Help for the Heelers

The benevolent butterfly effect in Bluey’s season finale.

From Mockingbird

Mockingbird connects the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life.

A cartoon dog family stand in their kitchen

Bluey and family.

Ludo Studio.

Written by Bryan J. This article first appeared in Mockingbird, 23 April 2024. By kind permission.

“Daddy, there’s no God in Bluey’s world, is there?” No joke, my precocious four-year-old PK [Pastor’s Kid] son asked me this question after watching the new Bluey season finale, titled “The Sign.” It’s a deep question, one that comes from a place of honest curiosity — “The Sign” is, without a doubt, one of the most spiritually significant episodes of a series that is known to offer big questions to little kids. The Heeler family is presented with a life-changing decision with no guarantee of a happy ending, and the whole of the episode features the family wrestling the unknown of the future. The fact that my son could pick up on the high stakes of the episode, the philosophical questions about the goodness of providence, and the impossibility of knowing whether the future was bright or not … let’s just say it justifies the tears that come every time I watch the episode with him.

Which is five times now. I have watched the finale five times and wept every time. Isn’t this show made for preschoolers?

“The Sign” reveals a family in transition. After offering a number of hints earlier in the season, we discover that the Heeler family dad, Bandit, has accepted a job offer that pays a lot more money, but will require him to move. Chili (aka Mum) agrees with the choice to move and take the new job, but she has sincere concerns about leaving family, friends, neighbors, city, and a beloved house behind. Bluey, of course, has trouble coming to terms with the idea, as any preschooler would, and Bingo remains blissfully ignorant of the big changes coming her way. The preparations to move coincide with preparations for Uncle Rad’s marriage to family friend (and Bluey’s godmother) Frisky, with the family’s four preschool girls joining in as flower girls.

Big changes bring big questions, of course. Nowhere is this more evident than in Bluey’s preschool classroom. Calypso, the teacher, models a zen-like spirituality for Bluey and her friends. At the end of story time, Bluey asks her teacher “Why do stories always have happy endings?” Her teacher responds, “Well, I guess ’cause life will give us enough sad ones.” (Is this a kid’s show?) This inspires a host of sad stories from Bluey’s peers: a guinea pig that ran away, a divorce, a lonely dad. It’s now that Bluey announces her not-so-happy ending, telling her friends that she is moving. To help the class cope with their sadness, Calypso reads her students a parable of a farmer, who approaches all of life’s good luck and bad luck moments with the simple attitude of “we’ll see.” It’s a story without a happy ending (or without any ending, really), and the kids don’t buy it. “Is that it?” asks one, disappointed. “What happens next?” asks another. “Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to, Bluey” says Calypso with kindness, which Bluey takes to mean that their family house won’t sell (which it does, in the next scene).

Big questions also mean big feelings. An enraged and fearful Frisky, dismayed to discover her fiancé expects her to move out west where he works, runs away the morning of the wedding. Chili hops in the car, with four preschoolers in tow, to track her down. A series of events, which can be only described as providential, take place along the way. Chili, Bluey, Bingo, and cousins run into just the right person, spill juice cups at just the right moment, and make pit stops at the precisely needed spot, to find Frisky in quiet reflection at a local hilltop park. Groom-to-be Rad shows up, too. Frisky and Rad talk through their concerns and move on with the wedding, announcing there that they’ve chosen not to move west as planned. It’s a lovely wedding, with dancing and family and fun and a host of easter eggs for eagle-eyed viewers to enjoy. “You’re having a happy ending!” announces Bluey to her godmother, before turning to her mother and asking “Do you think we’ll have a happy ending too?” “I don’t know,” replies Chili, “But I’m done trying to figure it out. I just wanna dance.” Queue the happy dance montage.

