Bluey, the Australian kids’ show about an exuberant young blue heeler and her quirky family, has become an international sensation. Now, far-right American conservatives are trying to protect their children from Bluey’s supposed wokeness with a blatant knock-off.
Chip Chilla, an animated show about a conservative American family of chinchillas, is now streaming on the platform Bentkey. Bentkey was developed by right-wing media company The Daily Wire, which is run by professional troll Ben Shapiro (yes, the guy who lit a Barbie doll on fire to protest Barbie). In Chip Chilla, the titular character is one of three homeschooled siblings—homeschooling being a common tactic among conservatives to indoctrinate their children into Christian nationalism.
The similarities between Chip Chilla and Bluey are pretty obvious. Not only are the art styles very similar, but the opening theme for Chip Chilla sounds a lot like the opening theme for Bluey. Chip Chilla was clearly designed to cash in on Bluey‘s success.
Australians have noticed, and they’re not happy. “This is a national disgrace,” said Australian news presenter Brooke Boney on 9News Australia. Adrian Schrinner, Lord Mayor of Brisbane, reportedly called the show “a phony U.S. version of our own Bluey … they’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Why can’t conservatives handle a kids’ show about a cartoon dog?
According to The Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing, Bentkey was developed explicitly to steer kids away from more mainstream entertainment. Boreing claimed that Disney, which owns the U.S. rights to Bluey, “pushes all the worst excesses of the woke left.” He positions children’s programming as inherently anti-conservative, saying that “kids go to school for 40 hours a week and then they engage in pop culture for 40 more hours every week. That means for 80 hours of a child’s week, you are turning them over to the left.”
The Daily Wire also recently unveiled a new adaptation of Snow White—without all the pesky left-wing bias of Disney’s upcoming live-action remake, of course.
Bluey isn’t preaching a left-wing agenda; it’s just a well-written, nuanced children’s show. We can laugh at Shapiro and Boreing’s clumsy attempts to replace good art with ideologically “correct” husks, but the intolerance and bigotry underlying it—along with fascist movements’ well-documented fear of “degenerate” art—is a much more sinister matter. Let’s hope Chip Chilla dies on the vine, and kids in conservative families get a chance to watch some quality entertainment instead.
(featured image: Disney+)
