Film Theory: The Tragic World of Arthur Exposed! (PBS Arthur)

you know looking back arthur might not be the wholesome pbs kids cartoon that we all thought it was i mean he had an episode where everyone in school struggled with addiction to strange ingredients in the candy bars that they were eaten that's certainly concerning and the whole world seems to operate under unspoken societal prejudices and hierarchies i mean did your six-year-old self ever notice the fact that reptile characters are only ever shown to be doing jobs with heavy manual labor it's true it's almost enough to make you ball up your fist in anger but there's one other dark truth about this show that you might have missed back in preschool heck that the adults watching this with their kids have still missed to this day a dark truth that'll make your brain melt and that my friends is what we're covering today [Music] hello internet welcome to film theory the show that has an original point of view just like everyone that you meet when you're walking down the street here's a question for you what's the longest running american cartoon if you said the simpsons well you probably also watched our king of the hill episode and you're right congratulations but you know what the second longest running cartoon in america is it's our buddy arthur the aardvark who's been growing up while learning family-friendly lessons on tv screens since 1996. this would be the part where i say only 90s kids will remember but after 22 seasons arthur is still on the air it's wild that my son can grow up watching the same shows that were on tv when i was a kid and i'm glad that arthur never left cause every kid ought to grow up in a world where we can learn to work and play and get along with each other arthur's also one of those shows that's great to go back to as an adult cause a lot of the jokes were totally put in there for the parents who had to watch whatever their kids were watching and if you were a kid well you probably missed a lot of those references the first time around sorry sue ellen it's a brother and sister race maybe there's a contest for lonely children after this it's only children dw a lonely child is what you're gonna be when i sell you holy jeez arthur when you sell your sister what am i gonna do run away literally join the circus my mom knows a good plastic surgeon but there's another thing that you might have missed when watching arthur as a kid something that's not so bright and cheery it may be a wonderful kind of day but we wouldn't be film theory if we weren't willing to ruin those wholesome childhood memories by exposing the dark and tragic truths behind them now if you're somehow one of the people who didn't grow up watching this pbs classic as a kid arthur is a show about an aardvark named arthur and his sister dw as they go to school with their friends including a rabbit named buster a monkey named francine a bulldog named binky a bear named the brain everyone in the world is an animal in case you missed the pattern and um that's pretty much what you need to know in typical kids show fashion they learn life lessons they shade each other you know how polly lock it works that's where you keep your most special important thing i figured you'd want to put this in there no thanks i'm gonna put in a picture of my cat oh and they burn the spelling of aardvark into your brain so completely that literal decades after you watch that one episode you still hear it in your mind a-a-r-d-v-a-r-k a-a-r-d-b-a-r-k no joke it is still how i remember how to spell that word even as i'm typing this up that song is playing constantly in the back of my brain and that's what you get if you're the target demographic but if you've ever stumbled across an episode of this show as someone a bit older after learning about the birds and the bees you might be wondering how in a society of animals inner species romance works but ha jokes on you the show is already one step ahead of you despite arthur living in a society with many different types of animals most families seem to be single species arthur and his sister dw are both aardvarks and both of their parents are also aardvarks buster baxter is a rabbit with two rabbit parents francine is a monkey with two monkey parents and so on and so forth now we do know that inner species romance isn't exactly taboo for instance back in 2019 mr ratburn who you might have already guessed is a rat married and aardvark and while that episode was apparently controversial enough to get it banned from television in alabama i'm gonna wager that the outrage was more about the fact that mr ratburn was a man marrying another man and not so much the fact that it was a rat marrying an aardvark in this world there's apparently nothing saying that an aardvark can't date or marry a rat but when it comes to biology and reproduction the arthur universe seems to follow rules pretty similar to our own if you're an aardvark looking to make some aardvark babies you're gonna have to find yourself another aardvark or at least that's the way it seems at first until you start digging deeper and you notice a strange trend for instance molly and james mcdonald they're both rabbits and while their father is a rabbit their mom is a dog emily here is also a rabbit with a rabbit mother and a monkey father and carl is a rabbit who has an aardvark mother and no other parents that we can see at first these three examples might seem to disprove the idea that interspecies romance in the arthur universe can't result in reproduction but there's another thing that they all have in common molly james emily and carl the four characters who all have at least one parent that doesn't match their own species are all rabbits that doesn't seem like it can be a coincidence in a world full of aardvarks monkeys bulldogs and all other kinds of animal species it just so happens