Still, providence has not finished working with the Heelers. On moving day, a whole host of minor events from previous episodes collide to cancel the sale of the Heeler’s beloved house. It’s hard to describe every little flap of the butterfly’s wing that impacted this outcome — a combination of stuck coins, romantic encounters at the drugstore, inchworms saved from being squished on the slip-and-slide, and overzealous real estate agents all played their part. In a moving montage, Bandit takes the call about the canceled sale of the home, changes his mind about the new job, symbolically rips the for-sale sign out of his front yard, and is tackled by a loving family who realize they don’t have to move anymore. The family sits on boxes in their empty kitchen floor eating takeout cheeseburgers, relieved of the anxiety of moving, while the show rolls to credits. The song playing in the background is called “Lazarus Drug,” sung by the same voice actor who plays preschool teacher Calypso. It’s a song about love drawing someone back to life, perhaps a nod to the love of Bandit’s family drawing him back to the reality that they may already have a great life, and money wouldn’t make it any better. The Heelers get their happy ending, too.

The Greeks were the first to use the storytelling tool we know by its Latin name: deus ex machina, God from the machine. In Greek drama, at the climax of a seemingly unsolvable problem, a machine (usually a trap door or crane) would lift or lower an actor onto the stage portraying one of the gods of the Greek pantheon. These gods would step in and provide a solution to a drama’s seemingly unsolvable and complex problem. Nowadays, the term is derisive, an insult that implies lazy writing or poor storytelling. At the time, however, the audience loved these deus ex machina solutions. At the risk of psychoanalyzing the past, one imagines they would have been quite happy to imagine that the Gods cared enough in the affairs of humans to intervene for a happy ending.

Deus ex machina is a criticism that can be leveled at this season finale. After all the adults tell the precocious preschooler that life gives out happy and sad endings, we are not given any sad endings. The only way to navigate change, according to the wisdom of the world, is sit back, embrace a sort of desireless “zen” regarding the future, and say “we’ll see,” but everyone nonetheless gets a happy ending. After bending over backwards to lay out how the future is fickle and unknowable, the show still insists on showing how everything lined up just perfectly for Bluey’s “prayers” to be answered. It’s not just her either. Aunt Brandy’s desire for a child comes to fulfillment, after we are told numerous times that it is not meant to be (S3E31). Winton’s divorced and depressed father meets the mother of the terrier triplets (S3E45), and the two come together and form a new family. The shaggy hair dogs get their house with a pool. Everything works out just fine. Despite the look of a Greek tragedy, in which everything ends poorly for the protagonists, things end up turning out fine, just like every Greek comedy. Or, to put it in Elizabethan terms, what starts out like Hamlet becomes A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream.

In Bluey’s world, the happy endings are real. The parents always muster enough energy to play with their kids. The right parenting lesson is always on hand, and handed down with pithy aphorisms. Hurt feelings are acknowledged and reconciled with emotionally intelligent strategies. The love shown between friendships and family members is realistic and optimistic. Moreover, in this square dog world of Brisbane, Australia, when parents and grandparents are at the end of their ropes, providence steps in to help guide the way. Happy endings are not so much earned in Bluey’s world as they are a given, or perhaps gifted, sometimes by tired and exhausted parents, but also, by an unseen benevolence watching over them. What is grace, after all, if not an unexpected happy ending?

So how did I respond to my son’s question? “Yes,” I told him, “there is a God in Bluey’s world. Who do you think made all those happy endings come true?” It’s not an answer I should have come up with so quickly. I’m not usually one to offer a succinct one-liner that sums up decades of media study and theology in a bite sized nugget for my four-year-old. Perhaps, instead, it was providence that gave the answer for me.

Article

AI - Artificial Intelligence

Culture

Music

3 March 2025

4 min read

As creativity and AI battle, greed is the true enemy

Every string plucked, stitch sewn, brushstroke painted, is a sign we’re made for more than utility.

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a writer exploring the role of faith in the arts, fashion, and design

A black and white list of music tracks reads: IS THIS WHAT WE WANT. THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT MUST NOT LEGALISE MUSIC THEFT.

1,000 artists, one message.

Is the battle between AI and creativity over before it began? A collective of 1,000 musicians have released a silent album to protest new government copyright laws that would make it easier for companies to train AI models without paying artists. The album, titled “Is This What We Want?,” has a tracklist that reads “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies.”

