As with most children’s programming that bleeds into mainstream popularity, Barney was a character of pure joy and love that teens and adults were happy to mock. Portrayed by Bob West, the happy purple dinosaur was the brainchild of Sheryl Leach. Leach invented Barney out of raw necessity after noting that her son had very little entertainment aimed as his age range. When the series launched at PBS in 1992, it was an unmitigated smash hit and ultimately ran for 268 episodes over 14 seasons. Obviously, it also lodged itself into the cultural consciousness of every parent and late show host from coast to coast. Also, apparently some people turned violent over it.
via: Vulture
“What color is happier than purple? No color.” This sounds like an empirical fact because Bill Nye is saying it. He’s one of a number of talking heads in the trailer for I Love You, You Hate Me, a two-part documentary “chronicling the rise and fall of Barney the dinosaur’s furious backlash — and what it says about the human need to hate.” That’s … a pretty Hannah Arendt–ish choice for this subject matter. “Barney stands for inclusion, acceptance,” says Bob West, the voice of the big purple dinosaur, ergo, the “violent and explicit” plush-Barney-bashing imagery we see in the trailer must be against those values. And here I thought singing “I hate you, you hate me, let’s go out and kill Barney” was just a healthy way for 6-year-olds of the time to signal they were big kids now.
In the trailer, Al Roker recalls the sensation of anti-Barney furor, and one person remembers scandalous schoolyard rumors like “Barney hides drugs in his tail.” Words flash onscreen saying, “Why does the world love to HATE?” It all sounds a bit extreme, but then again — did you ever think a Barney trailer would have the words “death and dismemberment” in it? Did you think it would end in a shooting? I Love You, You Hate Me will premiere on Peacock on October 12 in all its big purple glory.
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