Two small children jump into a bubble bath with expressions of dazed, perpetual pleasure. The taller one has hair like molded chocolate, the other’s is like a yellow ice-cream swirl. Everything—the walls, the children’s skin— looks bouncy, as though it would squeak to the touch. The bubbles are white and opaque, like globs of shaving cream. Music plays, a mixture of giggles and xylophone, with a tune you remember and words you don’t. It keeps repeating. White bubble balls appear all over the hands of the children, on their feet, on their arms. The children, once clean, materialize outside the bathtub and do a happy dance.
This is “Bath Song,” a two-minute-and-fifty-two-second video produced by the children’s-animation juggernaut CoComelon. In the world of babies and toddlers who watch a lot of YouTube, “Bath Song” is “Star Wars,” the moon landing, the white Bronco hurtling across a California freeway. It was uploaded in 2018 and is now the fourth most viewed video on the entire platform. It has been watched nearly seven billion times.
Very young children are crazy for CoComelon—a supercharged, brightly colored, Plasticine utopia. The swirlyhaired baby is called JJ. He has two older siblings, smiling parents who are endlessly available to make rainbow Popsicles, and a diverse group of friends who attend Melon Patch Academy under the tutelage of the youthful Ms. Appleberry. The scenes are depicted from toddler height; shots typically change every one to three seconds. All shapes are rounded at the corners: by company dictum, there are no sharp edges anywhere, so that nothing in CoComelon can hurt.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 17, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة June 17, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
