callous to the dark stories with the Bible. What if they trivialize the christian experience?

An example: In the classic episode: King George and the Ducky, instead of fighting in the great pie war, King George, played by Larry, Takes a bath with one of his many rubber duckies. As he finishes a musical number he notices something far a way, a little child named Thomas in a sawed off barrel taking a bath with another duck. King George must have it so he sends Thomas, to the front lines, the generals ordered to pull back and let him get the full force of the attack. At this point Nathan the prophet arrives with a flannel-graph sheet and tells him a story of a rich man who steals a sheep from a poor man. George is sad, but is given the opportunity to make up for his transgressions because Thomas miraculously survives, shell-shocked. But George gives him a royal bath, and everything is alright. Therefore learning the lesson that we need to consider others' feelings as well.

This light hearted story about a King and his love of toys, is really the Story of David and Bathsheba with any of the gory details removed from it. In fact, it sends messages that are actually harmful.

First of all Bathsheba is replaced by a toy, she is literally the king's play thing. She loses all agency. She is less than human. An object to be done with as David pleased. While she doesn't have much agency in the biblical narrative, she is stripped of even the dignity that comes with being human, or even vegetable.

Secondly, Veggietales trivializes the consequences of David's actions. In the Biblical Narrative, Uriah is killed when the other soldiers pull back. He died because the King decided his wife was attractive. There is no cutesy reconciliation at the end of this story. Bathsheba is pregnant, but the child dies.

During the Nuremburg trials, Hannah Arendt watched as Nazi's talked about how they struggled getting the trains to run on time, it never occurred to them that they were the trains shipping Jews to concentration camps. She described this as the Banality of Evil. People are able to do hideous things by breaking them down into trivial things, like pulling a lever, or pressing a button.

So when a person is thrown into the lion's den and the next morning is seen eating pizza with the animals, we lose the fact that Daniel was willing to die instead of stop praying. When slurpies are being thrown from the walls of Jericho we ignore the fact that real lives were lost. We have made the harsh stories in the gospels banal. Suddenly adultery and murder are not such a bad thing because it is just a rubber ducky.

So what do we do? Obviously I am not saying that children are ready to hear every story that is in the bible. We do not let children watch an 18A movie, it is okay for children to learn the darker stories when they are mature enough to understand. When that day comes we should sit them down and talk about the dark reality that the stories have, not trivialize it within catchy musical numbers.