that the kids who have parents of different species all are predominantly rabbits when you see a pattern like that it's the kind of thing that raises questions and demands answers the first question i had is whether there might be some particular quirk of rabbit biology that might allow him to breed across species it's not unheard of for there to be genetic hybrids after all for instance you may have heard of mules well they're the offspring of a horse and a donkey there's also many varieties of zebroids which result in cross-breeding zebras with other species you know what you get when you cross a zebra in a horse a zorse what do you get when you cross a zebra in a donkey a zonkey and those aren't jokes those are actual real animals that can be created via crossbreeding we assumed that molly james emily and carl were all rabbits based on their distinctive rabbit-like features but could it be that they're the result of some kind of crossbreeding well the science doesn't seem to support it rabbits aren't genetically similar enough to dogs monkeys or aardvarks to crossbreed with them you could argue that the arthur universe has different rules here after all all the animals are genetically similar enough to walk upright on two feet and speak to each other in english but even if that were the case it still doesn't explain why it's only rabbits that we see as the children in these inner species relationships however there may indeed be a biological explanation for why it's always rabbits who seem to be raised by non-rabbit parents and it gets into some territory that has some pretty troubling implications for the wider arthur universe one thing that we've been doing this whole time is operating under the assumption that all of these rabbit kids are the biological children of the parents that they live with but as we all know the real world is full of plenty of examples where parents and children aren't related by blood obviously adoption exists and there are plenty of kids with divorced parents living with their step parents in short the way i see it there are two key possibilities potentially causing this trend one divorce is more common in rabbit couples or two rabbit children are getting put up for adoption more frequently so let's start with possibility one divorce being common in rabbit couples you see this theory already seems plausible considering that divorce exists in arthur's world buster baxter has parents who are separated also a rabbit couple and there's a real world explanation for this you see real world rabbits don't tend to mate with only one partner for their entire lifetime they're not monogamous you could say that they are hopping from partner to partner which you know could produce some strain on a relationship when bitsy baxter over there is finding her husband beau in the borough with another woman except there's a problem with all this rabbits aren't alone in this category very very few animal species are actually monogamous it's mostly because it doesn't make sense from a genetic standpoint reproduction is all about ensuring the survival of your genes into the next generation so you want as many chances at that as possible with a relatively wide array of mates monogamy is costly because it requires an individual to place their entire reproductive investment on the fitness of their one mate it's putting all their eggs in one basket literally and in arthur we see all different animal types from aardvarks to bulldogs goats monkeys moose pigs sheep in all i counted about 20 different species of animal shown to be functioning members of this society and the fact is most of these types of animals would be dealing with the same marital issues if monogamy was really a concern in this universe so it doesn't seem like divorce here is causing the issue which means it has to roll up to option two adoption but why would so many bunny babies be put up for adoption in this universe well i think it's actually the result of two contributing factors you see it's no secret that rabbits are notorious for their mating abilities the phrase breeding like rabbits is a thing that exists for a good reason rabbits are able to become pregnant early in life with some species able to get the ball rolling so to speak as early as four months of age add to that the fact that the female is able to get pregnant for all but three days per month and you've got yourself a wide open window for babies now that alone would be pretty unique in the animal kingdom but there's another few factors that make rabbits incredible breeders you see a mother rabbit usually gives birth within 32 days of getting pregnant and is ready to get pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth so if they wanted a mother rabbit could have a litter of babies almost every month nearly 12 in a year which is incredible compare that to humans where the gestational period is 266 days but what makes rabbit breeding truly insane is that each of those litters can have anywhere between 1 and 14 babies with the average being six compare that to other animals that we see in the arthur universe aardvarks one baby every seven months monkeys one baby every two years or so dogs cats foxes bears you name it all of them have longer pregnancies and smaller litters which means that there's going to be a lot more rabbits in this world than there are any other type of animal and this is something that's actually confirmed by the show's character list looking through lists of all characters to have ever appeared in arthur you quickly see that there are nearly 220 unique rabbit characters that have shown up on the screen the second most animal species is as you'd expect aardvarks which clock in at around 170 unique characters but that number is also inflated since our main character is himself in aardvark so the show is going to revolve around him and his animal type