There are few things more sought out by desperate American parents than the “banned” episodes of Bluey. We not only want the extra content for our kids, but for a show so intentional about world-building and Easter egg hiding (literally) we know that any and all details could come back with added importance in the future. So when episodes are aired in the show’s country of origin, but not on Disney+ in the United States, the internet detectives are sent out.
Most of what has been at least initially cut or changed in the trans-Pacific exchange is literal “potty” humor – a scene with a “unicorn” pooping, an episode about Bandit (the Dad) allegedly “fluffy-ing” (passing gas). But none have been deemed more scandalous than “Dad Baby.” It’s an episode still not found on the Disney+ platform, though it was uploaded to the official YouTube channel without fanfare just a month ago (Tentreyo, 2024).
What is so egregious about “Dad Baby” that American audiences have been thought to be too delicate to see it? It is about pregnancy and giving birth. The horror. We couldn’t possibly be subjected to something as profane as the very biological processes that bring every person on earth into existence!
As much as “Dad Baby” is a typical example of the best a Bluey episode has to offer (Bandit regretting his over-commitment to the game; Bluey and Bingo refusing to let him off the hook; Lucky’s Dad being recruited to midwife with his usual pitch-perfect dedication to the craft of being neighbor), it is mostly remarkable because of this assumption that it would be unappealing to audiences in the United States. For a nation where one of our origin myths stem from the Puritans, perhaps that is a fair assumption – we generally get scandalized easily by the mere mention of the existence of sex as an act, and the functions of the female sex in particular.
For example, in our most popular animated movies – those by Disney – mothers are famously rare, and pregnant mothers are even more so. Either babies just appear out of nowhere, or pregnant women only exist as pregnant, indicating “being pregnant is what wives do, an image consistent with gender stereotypes related to couples” in the Disney canon (Tanner, Haddock, et al, 2012). There is very little interest in popular animation for portraying the real, biological changes that bodies go through in pregnancy and childbirth. Perhaps it is an attempt to help parents avoid uncomfortable conversations with their kids as they watch something otherwise “innocent.” Or perhaps there are stronger forces of patriarchy and misogyny that label childbirth as “uncomfortable.”
The Christian Church has a lot to answer for here. For millennia, Christian theologians have wrestled with the fact that one of our foundational stories is that Jesus was born… meaning he came from the genitals of a woman. Even with the claims of Mary’s virginity in the Gospels, the specter of sex and female anatomy was thought to be so anathema to the idea of divinity incarnated, the concept of Immaculate Conception came up in later centuries to ensure that sex was removed from Jesus by an entire extra generation (Han, 2021).
And yet, despite the systems of misogyny that shape the early Church, one belief that could not be buried under theological acrobatics is the idea of Mary as the theotokos, the “God-bearer.” Though some early theologians rejected this title for Mary, it remains the prevailing understanding of the way in which the divine becomes incarnate in the world, through the body of a woman and the human act of birth. In the body of Mary and the act of birth, that which patriarchal systems sought to fully separate from the sacred, declaring it too profane to have anything to do with Jesus, is forever fused to the divine. In this bearing of God, the false division between divinity and humanity, profane and sacred is wiped away.
Contemporary artists have taken to heart the task then to portray Mary and the birth of Jesus in its realness – scandalous and sacred. From Nicola Slee’s Book of Mary, featuring poems such as “In Praise of Mary’s Hairy Armpits” to Natalie Lennard’s Creation of Man (Figure 2), the artistic imagination has allowed the realness of Mary’s body to be something celebrated and centered, rather than hidden away in shame and secret. Similar in spirit, “Dad Baby” portrays childbirth as natural, and in all its messiness. Though gender-swapped, the episode does not shy away from the reality of physical pain, need for community, and joy in the midst of exhaustion that comes from the bodily process of bringing a person into a messy, broken, yet joyful world.
In the spirit of Bandit’s “Dad Baby” lesson, “if you’re going to do something, do it properly,” the words of Mary herself in the Magnificat call on God to continue the work of wiping away false divisions exacerbated by human systems. “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; [God] has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” Theologically speaking, Mary calls out what is truly scandalous and profane – poverty and hunger – and demands that God uses divine power to reverse human systems that produce them.
Would that we too take that lesson away from Mary’s story and Bandit’s advice. May Mary’s “words of justice, comfort, and challenge echo down the ages and shape us still” (Mann, 2023). Instead of shying away from biological functions, let’s call out the real scandals of the world. I’ll take having to explain birth to my child over having to explain war and poverty. I’d rather see a unicorn pooping than misogyny writ large. Let’s be proud to show childbirth and the power of bodies that create life in all their glory, and maybe then we can get on with the work of real change and turning the world upside down.
References
Han, Hye Hyun, “The Eve and Mary Parallel: Misogyny in 1 Timothy 2:11-15,” Asian American Theological Forum, Vol. 10 No. 1-2, 28 May 2021.
Mann, Rachel, “My Struggle with Mary,” The Christian Century, 8 December 2023.
Tanner, Lisa Renée, Shelley A. Haddock,Toni Schindler Zimmerman & Lori K. Lund, “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films,” The American Journal of Family Therapy, Vol. 31 Issue 5, 2003.
Tentreyo, Tatiana, “Bluey Episode “Dad Baby” Now Streaming on YouTube After Not Being Available on Disney+,” The Hollywood Reporter, 2 May 2024.
Rev. Erin Jones is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). After serving congregations in Southern California and Pittsburgh, she now works for Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania (LAMPa), helping Lutherans and others live out their calling at the intersection of faith and public life. She’s mom to two kids, and hosts the Spirited Animation podcast with her husband, Dr. Timothy Jones, an animation scholar.