A far-left professor in Canada is on a tear against the wildly popular kids’ cartoon, “Paw Patrol,” which he claims is “capitalist propaganda” that leads children away from Marxism, teaching them to critique and distrust government and embrace individualism.
King’s University College professor Liam Kennedy has published an entire treatise on the subject of “Paw Patrol,” entitled “Whenever there’s trouble. Just yelp for help’: Crime, Conservation, and Corporatization in Paw Patrol.”
“Paw Patrol,” created by a Canadian toy maker is “a cartoon, a toy brand, and a merchandising juggernaut, as well as a touring live show. Together, it rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year and has been forging a cult-like preschool following for years,” according to Fast Company. The show portrays a band of puppies who provide much-needed emergency services — police, fire, construction, and other public works — to a fictional town where the dogs in charge are largely incompetent.
“In the show, Ryder is the ring-leader of the pups, each of whom has a job to do as part of their team,” according to Post Millennial. ‘There’s Chase, the police dog, Marshall, the fire chief dog who can never quite get control of his hose, Rubble, the builder, Skye, who flies a plane for some reason and is the girl pup, Everest, the extreme outdoor adventuring pup, Rocky, the rescue dog, and Zuma, the pup who drives a boat.”
That’s a huge problem, per Kennedy: “Paw Patrol, as a private corporation, is used to help provide basic social services in the Adventure Bay community. That’s problematic in that the Paw Patrol creators are sending this message that we can’t depend on the state to provide these services.”
Kennedy is so anti-“Paw Patrol” that he won’t let her daughter watch the show, out of fear that she might grow up to love law enforcement, question authority, and approve of profit (Kennedy, Post Millennal reports, came up with his theory after watching hours of the show alone in his office).
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Kennedy railed against the evils of “Paw Patrol’s” peppy team of first responder hounds, declaring them the real villains of the show because they don’t respect their local leaders.
“I’ll start with the depiction of the state. Mayor Humdinger and Mayor Goodway—kind of the representatives of the state or the government—are portrayed negatively,” Kennedy railed. “Mayor Humdinger is portrayed as unethical or corrupt. Mayor Goodway as hysterical, bumbling, incompetent.”
And don’t get him started on how the Paw Patrol itself encourages individual achievement through its motto, “no job too big, no pup too small.”
“To me that’s an individualist message,” Kennedy said. “Pull up your bootstraps, you can do it if you just try hard enough. That kind of message ignores structural barriers in our society and not everyone can do it.”
It’s a truly awful show, Kennedy complained. “I just think that as time goes on, children might be less likely to critique the capitalist system that causes environmental harm in the first place and reproduces inequality.”
What nerve.