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[J. Morse Loyola]

From the VioPac Rant-O-Matic, v6.0. Author: ivan homeless

There are some people these days who feel that the art of satire is dead. I salute these people, because I feel their heart is in the right place - namely, on their sleeve. I like to walk up to them on the street with a fork and poke holes in their hearts, and watch them jump around in amazed convulsions.  Sometimes it's just because they don't want to get their sleeves soiled, but occasionally it's because you missed and got 'em in the arm.

Satire is not dead, folks, it's just occupied. Occupied, that is, in producing a children's television program called "The Teletubbies". Have you seen it? It really is quite exciting.

Our story - our telestory - is set in a remarkable twist on the postmodern wasteland. Whereas most post-apocalyptic motifs revolve around the tearing down of the modern and the "blasted heath" of the Wasteland, this delightful bit of televisual programming is quite different. Yes, we have the bomb shelter that our radioactive mutant anti-heroes call home, but the setting - the mise-en-cine - is post-post-apocalypse; everywhere you look, something is alive. Hills carpeted with lush, green grass, beds of colorful flowers, trees and shrubs as far as the eye can see - this is the backdrop to what is probably the single most cynical artistic work since The Holy Bible.

The setting is so simple, so basically alive, that we find ourselves drawn in to the action with a curiously childish sense of euphoric curiosity. It is only when we are introduced to the creatures inhabiting this horrifying world that we begin to realize that not all is well in Teletubbyland.

Our anti-heroes are, to put it plainly, a gaggle of radioactively deformed, mentally retarded idiot savants who, through a deliciously sarcastic plot element have actually grown their own televisions such that they protrude from their very stomachs. This burden of constant receptacle programming wouldn't be nearly as horrifying, however, if it weren't for the cruel, uncaring despot ruler of this hellish place: the Sky Demon.

We aren't given an explanation of how he came to power; indeed, such a theology would betray the simple-minded drudgery inherent in the repetitive lives of the Teletubbies. In point of fact, how he came to rule over them is irrelevant: all that matters is that he is the source of the constant tortuous ennui that would beset the Teletubbies if they were self-aware enough to be cognizant of it.

Alas, they are not; they are the last remnants of what we may assume to be our species. They are radioactive cyborgs, too over- and inbred to realize the true nature of their eternal suffering. Indeed, they are too stultified by the Sky Demon on the one hand and the Television sets bred into their chests on the other to realize that they are suffering. One needs little immagination to see the clear similarities present between them, in their rosy prison, and us, with our Cable TeeVee and running water.

Readers - and watchers - may remark at the oddly repetitive nature of "The Teletubbies". At first, we too were caught off guard by the repeated scenes, but their meaning soon became clear: the historic process that created the mutant Teletubbies was not relegated solely to what we must speculate as being the effects of War, Technology, and Religion; it was also the deadening of our senses, the gradual deterioration of our critical facilities. We will become, predicts The Teletubbies, so mentally crippled that, in the end, we will need this constant repetition if we are to be able to comprehend what we are being told. Indeed, a casual glance at advertising today only proves to solidify this conviction.

The impending holocaust predicted by this work is hammered home at the end of each episodic session: as the Teletubbies say, it's "Time for Teletubby Bye-Bye". Indeed, it is; for each one of us, now, it is time for our own very personal Teletubby Bye-Bye.