no other animal even comes close to touching the number of rabbit characters in this show now it'd be tempting to say that all these newborn bunnies are resulting in the parents abandoning some of their kids which is terrible and awful and quite honestly would make a pretty darn good dark twist for this episode on a show made for elementary school kids but i don't think that's the case here there isn't any scientific evidence suggesting that rabbit parents are any more negligent than parents of other species and it also won't explain why there are so many one rabbit households now i think that there's something else at play here you see there is one basic bit of biology that separates rabbits from pretty much every other species that we see on the show lifespan let's go back to that character frequency chart shall we and compare the life spans of the most common species that we see in the arthur universe aardvarks 18 years in the wild 23 in captivity brown bear 20 to 25 years in the wild dogs 10 to 15 years depending on the breed indoor cats 13 to 17 years brown spider monkeys 27 years in the wild 33 in captivity rabbit one to two years in the wild five to seven in captivity to borrow from another kids program one of these things is not like the others in the world of arthur animal lifespans are probably going to be closer to what they would be in captivity since arthur and his classmates probably don't have to worry about things like natural predators of course i missed that episode where the brain has to learn to suppress his bear-like instincts to avoid devouring his classmates but even when raised in captivity rabbits have a much shorter life span than aardvarks monkeys dogs and pretty much every other species that we see up here in arthur with the only big exception being rats but then again this is a third grade rat in arthur dude already looks like he's ready to put a mortgage on a house so i'd say he's agent pretty darn fast now obviously everything that we see in the arthur universe isn't going to be one to one with real life these animals can stand upright on two legs to walk down the street and can learn to work and play and get along with each other these animals seem to age at a rate similar to humans while real-life rabbits are capable of breeding at ages as young as four to six months buster is eight years old and doesn't seem to have hit puberty yet so if we adjust animal life spans to human lifespans like we see on the show it would look a little something like this aardvarks 97 years brown bear 95 years dogs 42 to 63 years depending on the breed cats 63 years monkeys 139 years rabbits 24 to 42 and this my friends explains the thing that sent us down this rabbit hole in the first place which is why there are so many rabbits who seem to have guardians of other species or just live in single rabbit families the simple fact is that even if rabbits are starting families at ages as young as 18 a significant portion of them won't live long enough to see their kids finish school with rabbit lifespan so short it's no wonder that so many rabbit kids are being raised by non-rabbits the surviving rabbit parent probably remarries out of desire to have a partner to raise kids with them if this is common in the arthur universe it wouldn't be all that weird for this sort of thing to happen which would explain why it's never commented on by characters in the show arthur has been on the air since 1996 and he's just one of those cartoon characters that doesn't age he's been an eight-year-old third grader for over 23 years which gotta say it's probably a good thing if the series actually followed the characters for 23 years they might have already gotten to the point where buster's classmates have to hold his funeral while everyone else is in the prime of their lives that of course would be after the episode where buster goes through his midlife crisis somewhere in the middle of high school looking at all the life expectancies for the animals in the arthur universe arthur the aardvark actually has a pretty decent shot of outliving most of his other classmates maybe he really should marry francine the monkey if he's looking for someone to spend his golden years with oh wait he actually does this is something that is confirmed in the show they do wind up together and strangely have a conversation about buster there's buster baxter whatever happened to him huh whatever happened to buster strange how those best friends don't wind up together in the end and notice how arthur just doesn't respond in this moment he just stares sadly off into the distance it's almost like he had a dear old friend who died a bit too early and that my friends is my feel good episode on the world of arthur happy childhoods and remember it's all just a theory a film theory and this episode was brought to you by the subscribe button the subscribe button helping this channel reach an arbitrary milestone that will get us a glorified paperweight subscribe button use it ark

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 4,034,037

Rating: 4.9158502 out of 5

Keywords: arthur, arthur pbs, arthur full episodes, arthur episodes, arthur aardvark, arthur song, arthur savage, dw meme, d.w. meme, arthur meme, buster, arthur wedding, dark arthur, arthur theory, meme, film theorists, film theory, matpat, film theory arthur, tv theory, cartoon theory, arthur episodes, cartoon arthur

Id: ExwtgMtovyY

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TheRozb]

u/MatPatGT I own rabbits, and from all the research I did, they can live from 5-15 years. One of our rabbits is 7 years old, and while she's not doing as hot as she was before, she's probably not going to die soon. What was your source for their lifespan?

[u/Nyancathulu]

b r u h why u do this to meeeeee

[u/Atallboi14]

Does anyone know how he calculated the math of the animal lifespans?