But this isn’t the first time that new technology has threatened the livelihood of musicians, nor the first time musicians have fought back. And the lesson to be learned from the past is that the real enemy of creativity isn’t technology- it’s greed.

Musicians on strike

The invention of the record player forever changed the music industry. It’s difficult to imagine a time when you could only hear music if someone was playing a live instrument. As music records grew rapidly in popularity, payments to the musicians behind the records lagged behind.

Up until the 1940s, record companies paid studio musicians only for the time in the studio. Playing records on live radio was cheaper than hiring big bands (which had previously been the norm) because the musicians wouldn’t see any revenue from their repeated use. But in August 1942, fed up at the lack of royalties paid from music records, the American Federation of Musicians went on strike.

The silence lasted nearly 2 years. During the strike, musicians were allowed to play for live radio but banned from playing on records.

At first, record companies relied on releasing music they had already recorded. But when it became clear that the strike would last longer than expected, they began to rely on acapella voices in place of big bands for new releases. The strike concluded in 1944 as record players conceded to the American Federation of Musicians and set up a system of paying royalties to musicians. The battle was over.

The technology creativity face-off

Technology has often seemed to be at odds with human creativity despite emerging from it. Human creativity invented the record player, but the record player threatened the human creativity of all those musicians playing live.

In a similar way, artificial intelligence was both invented by creative humans and trained on the work of other creative humans. And yet, its very existence seems to threaten the work of thousands. AI’s threat is felt in every corner of the creative industries- in music, illustration, art, film and photography. And it’s not just a worry for Top 40 singers. Generative AI threatens to replace graphic and web design for small businesses, music in the background of commercials and videos, illustrations on mass produced birthday cards and souvenirs- all areas of creative work where artists receive a modest income and don’t become household names.

Companies use technology as a mirage to hide the real threat behind its computer generated glow- the greed of the human heart.

he Christian faith offers a few truths that make sense of this tension between AI and creativity. The first is human creativity is not mere ornamentation- it is at the very heart of what it means to be made in God’s image. At the very beginning of the Bible, God is Creator. Unlike God, humans cannot make something from nothing. But we can produce wonders that inspire, that reflect the goodness, truth and beauty of the world God created for us. Every string plucked, stitch sewn, brushstroke painted, is a sign that humans were made for more than utility. We were made for transcendence.

The Christian faith also teaches that human selfishness gets in the way of the transcendental vision God has for us.

The invention of the record player created problems for musicians, but it was the unwillingness of companies to pay musicians fairly for their work that posed the real threat. Companies use technology as a mirage to hide the real threat behind its computer generated glow- the greed of the human heart.

As AI continues to be adopted, executives join the chorus speaking about the “threat of AI” and the need to prioritise human creativity. Yet the decisions of the same executives value human creativity in financial terms by the compensation (or lack thereof) that real artists receive.

Companies treat new technologies as inevitable– they might even tell employees that those who can’t learn to use new technology will be left behind. But the reality is that companies shape the direction of technological advancement. There is no “neutral” or “inevitable” direction to technology. Technology can solve human problems- but first humans decide what problems need solving. AI may help us solve problems that benefit all of us- like the work being done to synthesise proteins that can have great impacts in medicine and science.

But there is no reason companies must use generative AI for creative work. People may point to money and time saved, shareholder value created. And this is where the real contradiction lies. For creativity is not a problem that needs to be solved, but a gift for us to partake in.

Is This What We Want?

The album by “1000 UK Artists” contains the sound of empty music studios- a future the group fears if musicians are replaced with AI who were trained on their talent. Session musicians, cover artists, violinists who busk in the streets or play in weddings, all are in danger from AI being trained on their hard work for free.

Knowing that technology is never neutral, the album’s title “Is This What We Want?” poses a good question. What kind of world do we want to live in? What should our technology be building towards?

For me, I want a world that encourages real human creativity– the kind given to us by God, the original creative. I want a world where technology isn’t a way for the rich to become richer but for our communities to become better places for human connection. Technology should give us more time to create art, not less. The battle between creativity and AI is in the hands of lawmakers for now. But the battle to end human greed? That’s eternal.